longform

My Mix10 Session Recommendations

These are just two sessions I wanted to highlight from Mix10, they are not necessarily my favorites of the whole show; I’m still watching videos. Oh, and I’m a bit Segoe happy after seeing all the Windows Phone stuff, so please excuse the gratuitous formatting.

Developing Natural User Interfaces
with Microsoft Silverlight and WPF 4 Touch
Joshua
Blake

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/EX18

It’s
worth noting that at this design focused
conference, it was rare to see evidence of much good design put into in the
sessions themselves. Many were strikingly ordinary and pretty slides do not a
compelling presentation make. However, Joshua Blake’s session on Natural User
Interface design and Windows Touch technology was an exception. He delivered
the most compelling breakout I saw, and it hinged on how his tightly packed
content was synced with its delivery mechanism; a purpose-built PowerPoint
alternative that works like an infinite vector-based deepzoom. Not only did
Joshua build this tool using the NUI philosophies and techniques that were the
session’s topic (very meta), but he masterfully laid out the content in ways
that would give any Hollywood opening credits editor a run for his money. Even
if you didn’t care about what he was saying, it was fun to watch him say it
with these visuals. It’s also interesting how much this visual style, with its
heavy emphasis on flat graphics, minimal color, and modern typography,
resembles the Metro UI that was the hit of the show.

Oh,
and that’s me asking the first question. Free book! Note to Joshua, if you want
to see sales of your book skyrocket, release NaturalShow (preferably
open-sourced) when it hits shelves. The publicity will pay dividends.

Prototyping Rich Microsoft
Silverlight Applications with Expression SketchFlow Chris
Bernard

http://live.visitmix.com/MIX10/Sessions/CL03

I
think we all like us a good Sketchflow demo! But if you’re like me, you’re a
bit burned out on perfect-world scenarios that seem to strain the limits of
believability. Are people really importing Photoshop files with hundreds of
layers and creating working prototypes in a matter of minutes? The answer is,
not much, but they are using this tool and it is adding a lot of value for
those who use it right. This session took the refreshing approach of inviting
up several partners who have been using Sketchflow on real-world projects and
had them show some examples. Their purpose, fidelity, and depth varied greatly.
You are left with a better sense of the true practical value of the tool. Not
everything here is golden, and they ran into some technical glitches, but most
of it is very worthwhile.

BTW,
I had a chance to sit down with Bill
Buxton for a long chat Monday night. I asked him how he felt about
Sketchflow after its first year in the wild. He says he’s still excited about
it and that the Windows 8 team is using it extensively, with amazing results.
He also told me the first fax was sent in the 19th century; a history lesson
comes with the territory when talking to Bill.

Uncategorized

March 19, 2010

1 Comment

Animated Transitions in MVVM with WPF (my attempt)

I’ve been filling my brain with all kinds of data and discussions surrounding the MVVM model lately. I really like the pattern, but there is a particular piece of the puzzle that’s been bugging me. I spend a lot of time developing demos in WPF that use a lot of advanced graphics techniques. Every single change to the UI needs to happen smoothly, and that means a lot of animation and transitions. When I look at my code and try to think about how I would move more logic out of the view and either into XAML or into the ViewModel, this is an area that is most often the sticking point.

Well, after being inspired by Josh Smith’s post about that very subject, I took my own crack at this. My primary motivation was finding something that would work for transitioning items in and out of itemscontrols as well as single child content controls. I also wanted to avoid adding code to the view. Josh was sticking with current "production-ready" code, but since my apps are often just demos anyway, I decided to go ahead and use the Blend3 Behavior goodness.

The idea is this: If you apply one of my Behaviors to a content control, and the content is of type ITranstionItem, then the behavior will apply a transition when the value changes. If you apply the behavior to a datatemplate to be used in an itemscontrol, those items will transition in and out when they are added/removed. The behaviors are meant to be stackable too. I built two behaviors (or actually I guess they’re actions), one just fades items in and out, the other applies storyboards defined in the view and assigned at design time.

So even though this is very rough, I decided to show some details here. I don’t really like what I named things, and for some reason I did everything with properties and monitoring for PropertyChanged events instead of custom events (I did a lot of iterating on the fly) but I decided to stop here and step back. There’s probably memory leaks and obvious improvement to be made.

