If you've been one of the rare long followers of my blog you might occassionally ask yourself what happend to NukeBall, and all those other WPF apps and tools I've been talking about.

Well, we went over a lot of changes as Microsoft put WPF, Blend, and ORCAS into shape. Finally, we're ready to talk more about it.

We're bring all those things under one roof called REUXABLES (that's pronounced "reusables"). Click this link to find out more. We're going to reveal more over the next few weeks what other stuff we have in production under the reuxables line.

Show #227 | 4/9/2007
Dax Pandhi talks WPF and Expression

Graphics guru and WPF wonk Dax Pandhi shares his thoughts on WPF, WPF/e, Expression suite in general, and Blend in particular. You'll hear the story of how Dax came to be the "Pwop graphics guy" as well as his contributions to the WPF community.

Dax Pandhi is the CEO of Nukeation Studios, an award winning UX studio, he is also a very recent MVP, and one of the first people to say that WPF will rock the world! He and his company have been helping clients prepare for and adopt Windows Presentation Foundation for their applications since 2005. Dax is committed to bridging the gap between developers and designers in the new world of User Experience. He spends his time helping UX-impaired developers adopt WPF, writing about WPF, and trying to get a life. http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?showNum=227

I'm still finding that many people are still not trying WPF. Many don't know where to start. So to help people adopt WPF, Andy Eick and I are creating some cool "learning material".

Instead of assuming we know what you - "Joe Developer" or "Joe Designer" - want to know more about in WPF, we'll just ask you.

What do you want to learn about in WPF? Does databinding interest you? Or maybe custom controls? Or scalable layouts? Or the declarative XAML?

Post a comment and leave your thoughts. We will make sure we do our best to satisfy your questions in our "learning material". Really. Free training material tailored to your needs - what more could you ask for?!

Keep reading Andy's blog and mine for updates.

 

From left to right:

Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman of Microsoft India; Tarun Gulati, MD of Microsoft India; Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corp.; Dax Pandhi (Me), CEO of Nukeation Studios.

This week has been amazing! I don't do much public speaking but the guys at Microsoft got me to be a speaker at IndiMIX'06. The central focus of the event was Expression and Live. Designer and developer. Cricket and Bollywood.

The event (my first big event) was fantastic. It started with a keynote from Steve Ballmer. Following that the application MatchCast, a high-end cricket statistic and analysis application, was showcased by Anil Kumble. Nukeation was the UX consultant on the application.

There was more stuff after that (from 1100 to 1300) but I missed it for two reasons. First, as the winner of Microsoft Blogstar, I had to go backstage and meet Steve himself!

>> This blog has been interrupted to announce that you are reading the blog of a Blogstar. We now return to the regularly scheduled post. <<

I got my photo taken with him, but they haven't sent it to me yet. :/ And secondly, after Steve left, my team had to prepare for our session.

The Designer Session Team

This was my first real, big speaking event and I was nervous as hell at first. The main reason I was able to give a good presentation was because of three incredibly cool people - Leon Brown, Pandurang Nayak, and Deepak Gulati. Our session was 75 minutes and covered the three Expression products. We also launched www.1expression.net (more on that later) and the WebRockstars contest at http://www.webrockstars.in/

I couldn't have asked for a better team! These guys are amazing. Thanks so much, guys! We spent two days in a conference room in Microsoft Mumbai preparing for our stuff. It was a first-of-it's-kind experience for me. Of course, the traditional "pizza while debugging" was a familiar entity.

Our session went excellently. It opened up with Leon (who was our session host) and cricket player Murali Kartik (a name Leon still probably can't pronounce - man, he got a lot of torture from me about that - and lots of other stuff!), followed by a walkthrough of Expression Web by Pandurang.

Pandu explains the session to Murali Kartik

I followed that with a brief intro of Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer. After that Deepak and I did a Developer-Designer workflow integration demo. He made a strict "developer looking" application (aka, functional but crappy looking) in Visual Studio 2005 with "Orcas" tools. I opened the solution in ExprID and enhanced it with styles and animations. We got a really great response from the audience. Deepak and I immediately developed this chemistry which allowed us to create a funny little style of working together on-stage. And I think the people really loved it.

We ended our session with three important things: an announcement that great things will be revealed about Expression in the first week of December; the launch of www.1expression.net; and a Q&A session. My fun moment there was representing my fellow designers worldwide - the most audible form of that was during the closing when someone asked "What are the debugging capabilities of Expression Interactive?". Deepak, Leon, and Pandu gave good, real answers. I, of course, said "Designers don't debug". :)

Mandira Bedi, TV personality and the host of the live webcast

I again missed the next session (Developer) as I was asked to be interviewed on the live webcast (75k viewers - made my knees shake!) by Mandira Bedi. I was able to catch Bob Muglia's closing remarks and Q&A. After the event, Leon and I also did a short interview for CNBC.

Bob Muglia answers a question. The four guys in the background are Deepak Gulati, Janakiram MSV, Kevin D'Souza, and Rohit Kapoor.

Praveen Srivatsa, Microsoft Regional Director for Bangalore, takes software construction seriously

 

Over the past 5 days, I got to meet some really great people - Microsfties, MVPs, RDs, simple civilianss, business execs, Cricket stars, movie stars, and who can forget Steve Ballmer! I also got to learn so many cool things that I can't tell without violating a dozen NDAs. That's the price you pay for being close to Microsoft.

All I can say is: hang on - the ride has just begun!

PS. Leon, yes, still MEKNB.

If you don't already know, MIX'06 is coming to India in the form of IndiMIX'06 (http://www.indimix06.com). The keynote will be given by Steve Ballmer.

I've been given the honor of being on the same stage as Steve B. I'm going to be doing a piece on .NET Framework 3.0 - essentially about Windows Presentation Foundation and the Designer / Developer work process. I'll be co-presenting the demo with some really cool people.

IndiMIX'06 will be held at the National Center for Performing Arts (NCPA), Nariman Point, Mumbai. It's a free public event and you can register for it at the official website. If you're not able to come to Mumbai, or if the event is sold out you can watch the live webcast. Register for either at the official site.

My presentation will be from 2:00pm to 3:15pm (local time, +5:30GMT).

For more info, visit http://www.indimix06.com

Aero Glass
Just about everyone making (or thinking of making) an application for Windows Vista wants to try out the cool new Aero User Experience. Software such as Windows Media Player, Windows Calendar, and the Windows Sidebar really show off the Aero glass look.

