Transmogrify on Facebook
We’ve finally gotten around to creating a Facebook group for xmog. “Like” us if you’d like!
(215) 436-9664
RestFB now supports the Facebook Graph API
I’m pleased to announce that RestFB 1.5 has been released and includes support for the new Facebook Graph API. If you’re a Java developer and are interested in trying out the latest and greatest from Facebook, I recommend checking this out. The Graph API is really easy to use and fun to work with – you can do lots of neat things with all that data! I welcome any feedback or bug reports you might have – come on over to the RestFB Google Group and let the community know your thoughts.
What the iPad Owes to Flash
For all of the internet ruckus regarding Apple and Adobe — both official and unofficial — I haven’t seen anything written about the positive influence Flash has had on user experience design (and how that influence has affected the iPad). Though it’s often written off as an enabler of awful design and annoying splash screens, today’s haptic interfaces owe a lot more to Flash than most would be willing to admit.
As I was browsing the web for creative ways of handling navigation for an in-the-works iPad application, it struck me that there really is no model for interaction on the iPad. Some would claim that this lack of UI ancestry is because Apple is magically revolutionizing the way software can be designed, and that we’re now free to pursue our wildest user interface dreams. While I don’t disagree that the iPad provides a wonderful user experience, I do think that some of the design principles iPad app designers are currently using have been around for quite a while, and are readily found in Flash sites.
Because of the (admittedly warranted) bad name that Flash has for a variety of reasons, people are apt to overlook some of the very nice things that it’s capable of when in the right hands. As a result, they simply don’t look for influence within the medium. Apple seems to enjoy fanning the flame of contempt for Flash that web standards advocates started years ago, and coupled with the release of their “hot new” platform that is so rabidly and publicly anti-Flash, the avoidance of Flash design has no real hope of turning around. I want to be clear, though, that I’m not denying that Flash’s time is up, or that its usefulness — short of video — isn’t long since expired.
Apple’s official beef with Flash and the echo chamber that has ensued is doing something that I think could hurt the design of iPad applications, at least in the short term. This constant trash-talk from the loyalists of a company that designers consider to be the epitome of hip is encouraging those same designers to ignore some pitfalls of design that good Flash designers have already handled with finesse. Apple’s notoriously hard-line approach to protecting its intellectual property is doing nothing to help application designers develop a community of positive influence. Before the iPad was released, the only way a development shop could get their hands on one was to black out room to house it and then secure it to an immovable object. So for those of us who started working on iPad apps before the device was available, where were we to go for design influence? Where I arrived was Flash.
HTML (with some JavaScript influence) has come a long way — and I believe that it will eclipse even native device applications in the future — but experimentation with the medium is only recently gaining some momentum. Flash, however, has been a commonly used platform for unique user experiences, both good and bad, for years. While browsing recently for navigation design, I stumbled on some very nice examples of interaction using Flash. Although some of these sites commit the cardinal sins that have earned Flash its awful reputation, what they do well is find fun ways to deal with the problems that also plague iPad designers; non-linear information and navigation design, touch-like interaction (dragging, swiping, etc.), faux realism in UI elements, and animation.
I do know that time will fix this problem, and that after a few generations of iPad applications there will be a suitable ecosystem for sharing and developing influence within the iPad design community. But I’m worried that because of the constant barrage of anti-Flash writing, some perfectly acceptable — and in many cases quite good — sources of inspiration are going ignored. I’m in no way defending Flash as a platform to developers, but merely admitting that Flash is not all bad, in much the same way that iPad and iPhone applications are not all good, and that there is some value in good Flash design that could positively influence designers.
R5 Productions iPhone App Update
Version 1.2 of the R5 Productions iPhone app is now in the App Store.
Get it now!
New features:
- Improved event download speed
- event sharing on Facebook and Twitter
- band videos
- music purchase links
- a virtual lighter
Key Ingredient iPad App Now Available!
Transmogrify’s first iPad app is now available in the App Store. Special thanks to Key Ingredient for being an awesome partner in this endeavor.