Here’s the interface. The viewmodels I want to support transitioning will implement this (or extend the abstract class below).

public interface ITransitionItem : INotifyPropertyChanged

    bool TransitionEnabled { get; set; }

    bool IsNew { get; set; }

    bool IsOld { get; set; }

    bool IsReadyToRemove { get; set; }

I also created an abstract class implementation for the properties and one reusable method called DelaySet. This is where I should probably change things to use more custom events rather than properties.

protected bool DelaySet(object currentValue, Action applyValue)

    var tItem = currentValue as ITransitionItem;

    if (tItem != null &&

        !tItem.IsNew &&

        !tItem.IsReadyToRemove &&

        !tItem.IsOld)

        tItem.IsOld = true;

        PropertyChangedEventHandler handler = null;

        handler = new PropertyChangedEventHandler(delegate(object s, PropertyChangedEventArgs ev)

            if (tItem != null && tItem.IsReadyToRemove)

                tItem.PropertyChanged -= handler;

                applyValue.Invoke();

});

        tItem.PropertyChanged += handler;

        return true;

    else

        return false;

Then here is a view and viewmodel using the fade action:
<ContentPresenter Content="{Binding Path=Content, NotifyOnTargetUpdated=true}"
    <i:Interaction.Triggers>
        <i:EventTrigger EventName="TargetUpdated" >
            <PersonalMVVMSampleApp_Behaviors:Fade_InAndOut_TransitionAction />
        </i:EventTrigger>
    </i:Interaction.Triggers>
</ContentPresenter>

public class ApplicationViewModel : TransitionItem

{...

  public ITransitionItem Content

    get { return _content; }

set

        if (!DelaySet(_content, () => Content = value))

            _content = value;

            OnPropertyChanged("Content");

The code for items controls is even simpler because no special code is needed in the viewmodel. It’s handled by a custom version of ObservableCollection:

public class TransitioningObservableCollection<T> : ObservableCollection<T> where T : ITransitionItem

    protected override void RemoveItem(int index)

        var toRemove = this[index];

        if (toRemove.IsReadyToRemove)

            base.RemoveItem(index);

        else if (!toRemove.TransitionEnabled)

            base.RemoveItem(index);

        else

            toRemove.IsOld = true;

            toRemove.PropertyChanged += new PropertyChangedEventHandler(delegate(object s, PropertyChangedEventArgs e)

                if (toRemove.IsReadyToRemove) Remove(toRemove);

});

I won’t post the details of the behaviors here, but basically they attach and look for a transiton item to listen to, then apply the transtions when appropriate. (i’ll make the source code available soon)

This is meant to get me on the road to something reusable, but I welcome suggestions for how to improve this, or you can just tell me that this is a crazy way to handle this issue and you’ll probably be right.

Programming

April 29, 2009

1 Comment

Microsoft’s REC

I see Microsoft has announced their Retail Experience Center (REC). I’ve been there, and I can definitely say they’ve built something really cool. In fact, they’ve included so much detail it’s actually kind of surreal. You can easily forget you’re not in a real store. Right down to the giant mural of a parking lot that’s behind the sliding glass doors. Anyway, if you have the means, I recommend checking it out.

Also, Avanade’s retail demo is installed on their Microsoft Surface, and you can catch a glimpse of it in the video (it also appears in one of the gallery images). So that’s cool to see!

Microsoft Surface

January 12, 2009

Financial Planning on Microsoft Surface from Avanade and Accenture

We’ve finished another Surface demo and that means I get to embarras myself in another video. Hopefully you’re too distacted by how amazing the app is to notice my performance. I had a lot of fun developing this one, and while I’m sure everyone will have their own positive and negative reactions, I think we produced something that showcases several good ideas in a short amount of time. So I’m happy. Please let me know if you have thoughts or questions. I’m happy to discuss.

Microsoft Surface

January 5, 2009

The Big Drive

I just finished a drive from St. Paul to Seattle. 2.5 days,
1800 miles, lots of fun, 1 perspective shift. I have a new position at the same
company, but now it makes more sense for me to work out of our headquarters in Seattle,
so here I am. Technically, I could have flown. It would have taken about 6-7
hours total, and would have put me here in time to enjoy a beautiful august
weekend. The company is paying for relocation, so whether I drove or had my car
shipped was totally up to me and made no financial difference. So why did I
drive?

It was a rather an easy decision to make, even though I put
on a show of going back and forth about it for a couple weeks. Really though, I knew I wanted to drive the
first time I thought of it, but it’s only in doing it, that I understood
why. The fact that I hadn’t ever been in Montana, Wyoming, or Idaho was
something I thought should change. I’m also planning to sell my car shortly,
now that I don’t need it to get to work or the gym, so I thought it would be
good to enjoy it while I have it. But the real
reason turned out to be perspective. I needed to MOVE, not just pop over to
Seattle like I’ve done at least a dozen times before. I wanted to feel the very
sobering reality that I was leaving my home state indefinitely for the first
time. I wanted to feel the weight of leaving behind friends and family. Not
that I’m a masochist, understand; it just seemed like flying here would be like
cheating somehow.

The fact is that Seattle IS 1600 miles from St Paul (the
extra 200 miles I drove was for a very worthwhile detour to Yellowstone
national park), and one tends to underestimate the enormity of that distance
when they routinely cover the round trip twice a week and sometimes 10 times in
a single month. The incredible speed at which you travel while 30k feet above
the earth should evoke its own kind of awe, but for someone who didn’t grow up
taking road trips, I suspected these distances were somewhat lost on me. I was
right.