While overusing the glass bit is a certain possibility (and a probability), using it judiciously can seriously help spice up your app. A few things to keep in mind when using Aero Glass:

• Avoid a full glass window. This creates performance as well as usability issues.
• Use full glass windows only for non-resizable, non-maximizing windows.
• The glass portions of the window should always allow the entire window to be dragged.
• When designing the window, keep in mind what it will look like in a pre-Vista OS – i.e., without glass. Always have a non-Glass look ready to fall back on if Aero is disabled or if the app is run on an older Windows.

This exercise will require a good GPU (128MB AGP recommended).

Thanks to Adam Nathan for the original code!

The Code

Create a new code file and add the following code:

 

In your Window.xaml file, make the DocumentRoot object's Background to NULL then just insert the following code (marked in bold) in the codebehind file:

You will get the following result:



If you replace the thickness(-1) with thickness(5,70,5,42) you get something like this:



You can download the full code below. It requires Windows Vista RC1 or later, .NET Framework 3.0 (RC1), and Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer September CTP.

AeroGlassExample.zip (14.43 KB)

Vista keeps getting better! Sure, there are still many bugs and improvements to be done, but this is a very stable work, and we're doing all our WPF experiments in Vista now.

Setup still managed to erase my Windows XP from the bootloader, and had to do the same thing as with the previous CTP. But other than the experience has been very good.

There are some neat new graphics - especially the Aero cursors now on by default!

I also noticed that the performance of WPF applications is much better on this build. There is a small glitch with ExprID and Vista, tho. Unless I disabled Desktop Composition, the menus dont show or rather don't draw.

I highly recommend trying out this build!

Windows Vista build 5456 is just plain cool! I love the new animations and graphics, as well as all the little updates and the stability. But when I installed 5456 last night (the media wasn't corrupt, thankfully), it installed in about 40+ minutes (on a 2GB RAM / P4-HT 3GHz) and I was presented with a black blank screen with a little screwed up strip of garbled pixels at the bottom. Y'know, the kind you get if you yank the VGA cord out of the display card's port. Anyways, if I wait a minute or two, it loads ok - something with the display drivers, I guess.

So, everything is ok, but when I went to reboot into my old WinXP, I saw only one "Microsoft Windows" entry in the dual-boot window. And that led to Vista.

I panicked for 5 minutes, experimented for 20, and went online for help after that. All the info I needed was found here.

The problem is that good ol' boot.ini has been replaced by the new bootloader that ships with Vista. It controls which OS loads, and stays even if you rip out Vista.

Here's what you do. Load Vista, go to START | Programs | Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and click RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR. Then punch in the following command lines, one by one. The italics lines are my comments.

BCDEDIT /create {legacy} /d "Windows XP SP2"

The /d is just the description, and can be anything you want. I suspect Vista overwrites your description regardless. You may also  get some message about {legacy} already existing. Ignore that, and go with the following.

BCDEDIT /set {legacy} device boot

BCDEDIT /set {legacy} path \ntldr

BCDEDIT /displayorder {legacy} /addlast

Each command should return a "operation completed successfully".

Reboot, and you will see the Legacy Windows in the boot list. You can log on to Vista, go to Control Panel | SYSTEM | Advanced Settings | Startup and Recovery, and select the legacy item as the default loader. Or enter the following in the command line as before:

BCDEDIT /default {legacy}

It wasn't too much trouble, but the boot thingie in Vista does have its problems.

Power failure. Gradual, yet instantenous power loss, caused the backup power to not hold up. System rebooted. Possible corruption of ISO of 5456. 538MB left. Integrity failure will require a re-download of the ISO. 5 gigs of bandwidth down the drain. Sithspit.

Microsoft is committed to splurging my bandwidth. ~3 hours to Vista build 5456.

My article has finally been published on MSDN. Thanks to the nice people at MS for letting me write this!

I just read Andrew Lucking's blog post about my first video on EID, and it kinda inspired me to give my perspective on Flash vs EID.

Let's recount the basic stuff:

	Flash	EID/WPF
Programming Support	Medium (ActionScript 2.0)	Heavy (.NET 2.0 and XAML)
3D support	Medium (Shockwave 3D or Vectorized 3D output)	Heavy (WPF and DirectX)
Declarative Programming Support	No	Yes
Bitmap Effects Support	Limited	Extensive
Animation Model	Timeline-based: timeline is the ultimate controller; timelines are NOT optional	Trigger-based: timelines control the animation, but the timelines are controlled by triggers; timelines are also OPTIONAL
Cross-Platform support	Extensive	Limited / Currently unavailable (WPF/E details are still sketchy)
Drawing Tools	Heavy	Medium

 

What's EID and WPF potential over Flash? Well, can't say much about WPF/E until I actually use it, but taking WPF as a basic example, here are my thoughts:

NOTE: For the purpose of this post, EID and WPF (or at least the features) are the same. If it is in one, its in the other.

• It all comes back to the timeline. In Flash Timeline is God. In EID, Timeline is just another aspect of an object, and there are more than one timelines and each can be ran parallel to other timelines - even of the same object!! In other words, with Flash we're looking at "time" from a normal layman's perspective; with WPF, it's like looking at "time" from Einstein's perspective.
• In Flash, you have to stop the timeline in order to have a static frame, which makes creating a multi-section Flash website quite difficult. It's not difficult per-se, but difficult when you consider the trigger-only-timelines that EID presents. That would make this much easier.
• Creating 3D content in Flash has always been terribly difficult. Shockwave does add 3D support, but its more like VRML on steroids. If you don't know about VRML, it was a 3D web standard pushed in the late 90s. It was terrible!! With inherent and DirectX support for 3D with shaders and crap is actually fantastic! That alone will land a good blow to Flash.
• There's good DOCUMENT support in WPF. This gives you a document-data presentation component that Flash just can't do! This is one of the chief reasons why the Adobe people are gung-ho on integrating PDF and SWF.
• EID comes from a "component and controls, animate it all" point-of-view, while Flash is "all animation, some component... animate components? uhh, ok, you can try...". The WRAP PANEL and other such controls can seriously kick Flash's ass.

You might say: "Whoa! Hold on. WPF/E does not have all this! It's very puny and limited!"

If you're a Flash or non-Microsoft-stuff user, I'll let you go. If you're a Microsoft-user and you said that give yourself a big kick. Without going into the intricacies of numerology, we all know that this is just version 1. All we have to do is wait 2 more versions. Let me explain:

So I've said all the nice things about WPF and put down Flash. Well, that's not the whole story. WPF is severely limited in many ways that Flash isn't. The user base being not the least of it, of course. Right now, WPF is more close to Macromedia FLEX than Flash.

Branden Hall writes in his post titled "The Flash Killer Cometh":

Well, I can't say I disagree with the first part. For the "mythical Interactive Developer" (I might have to adopt that as my title) comment, well, I disagree there.

Mythical Interactive Developers are not, in fact, mythical. I am one myself, and in the last 7 years have trained 4 such people (10 years and 16 people if you want to count VRML in this). We (ahem) are rare, but not nonexistent. And more shall rise. The gates of Oblivion have opened!! Uhh... sorry, wrong topic.

Anyways, let me get back to my point.

If you are not a Microsofter or are very new to the Microsoft world - the REAL Microsoft World that only devs see - you don't know the power of number 3. As I said, again ignoring numerology, that this WPF 1.0. Microsoft ALWAYS strikes gold with Version 3.

Windows 3(.1) was the most popular in the first generation. Windows 98SE was WAY better than 95 or 98. Windows ME was a fluke, so let's forget that. In the third generation we had Windows 2000 and then XP, now we have Vista which will undoubtedly hit the mark.

Visual Studio 6.0 (#3 of II generation) was way better than anything else. Visual Studio 2005 (#3 of the III generation) is already doing great things!

So step back a bit. Look from a larger perspective. Microsoft is only laying the foundation. Bill Buxton said:

There is a new revolution coming. It will come in THREE waves. Here's my prediction for it:

• First Big Wave: We shift from WinForms to a more Web+Vector like platform. We learn the ropes for the upcoming waves. The Mythical Interactive Developer is born and many Flashers flock to the Microsoft banner - mostly because working with WPF will pay a LOT more than Flash does. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Second Bigger Wave: After a year or more of having WPF out there, Microsoft will have perfect grasp on what's needed, what the public wants, what the designers+developers need. A 2.0 release gives you more power. More people flock under the Microsoft flag. More users keep adopting this technology - even just as runtime. Microsoft silently keeps working on the final stuff.
• Tsunami: The work is done. Microsoft has the perfect blend ready. Flash is either killed or is kept limping behind.

Branden Hall also writes:

I recommend reading the posts in this category in old-to-new order. But let explain in short:

Microsoft is right. WPF is not being primed (solely) as a Flash-killer. It will definetely be a Mac-killer tho. But my point is this: If you think WPF is only for making things pretty you are WAAAAAAAY off.

WPF is about getting the presentation layer of a software done quickly and flexibly. Things that required superior subclassing skills and knowledge can be done by an amateur now. The declarative model makes things much easier. WPF will be a boon for developers. It will solve a LOT of problems.

For record let me make it clear:

Windows Presentation Foundation or Expression Interactive Designer will not make anything extra-graphical or extra-interactive unless designer/developer goes to some lengths to actually make it so! When you DON'T skin a control, it will look just like a normal Windows control does. WPF will solve problems such as creating composite controls, creating resolution-independent applications, allowing better and economical usage of graphics hardware and vector to lower CPU usage that GDI+ does not, and more. This is not an animation package (yet).

No. WinFX/WPF/EID is the next generation of development platform. Of course, it won't take long for it become what ASP.net is for the web. But it will be like ASP.net in many ways. WPF/E will co-exist with Flash, just as ASP.net does with PHP and JSP. Of course, it goes without saying that ASP.net is better than PHP or JSP, and so will be WPF/e (eventually).

With that, and the sun shining in my face at 7:20 in the morning, I bid thee good night.

Here's a first look at NukeControls. This is just a small piece of the whole thing - only 3 controls.

nPanel - a special "header" control
nProgress - a super cool Vista-style progressbar for .NET 2.0 with animation!
nNavigator - bi-directional navigation control

All these controls have 6 or more themes, and some like the nPanel, can be customized.

Click the image above to download a ZIP (175kb) with a VB.NET 2005 project. If you don't have VB.NET 2005, you can just run the EXE in the BIN folder.

This is an alpha build only. Expect a public beta in the coming week or two. If you run this in the IDE, do note that only a handful of events and properties have been exposed for this demo. Some themes will not function as well.

Comments are appreciated. We are also looking for people to beta test the controls suite. Beta testers get a free copy of this product! Contact us at beta [at] nukeation [dot] com.

"The Human UX" or "The Human User Experience" is an article I wrote back in mid/late-2005 for MSDN. During the release of Visual Studio 2005, the article got delayed indefinetely. In retrospect, I think this was for the better. Some of my comments will hit harder now that people are using WPF and EID. Some of the references such as the Windows Vista UX Guide have been updated as well.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Brad McCabe (Content Strategist for the Visual Basic website, as well Program Manager among other things) giving me the go-ahead to update the article (it was written in August 2005 - lots of things became outdated). I got an email from Brad today confirming that the article will soon be published!

For a BIG Microsoft fan (and why not, 60% of my life depends on MS!) there couldn't be a greater honor.

The Human UX serves as an interim-design-guideline - bridging the gap between designing for Windows Forms and designing for Windows Presentation Foundation. It focuses more on theory than on actual code so everything will apply to both technologies. Essentially, this article has "usability" at its heart. I hope for it to be a prelude to an article on WPF Design Do's and Don'ts.

The article was originally thought to be a VB article, then expanded to include C# as well. But my inability to cope with too much C# made it difficult to write it that nicely. And what about the guys who do C++ and J#? So at the end I made it platform-agnostic (to borrow a term from Ted Neward's site). Whether you do .NET or Java, GDI+ or WPF, VB or C#, Dogs or Cats, Batman or Superman, Doom or Half-Li... uhh, you get the idea - this will be good reading for you.

IMO, in my recent experiences, a large number of people still think of a skinned app as something like Windows Media Player, WinAMP, PowerDVD, the OEM apps that come with digital cameras, Bryce or even PwopCatcher. Skinning CAN be like that, and no doubt MANY people will want that (and need it too). However, skinning can also (and in a more widely needed as well as realistic pov) mean enhancing the existing structures of your WPF application controls.