For example, yesterday I spent over 11 hours driving; saw
the sunrise and the sunset from the car, and stopped only occasionally to
stretch my legs and remind my senses that the world isn’t perpetually speeding
by at 80 mph. When I started the day I was in Montana and I ended it in….wait
for it….Montana! And still a good 150 miles from the western border! Granted, I
spent some of the day taking a detour a bit south which took me through a
corner of Wyoming, but generally I was heading west the whole day. I averaged
60 miles an hour according to my car’s computer, and filled my tank a couple
times. That’s distance!

And here’s the most important thing about it: every mile
along the way, every mountain pass or 10 mile straight-away that begs you to
see if you can get your car past 130mph, I was aware (at least subconsciously)
that it brought me further away from my old home and closer to my new one. That
limbo time, during which I thought of myself as a homeless wanderer (I should
have learned kung-fu first) was therapy for the mind. Or at least I hope it
was, because it didn’t do much for my back.

I will take possession of my new apartment tomorrow, and in
so doing, complete a journey. Moving to a new city is not a breakthrough for
mankind, I realize, but this is a journey that has been a long time coming for
me, and I feel it is (if you’ll permit the cliché) a beginning as much as an
end. Only one reader of this will remember directly, but I once stood on a dock
in Greece telling someone, who was at the time a relative stranger, about how I
wanted my life to be bigger. It was something I hadn’t thought of in those
terms before that moment, but it was very true. So what better path to a bigger
life than a big city, some big sky, and a big drive?

The Drive’s Flickr Set

Travel

August 31, 2008

2 Comments

iPhone 2.0 vs. Windows Mobile – A Back and Forth Conversation

I decided that the only way I can express my decision making process, which has led me to NOT buy a new iPhone tomorrow, is to externalize the conversation taking place in my head. So here ya go:

WM Owner

Ok, I’ve decided to stick with my HTC Touch Cruise (substitute any of the latest wm phones with 3G and GPS).

iPhone 3G Owner

But how can you think WM is still a better choice when the new iPhone is so great?

WM
I know, I have to keep reminding myself of the reasons. Let’s do this though. You start telling me the things you love about the iPhone that you think are either unique to it, or better than WM. And I will respond with something that is unique or better on WM; OR demonstrate equivalent functionality on WM, and see how far we get. And I’m not just going to list features for features sake; these are things that really matter to me

iPhone
Alright. Let’s start with mobile web browsing. Web pages are displayed like they are on a desktop.

WM
Yeah but opera 9.5 on wm does the same thing as safari now. It has all the same benefits. The only thing it can’t do is the multi-touch pinch, so just to even us up, I’ll throw in the obvious wm advantage that it can be used with any carrier world-wide and supports more radio bands.

iPhone
Fair enough. So how about the great multi-media ipod functionality? It plays videos beautifully.

WM
I’ll give you that it’s better overall at multi-media, although I can play xvid torrents natively on mine with minimal slowdown, while those have to be converted for the iPhone. Also I can play audio over bluetooth and expand my storage with the SDHC card reader.

iPhone
The iPhone is great for texting with its threaded display and smart keyboard.

WM
Actually I have threaded txting now too, and I can copy/paste things into my txts/emails from any other program on the phone. I also have a 3^rd party keyboard that incorporates all of the smarts of the iPhone keyboard, plus the ability to choose your layout and customize other useful options.

iPhone
I love google maps on the iPhone. And now I have gps.

WM
Yeah I have the same google maps program with gps, and I also have MS live search which includes turn-by-turn gps support via the internet. It even does rerouting when you deviate from course. And it supports voice commands.

iPhone
The gesture-based UI is great.

WM
I’ll give you that it’s nice, although multi-touch is probably underutilized. HTC phones do gestures now though too. All lists are flick-able. I can flip through pictures and emails. There is a program launcher that is all gesture based. And I can even zoom in on areas of pictures by drawing little circles instead of doing the pinch.

iPhone
Email support is great, and now supports exchange push.

WM
That’s great, but obviously WM has that too. Also, it implements ALL exchange features. The iPhone is missing tasks and flagged emails, which are extremely useful to me.

iPhone
How about how you can browse itunes and buy/download music directly over wifi?

WM
Good one. Although I have an app that will auto-download podcasts over the 3g network, which I find more useful than buying songs. I also have apps for twitter and flickr uploading, all running in the background, which I understand you can’t do with 3rd party apps on the iPhone as they can’t stay resident.

iPhone
Honestly, when it comes down to it, the iPhone is all about the overall amazingly fast and beautiful user experience.

WM
You win on ux and speed, I can’t deny that. It takes a lot to overcome this one for me. Here’s a few things I haven’t mentioned yet: OfficeCommunicatorMobile for corporate IM and true freedom from the office; decent 3mp camera with auto-geotagging; windows remote desktop, for tweaking my home server from the road; laptop tethering to the internet via Bluetooth; spare batteries; Skype.

Uncategorized

July 10, 2008

Surface Video Available

I promised in my last post that we would put up a video of the Avanade/Accenture Surface demo, and it’s finally here. Just took a bit longer than expected.
So enjoy, and try not to be too hard on the poor actors, they aren’t professionals.