In certain situations "skinning around the control" rather than "skinning the control" also helps. And if you allow me a moment to be painstakingly irritating, with WPF's super flexible design model, skinning is too narrow a term to really describe what can be done. But back to skinning around the control, let me clarify what I mean by building upon an example I (will) present in The Human UX:

Say we have a button that triggers a purge of a nuclear reactor (if you don't know yet, this is a hypothetical situation). From a typical skinning point of view (STC - Skinnin the control) we might have an urge to paint the control red, put a biohazard or radioactive symbol on it, and add those yellow-black warning stripes around it. Now that's all nice and good, but just PAINTING the control is not really helpful aside from making an idiot go "ooooooh, what does THIS button do?".

Let's build a USABILITY ENHANCEMENT on top of this. For a seriously dangerous function trigger like this button, a good accident deterrent is needed. Let's use a reversed version of the "Your computer will restart in 15 seconds" dialog. We make the button nicely big (say 100px wide and 50px tall). When idle, it says "Purge Reactor" and has an exclamation on either side. When clicked, the text says "Confirm?" and the button starts to pulsate its color. A small 95px wide, center-aligned, progressbar appears ON the button, and instead of the exclamation icon, a countdown is shown - which is also reflected in the "emptying" progressbar. If the action is not confirmed within 15 seconds, then it is automaticaly cancelled. To be safe from accidental double-clicks, the countdown starts 3 seconds AFTER the first click.

On cancellation, the button fades back to the normal "idle" mode.

Now this is something I just dreamt up right now. With proper planning and some usability experts (<cough> Nukeation </cough>) these types of "little things" can seriously enhance the usability of any application.

What we just did here was NOT your typical skinning. We actually edited the base template of an existing button, added various timelines to respond to different events, and added sub-controls hosted on its surface. This kind of work was not possible (at least in terms of practicality and ease) unless you knew some heavy C++. We are messing with new "sub-controls" and timelines rather than just slapping on sweet graphics, so this isn't really skinning. While the official terms for this are (as far as I know) "Editing a control template". I call it Avalonizing or Avalonization, of WPFing (pronounced "wip'fing").

But enough of terminology. My main point here is that we now have an affordable, easy to implement, and flexible model for doing such things. And this power should not be wasted on just skinning an application, but rather to create superior usability enhancements to your apps.

Coming soon

Next Part: Using various contains like Grid, Canvas, and Flow to seamlessly present both controls and textual content in a single form.

Tutorial: Simple Template Editing for the Button and Progressbar.

It is entirely possible to get lost at the Microsoft site. If you know how to find information, you can see how truly immense the site is. It could surely use a better navigation system, because often some great resources are hidden from plain sight and just might miss the mark.

I accidentally stumbled on this page that I had visited long ago. It's the Microsoft Design Resource site. At first glance you can see how the design is atypical of Microsofts normal trends (barring the 30th anniversary, Research, and Innovation presentations in the Corporate site).

This site is an excellent read and has some really nice, chic even, designs. The PEOPLE section is very interesting to people who are interested in design.

Here's an example of a cool thing - the "Office of the Future" design that won Microsoft an IDEA (Industrial Design Excellence Award).

This is a UI targeted at a very wide (and curved) prototype computer Microsoft has made. It's like have three monitors, but without the breaks in between.

How developers will embrace WPF and the new vector design methods is yet to be seen. If the reactions I've seen so far are a sign of the future, I think it might take some time. While developers love the cold logic of code, computers are merging more and more into human life, and as such will need to be approached with a psychological view as well. Right now, only few software companies (most of which are giants) do such research and apply it to their products.

The role of the designer in the software industry will be a very powerful catalyst for the entire industry and how we work. The factors of psychology in relation to human-computer interaction (psychophysics I believe applies here) are very important as I've started to learn in the last few months. I only had shallow knowledge of such, but after reading a few essays and the book Emotional Design by Dr. Don Norman (www.jnd.org) I started developing a much deeper interest. My personal ideas and views conflict a bit with Dr. Norman's, but I have come to greatly appreciate his insight.

Usability might seem like a trivial thing - especially when worrying about the code you still have to write - but it is far more important than it seems. When dealing with a non-technical (or even technical) software product - a good aesthetic+psycholical influence can help you increase sales, make the product more usable, FUN, and increase productivity at the same time.

My thoughts will be continued in "The Human UX" and some other posts. I had hoped to have it published on MSDN sooner, but I will post a preview copy here as the MSDN schedule seems a bit delayed.

After 6 months and 10 days of slaving over 23 designs (will post the process here later) Nukeation.com has finally been updated. This is version 19 (if you count the officially published versions) based on the layout codenamed "REGENERATE".

HanselMinutes, dnrTV and the other new shows are not yet in the portfolio. They will be added as soon as the sites go live.

Please feel free to visit www.nukeation.com and check out our new services including: Blog Design, WinFX/WPF consulting, Multimedia Services, and more. We've also added a PROCESS page where we show you how projects are done and what it is like working with us.

Feel free to mail (or comment here) any comments, questions, suggestions, or critisizms.

WARNING: We're dealing with unsupported, pre-release software and a half-assed attempt to force an installation that was explicitly denied. Don't try this on your production PC! Attempt at your own risk!

I downloaded the 1GB Windows SDK from http://msdn.microsoft.com/winfx/ with the December CTP for WinFX. I wanted to try out the new Visual Designer for XAML/Avalon codenamed "CIDER".

Anyways, I install the DecCTP runtime for WinFX. Then run the setup for SDK and it fails on me saying the Runtime version mismatches with the SDK. It is clearly not the case, since I uninstalled and reinstalled the latest runtime 3 times.

The installation went smoothly in Windows Vista and on XP SP2 on my Tablet. So I kinda manually ran the SDK installer manually. Here's what I did in case someone else has the same problem.

1. Install the Dec CTP WinFX runtime
2. Run the following installations in this specific order: (this is the SDK DVD image you can run virtually or burn to a disc)

i. msh_setup-i386.msi
ii. WinSDK-x86.msi
iii. dbg_x86.msi
(optionally also run dexplore.msi but often not required)

3. Run the VS Extensions with CIDER.

This should install everything ok. The main installer program is kinda messed up but this works a-ok. I have Cider running nicely now. I do get some errors now and then, but I think that's because its a beta/CTP.

I will start posting sourcecode of the two XAML samples I'm making - FXAurek and FXBesh.

My blog has always been reflective of nukeation.com, and nukeation.com has always been reflective of my current "mood". With Vista and Aero and Avalon taking up most of my mental bandwidth, I crafted Digital Exile to look like the upcoming Nukeation.com "skin" which is reflective of Vista and the new "glass" stuff I've been experimenting with.

I also wanted to remove the clutter of the previous design. I finally added a slideshow in this upgrade. It's Flash based, and runs on XML, so I'll be updating it often.

Another addition is the ANNOUNCEMENTS panel where upcoming projects in which I'm involved are listed (and linked, if possible).

As always, please feel free to send comments about how you love or hate the new design.

Let's start with the "symbolic" big-wig of Vista - the ROUND Start button. It seriously looks cool, and I spent a hundred clicks on it just to see it light up.

When you jump into "COMPUTER", formerly "MY COMPUTER", you are greeted by the new cool Hard Drive icons (the Flagged Drive is a leftover icon, I think, from the previous builds).

This weekend, I might install 5270 on my HP TC1100 Tablet. Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on how fast (and if) I can restore to my EXTREMELY customized settings. But when I do install Vista on the Tablet, the EXTRA LARGE icons will be a big blessing!

Alright, I'm too tired to go on. I need some sleep and then back to work. More soon!

PS. The customizable AERO interface is much sweeter!!

By the Force! This build rocks. The installer looks better, the startup process is looking better, the new round START button just plain rocks!

They finally added the RUN feature right into START SEARCH. I need to install Corel Capture and start taking screenshots! This is the most bloggable thing since... since... build 5231. :-P

Seriously tho, they've really improved Windows. There's still no sidebar in this build, as far as I know.

Damn... too excited to write anything. Need to get some work done. Will blog again (with screenshots) before I go to bed. Arrgh. This is too exciting for my poor ol' ticker!

13MB left ... 3 minutes...

preparing to write DVD...

feels like morphine.

Yes. I have DSL this time. Build 5270 (of which I'm an official beta tester who was just given his Christmas gift 5 minutes ago) is now downloading on a 512kbps line (much better than the 64k I had the last time around). 11 hours and some minutes to go.

The first thing I noticed in Windows Vista Build 5219 was the sheer lack of performance. In Beta 1, the AERO interface effects worked nicely. Here, it's sluggish - often skipping frames or being stuck. And this isn't a low-end system either, I'd think 2 gigs of RAM, 15GB of Pagefile, and a Limited Edition of 128MB GeForce FX5700 AGP would be good enough.

Outside of the performance issue, I think there are some really nice improvements. The best of them all (for me) is being able to close the window by simply clicking in the top-right corner (even tho close button is a couple dozen pixels away).

After a bit of work, the sidebar was enabled and seems promising - although there isn't much there to see except a pretty clock, instant search, and an RSS reader. It's a lot user-unfriendly at the moment, but I can see where it's headed - and it's gonna be a real cool thing!

There are some nice improvements in the Explorer too. The progress of your current search or navigation is shown in the address bar. The text becomes virtually unreadable, but the idea is good.

I'm gonna try and install the TV Tuner drivers for my old card, and see if I can get the Media Center functionality to work. Initially, I was planning on installing this Ulimate Edition on my TC-1100 Tablet PC, but with this kind of performance issues, I'm gonna have to rethink it.

More to be posted as I dig in deeper.

Not exactly dying (sorry) but I sure feel like it. I have some severe problems in my mouth (too gross to write about) and the only way to solve it (according to the doc) is not to talk much - or preferebly not talk at all. While I feel miserable about it (not to mention the pain, oh the pain!) people are very happy that I'm not talking. Sure, I do tend to cause trouble with my words, but it's all in good natured humor. Is it my fault they don't have any of it? Am I sounding like Rory Blyth now? Well, I don't mind sounding like him, but being sick like him is a problem for me. Of course, from one point of view I am already sick like him.

In any case, I have less than 2MB [1.2 to be exact] of Vista CTP to download. This will provide some relief.

Oh, and for anyone reading this who has kissed me before and would want to in the future (really?! thanks!!) don't worry, my oral condition will be all cool in a few days. I also go back to work tomorrow.

Well, HOPEFULLY the last day.

At ~10kb/sec there are about 800MB and ~21 hours left. And this is where my DVD burner started giving me various errors (whilst ruining 2 perfectly nice discs). Sigh.

Total: 2802.3 MB

Remaining: 1478.2 MB

Speed: ~8.5k/sec

ETA: ~48 hours

User status: Agitated, possibly suicidal. Trying to forget by trying to work real hard.

See the world's most sophistacted skin design.

Current status: 1908.5MB (downloaded) / 2802.3MB (total)

Time remaining: ~80 hours

User status: Bored

Hopefully, some dental surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning (yes, the graceful person that I am, walked into a metal door, damaged a tooth, has to pulled out, expecting lots of pain) which will show me a more potent meaning of pain that will make waiting for Windows Vista to download somewhat less harsh.

The pain, the anguish, the messed up bytes, the whole package! It's all starting again.

I've just started downloading Windows Vista CTP Build 5219 at a speed ranging between 5.9k/sec to 9.3k/sec.

I only pray that my broadband connection comes soon!

WPF or WPF/E are too weird and have too many hard syllables. Has anyone found a nickname yet? Or a better way to pronounce them? I suggest "Whippfee" for WPF/E. Makes it sound like an R2 astromech. WPF/E will need a better name if Microsoft wants to target it at the standard "everyone" market.

Avalon was a real good name. Everyone took to it quite nicely. If they're worried about trademarks, they wouldn't have a trademark issue if they just make it "Microsoft Avalon(tm)". Like Flash (which is actually "Macromedia Flash"), people will call it just Avalon.

While I don't usually critisize Microsoft, I think they've got this whole naming thing backwards. Me, I would've called it WPF inside the company. Then when released, it should take on the "codename" they usually give. "Codename WPF" sounds better than just WPF, and Microsoft Avalon sounds much better than Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation.

Sigh. That "official" name has more syllables than the entire works of Shakespear (even the ones that the monkeys wrote). If anyone finds a better name for WPF and WCF, please drop me a line. I'd very much appreciate it.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/default.mspx

Check it out - looks WAY cool! I'm impressed (which is a rare thing when talking about Websites made by/for Microsoft). The last time this happened was with the Flash animated Corporate Section thing.

A subtle, yet extremely important aspect of software branding will now finally be fulfilled with WFP. The Windows Presentation Foundation will allow you to create a "sub-theme" with application-level (or maybe even Form/Window level) scope.

 

"Sparkle" will allow you to modify themes and apply them locally to your app or form, as you can see in this screenshot. It will also be easy to create compound controls (think ASP.net UserControls on steroids). Visual subclassing has always been a pain - and Sparkle is the painkiller.

Companies like mine (Nukeation) will no doubt release theme packs for XAML based UIs.

Recently I was working on creating this custom drawn ListView effect (like the Vista ListView selection box) and I had to write about 70 lines of code (and rewrite it again and again by trial and error) and spent about 3 hours just to get it rigth. It's needlessly complex. Well, not needlessly, but you know what I mean. I for one can't wait for Sparkle.

I was told I was babbling "Xaaaaaml.... Spaaarkle .... Avalooooon" in my sleep last night. Occupational hazard.

Microsoft's Expression product line seems very impressive. When you take into consideration the cross-platform (WPF/E) power and the extreme flexibility of WPF/XAML, and not to mention the solid power of programmability (something Flash lacks in boatloads) WPF/E will most probably revamp the Internet itself!

If you don't know anything about all this, think power of the world's best programming language, mixed with futuristic Final Fantasy like software interfaces. The future is finally here. Where do I want to go today? I wanna go to the place where they store the bits of Sparkle in Microsoft!

If you've worked in Flash and if you've worked in .NET, you just KNOW that the possibilities are mind-boggling. I have half a mind to create a time machine and go to the release date!!

WPF/E supports portable devices, Mac OS X, and possibly Linux as well! This is one of those few (if not the only one) things Microsoft made that is cross-browser compatible to such extremes. Check out Sparkle's features.

Windows Vista will finally be that massive graphical step in a visually better computing world. Not to mention all the other stuff - but I'm a graphic guy so I don't see nothin' else! :-P

Also, check out the ATLAS page. I'm gonna get my hands dirty with all this this weekend!

I'm still shaking from excitement over Expression. I better stop trying to write my thoughts about it before I go completely nuts!

EXPRESSION ROCKS!!!

I said it first, I said it again, and I confirmed it too. And now it's officiall announced. Acrlyic will be the Visual Designer for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF, formerly codename "Avalon"). Check out the August CTP.

I've said it before and I'll say it again AVALO-- eh, Windows Presentation Foundation ROCKS!

That's right - NukeBall, the Ultimate RUID Tool for Visual Studio 2005 is now nearing it's release. We're putting out a public beta of the Express Edition (analogous to non-alchoholic bear, but a bit better) near the end of the month. We have officially announced the contents and features of the software, the Express Edition, IDE Integration and more. Check out the website at http://www.nukeball.com

We still have a few slots left for beta testers. We give amazing rewards. For info contact beta [ at ] nukeball [ dot ] com.

 

"The Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX Beta 1 are available as a separate download. The The Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX Beta 1 provide developers with support for building WinFX applications using Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2005. This support includes XAML Intellisense support through schema extensions for the editor, project templates for the Windows Presentation Foundation (formerly known as “Avalon”) and the Windows Communication Foundation (formerly known as “Indigo”), and WinFX SDK documentation integration. It does not include a graphical design surface for either the Windows Presentation Foundation or the Windows Communication Foundation."

This text is from Microsoft's website. Please note the highlighted area. Is it just me or does it sound like visual designers (so dryly referred to as Graphical Design Surface) is *the* thing to see in the upcoming CTPs or Betas of WinFX SDK? I for one couldn't be any happier.

In a desperate attempt to release the build up of excessive creative energy in me, I spent the last few hours creating this Vista/Aero look for my blog. Would love to hear some feedback.

This is all Vista. This is also an experiment for me. I have various assets on the internet - my business website, my upcoming software's website, my personal website with art & photography, and of course, my blog (all links at the top of the page). I'm trying to establish this blog as a hub between all this.

What I would love to know is whether this blog is just the private/public form of therapy for myself, or is it actually informative or at least entertaining. Does anyone even read it regularly? If you do read my blog - or even if this is your first time, please drop me a line and tell me what you think. It'd make very happy.

Oh, and thanks for reading my blog!!

I'm very happy to report that I've found Vista Beta 1 to be so stable and reliable that I'm moving a few projects onto the Vista platform. I'm also thinking of installing it on my Tablet PC over the weekend.

To move work on to Vista, first I had to see if all my work applications worked properly or not. Office 2003 has worked nicely, and so has Corel Graphics Suite 12. Next came VS2005.

Visual Studio 2005 Setup runs in all it's aero-enabled glory.

Somehow, the setup failed when it started to install the only missing prerequisite - MSXML (3 or 6, I can't remember at this moment). I had to go the WCU folder on the DVD and manually run that install. After that, VS2005 installed very quickly - faster than XP - or is that just my imagination? In any case, after the uneventful install, I launched VS2005 and it didn't give a single error or warning. You can see the IDE in the shot below.

The Aero "Express" version Form shown here is the same theme I encountered when installing Longhorn on my VPC. The cool thing (tho maybe it might appear annoying later on) is that the animations run while you're designing the form. The default button's blue tone fades in and out; the progress bar's "filled" are has a shine pass over it (marquee mode makes the bar show up as 100% and the shine keeps passing over it to show somethign is, in fact, happening). The only problem I saw so far in VS2005 on Vista, is that some parts of the UI - mainly the toolstrips - fail to draw, and end up as black blocks. Forcing a redraw (minimize and restore) solves it tho. Dragging / stretching tool windows causes it again. Not much of a problem tho.

I made this quick sample to see how things look. This was a two-fold test. I installed our untested build of NukeBall, the upcoming Rapid User Interface Development tool we are making here at Nukeation Studios, in Visual Studio 2005. I saw that the endless hours of coding paid of. It worked. If you look at the top left corner of the image above, you can see the NukeForms command sitting next to your standard Add Item button. While we don't officially support Vista 1, each and every piece of content in NukeBall does, in fact, work on Vista.

I quickly made this sample below with NukeWads and NukeForms. The lower progressbar is in marquee mode (infinite progress).

I tried over 27 different applications I've made (including some made long ago in VB6) and they all ran nicely on Vista, except for a couple of those VB6 apps that relied on some obsolete code. All in all, I give Vista as many thumbs-ups as can. Very cool. Can't stop saying that. I fear I might scream VISTA in the middle of the nigh- day (I work at night, sleep at day).

Coming up next: Adding Aero to my blog, and more.

Blogging from Windows Vista.

Something is wrong. DasBlog (this blog's engine) just gave me a plain text box to enter HTML code to write this, instead of the rich-text editor. IE 7 looks cool. Installed it on XP too. Love the tabs.

Ok. Am gonna how to find out how to enable the textbox if I want to write larger pieces. I hope its not a IE7 thing. Damn.

More soon.

Update...

Looking at the editor from my XP installation - it IS in fact IE7. Damn. Gonna try to search for a solution, otherwise I will just uninstall it. This is damn annoying.

Now that I have Vista running on dual-boot on the best machine I have, I'll be doing a long series of posts about my experience with Vista.

Being more of a graphics guy, I delved deep into the UI first off - it's hard not to with Vista - it's so slick. It's so slick, that my cursor often slipped.

Contrary to what has been said, the Windows Vista UI - at least in Beta 1 - is not 100% Avalon/Vector based. Parts of the Window Frame certainly seem to be using VisualBrush from Avalon, but the buttons, progress bars, even icons, are all bitmaps. This is expected, since this UI will be replaced (possibly) by a super secret project called "Project M" that most people in Microsoft refuse to speak of. While bitmap handling may very well be done by Avalon, as it is strongly suggested with the smooth scaling, we still have to wait a while before a full Avalon UI comes along. Avalon - even in Beta 1 - is less than half complete. They don't have merge modes which are desperately needed. Avalon doesn't have a visual designer (yet). And so, there still is time.

I think ClearType doesn't blur nicely. Like I said, Avalon still needs a lot of work.

The "AERO" theme is built right on top of the Lune template. If you go to <root>\Windows\resources\themes\ you will see the Aero theme file. The .msstyles file in the subfolder is actually a disguised DLL. I don't know if this violates the EULA, but in theory, if you make a copy of this file and rename it to something.dll, and drag it into Visual Studio or any Resource explorer/extractor, you can see the bitmaps with which windows is built on. But thee theme system is much different from XP. For one thing, it overlays these bitmaps on Windows with Aero - while I don't have solid proof, I feel it when anything is drawn on the screen. Trust me. This is my domain (www.nukeation.net :P). But bad jokes aside, I love the UI - not the eye candy, but the layouts, new widgets, the whole new design paradigm. But more on that in an upcoming post.

UPDATED - August 6 2005: I was actually slightly askew in saying that the Aero theme is built right on top of Luna. While such a thing does exist, it used in the non-dedicated graphics card (or Aero Express) environment. When you have a solid AGP or PCI-E card, it will use Avalon to theme everything - but it will also use parts from the Luna-based theme template. It could also be that it has seperated resources (similar graphics but in different places, or perhaps drawn/rendered in real-time) for AERO. So, I was not wrong in what I said, but I wasn't totally right either.

I tried out some of my .NET 2.0 and .NET 1.1 apps on Vista. They ran perfectly. Non-.NET applications such as Corel PhotoPaint 12 also ran nicely. ACDSee 7 failed miserably. Thankfully, the Add/Remove Programs applet is now much nicer and easier. I intend to install Office 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 on it next.

The first thing that impressed me with Vista (after the UI, of course) is the so obvious speed. I know it's running on a 2gig machine on a 3GHz HT Processor, but still it works faster than my XP installation. It's true I don't have much installed on it (yet). The shutdown is still impressive. 3 seconds flat. Without fail. The startup is just as fast (relative to XP).

I haven't gotten a chance to actually USE the Virtual Folders outside of a small test. I expect them to be quite helpful. The instant search/filter capabilities are GREAT. But the search box in Start Menu is a pure nuisance. I am a super-Power-User. I need my keyboard more than my mouse. I don't CLICK "Run". I hit "START", "R". Now when I do that, I get a bad assed "r" in the search box. Microsoft, REMOVE IT! At least make it OPTIONAL, dammit. This and the extra space after the close button in the titlebar are the two strong negative points I have found in Vista.

More soon in Part 2. I gotta go boot into Vista. And I just realized as I type this - Vista is much easier to type than Longhorn.

At 23:29 on Wednesday night my long running download of Windows Vista Beta 1 (formerly Windows codename "Longhorn") was finally completed.

With a shudder, I tested the ISO image for the possible corrupt data and as I held my breath, I saw the progress bar reach 100% without a single error. There is a God! And he writes managed code!!

I fire up Virtual PC 2004. I start the installation. Very smooth. A bit dull, and took too long even on a 1064MB RAM VPC. The installation takes over an hour but it WORKS. It's installed. It's rebooting. It starts up... in 16 colors.

No problem. Let's install the drivers and VM Additions. There. 32-bit color. Wow. Looks coo- hey, wait a goddamn minute - I thought Aero was TRANSPARENT. Everything on the screen is shiny, but opaque. What the...? I google up some stuff, and find out (should've known) VPC doesn't support direct host hardware utilization. Damn.

I don't have any machine powerful enough that is also available for taking risks. Damn. No. Risking it on my Tablet - which doesn't have a CD or DVD Drive - would be foolish. So, I scour a stand-by PC, and rip out the 72 gig drive (PATA, yuk) and plug it into my main production PC - a big 3GHz HT PC with 2 gigs of RAM, 2 monitors, and a 128MB nVidia GeForce FX series graphics card. Dual boot will be fine. If anything goes wrong, I can just rip out the extra disk and be done with it. But BIOS doesn't detect the damned disk. I check the cables and mess with the jumper settings. Master, slave, primary, secondary. Crap. Okay, so I finally have it running now. I log into Windows XP, and see the 2 new partitions in My Computer. Phew! I run the setup file, enter the long product key, click next, and BOOM - the setup stub crashes. I try again. It crashes. And again. And again. So, I say "<bleep> it". I write the ISO onto a blank DVD. 7 minutes later, the disc is burnt. I say, hey what the heck, let's try it once more from the disc. Setup runs successfully!! It's a Disc-run only thing, I guess.

Setup runs nice and quite (faster than the VPC install, of course) while I watch Cartoon Network at 4:30am. I spent the time between the download's completion and now to mess with drives, old PCs, new PCs, and Virtual PC! 39 minutes later, it's installed. I gingerly touch the mouse as the setup finishes up. A new window pops up...

... I stop squinting long enough to peek out of the corner of my eye and - OH NO, OH MY GOD...

it's TRANSLUCENT.  Longhorn's Aero UI in all it's glory. Blurring the background and casting a drop shadow. I had a little tear in my eye.

Unable to contain the joy, but wary not to cause any damage to the beta installation, I start popping open folders and being amazed by all the eye candy. To quote Michele Leroux Bustamante, "No, please, make it stop, don't make me go back, I don't want to go back...I'll never go back...ok, fine, I'll go back...for now...but I won't like it..." All I could think of was what will I do now? How will I take these eyes back to that old, dry, and boring Legacy OS? XP themes aren't that nice anymore.

Pushing that damning thought to the lower recesses of my so-called mind, I plow on. It's SO cool. The graphics, of course, are. But I'm talking about the organization features. The MUCH needed improvements.

You're probably asking where are the screenshots? well, you will have to wait. I haven't installed Corel Capture on Longhorn, and Paint+PrntScrn is too tiresome. I'll post more tomorro-- uh later today - I see the sun coming out.

Once I was satisfied to experience the glorious interface and the features, I accessed the other hard disk, opened my Visual Studio projects folder, and started running various WinApps built in VS2005/.NET 2.0 - they ran nicely. So did all the 1.1 apps. I tried to hotwire some of them instead of installing them - .NET ROCKS (and that's a show too) - it all worked.

Two negative points which I will elaborate on in my detailed post later, are:

The CLOSE buton on the top-right corner has to be the ALIGNED to the FAR RIGHT - no extra pixels. I have a habit of slamming the cursor into the corner and blindly clicking to close a window. That doesn't work in Vista, as there is some extra space after the red button.

The second point is that the new Common Dialogs (Open/Save) have a new sidebar with common places and common searches for easy navigation. The feature is quite cool, but the layout is all cramped. In some places in Vista, I do feel claustrophobic.

Alright, that ends my experience in Vista-land for the moment. More this evening - with screenshots.

...things that I know, nobody told me...things that I saw - they still controoool mee...

As I listen to The Strangest Thing by George Michael at the maximum volume possible with these headphones, I see the File Transfer Manager's progress bar hit 86% - 336.8MB and dropping at a rate of 10.4KB/sec. After a horrible power failure due to my power supply unit being burnt to a toasty crispy black piece of junk, I fear completing this download only to find out that the file was corrupted midway at around 660MB.

Internet, power, and human failures notwithstanding, I've spent over 75 hours as of now to download Vista Beta 1. If this download is corrupted... I shudder to think of what might happen.

We'll find out the truth in 8 hours and 57 minutes. May the Force be with me.

So I waited a few years, and then some months, and then many days, until Microsoft released Windows Vista Beta 1. So, it's a 2.42GB ISO. I have to start downloading it now (because it will be sent to MSDN Subscibers in DVD form in SEPTEMBER!). So I have to download something that I will get for free (well, not free free).

So what's the problem? The problem is that I'm downloading on a freakin' 115kbps connection via my cell phone which serves as a modem - the fastest connection available in this town-sized replica of tattooine. I started downloading on the 27th, and it this very moment, I still have 1066.5MB left to download at 10.1kbps (which is around ~30 hours worth of downloading).

The only stuff I know about Vista is the couple of videos I've seen on Channel9 and at Paul Thurrott's site, plus the stuff I read at http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

I just hope I can see everything first hand and in proper performance on my 2GIG VPC.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Still waiting... sigh.

UPDATED: 4 hours later

Current status - 969.7MB ~29 hours

While waiting for Longho- er, Vista to download, I...

• read 3 Star Wars novels
• found out that your thumb is more sensitive that your index finger as it is used less often and the nerves are more sensitive as a result
• have over 183 'lines' in my thumbprint
• saw something resembling Joe Pesci near the center of my thumbprint
• found out that eating realy spicy food before going to bed gives you horrible dreams about your 2GB download file being corruped
• made over 17 backups of the temporary download file for Vista, including one "fallback milestone" at 660MB when a power failure occured and my UPS died with it
• started preparing for NukeBall's CD production, booklet printing, manual design, and other such stuff
• updated the frontpage of Nukeation
• re-read the "Q Continuum" trilogy
• am closing in on the secret of life and the universe - I think I might completely solve that mystery when I download Beta 2
• photographed and studied a lizard hanging out outside my window (I'm the only one at 3am who has light on, so the entire state's insects visit me at night)
• discovered 78 ways to kill mosquitos
• started working on my article 'The Human UI'
• listened to Burning Man in a loop for 3 hours
• finished (from start to finish) Republic Commando over 4 times
• finished WORK
• the list is building...

In my last post, I mentioned Blend Modes and their need in Avalon. To follow up that with an actual sample/simulation, I made this mock-app.

"XRavalon", the hypothetical Avalon application, let's you view X-Rays and CAT scans in 3D and annotate them. This is possible ONLY WITH BLEND MODES.

Here are a few screenshots of XRavalon and movies:

Flash SWF (LoFi) - direct link to 136kb SWF file

QuickTime MOV (HiFi) - 4.09MB ZIP

This was created in 3D Studio MAX with a bunch of simple 'Plane' objects and alpha-channel'd images. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a larger image array of a CAT scan - this has only 9 - while in a real world app, doctors could feed many more images to create a virtually 3D model of the brain.

To implement this in Avalon is child's play. Again, normal transparency channels WOULD NOT DO - as important artifacts in the scans (or any image) would be hidden or diffused, while ADDITIVE transparency/mixing would preserve the contrast/intensity - so the color may not be true, but the artifact can still be seen. A reverse (SUBTRACTIVE or DIVIDE) blend mode would be used to annotate the layer with text or graphics.

NOTE: I know nothing about CAT scans and X-Rays and how doctors use/annotate them right now in the real world. This is just a simple simulation of a real-world possibility.