TGI Black Friday is back…now for Android.
Our TGI Black Friday app is back for 2010, and this year, it’s in the Android Market as well as the App Store!
I had a fantastic time developing this app; it was an immensely fun experience from start to finish, and I learned a lot about Android’s intricacies along the way. We’re all very happy with the end result, so if you have an Android handset, go try it out and let us know what you think! It’s free, it’s easy to use, and it will help guide you through the feeding frenzy that is Black Friday.
I’d like to thank the fine folks over at Dealcatcher.com for once again being such awesome clients. It was a pleasure making this app for them.
Here’s a QR code for the app, scan it with your phone’s camera and you’ll be taken directly to the market.
Enjoy!
Posted in blog Tagged Dealcatcher, TGI Black Friday
A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design
A few weeks old now but still relevant, this article by designer Bret Victor discusses the path user experience is taking and why it might not be the optimal direction for human interaction with computers. Largely a response to Microsoft’s “Future Vision” demo, Victor has a fascinating viewpoint that some may not have considered in the face of flashy new technology.
Microsoft’s “Future Vision”:
Victor asserts that what he calls “Pictures Under Glass” interfaces lack the connection with human senses that good tools provide. This missing connection causes users to shape themselves and their behavior around tools, rather than tools acting as an extension of the human body.
As an example, Victor discusses the haptic feedback of reading an paperback book:
“Notice how you know where you are in the book by the distribution of weight in each hand, and the thickness of the page stacks between your fingers. Turn a page, and notice how you would know if you grabbed two pages together, by how they would slip apart when you rub them against each other.”
He then compares that to playing “piano” on the iPad:
“What did you feel? Did it feel glassy? Did it have no connection whatsoever with the task you were performing?
I call this technology Pictures Under Glass. Pictures Under Glass sacrifice all the tactile richness of working with our hands, offering instead a hokey visual facade.
Is that so bad, to dump the tactile for the visual? Try this: close your eyes and tie your shoelaces. No problem at all, right? Now, how well do you think you could tie your shoes if your arm was asleep? Or even if your fingers were numb? When working with our hands, touch does the driving, and vision helps out from the back seat.
Pictures Under Glass is an interaction paradigm of permanent numbness. It’s a Novocaine drip to the wrist. It denies our hands what they do best. And yet, it’s the star player in every Vision Of The Future.”
(This is likely the reason a predominant amount of “iPad Bands” you see on Youtube are horribly out of time.)
Though Victor’s article doesn’t offer anything in the way of an alternative to touch-screen interfaces (which he gladly admits in the beginning of his article), his argument is one that’s hard to write off.
Read his entire article here, it’s worth it.
Posted in blog Tagged User Experience, User Interface
Mixed-mode warnings in Chrome
I really like a recent addition to the Chrome Inspector: if your HTTPS page includes non-HTTPS content, it tells you what the offending URL is.
Contrast this to other browsers, where you’ll get – at best – a warning in the console and – at worst – a popup dialog, neither of which provide you with relevant details necessary to find the offending URL (note: I haven’t played with FF4 enough yet, maybe it also behaves nicely like Chrome).
Most of the time it’s not hard to figure out where the issue is, but sometimes things get hairy/non-obvious. For example, if you’re using the Ajax feature of fancybox in IE6, it creates an iframe element with a missing src attribute. IE6, for whatever reason, does not default this empty iframe to the protocol of the current document – instead, it’s always HTTP. Tracking this down and patching fancybox took the better part of an hour but would’ve been only a minute or two if IE were more like Chrome.
Posted in blog Tagged Chrome, Javascript
Firefox Image Downscaling Quality
Have a large image and want to scale it down for display? Make sure you test on Firefox before shipping. There’s a well-named “Awful image quality in image scaling” bug report that’s been open for a couple of years now. Even IEs > 6 have better-quality image downscaling!
When you’re serving static images, this is a non-issue because you can resize them manually beforehand. But for systems where users may upload their own images, it’s nice to work with only the single uploaded image instead of programmatically scaling and storing off a few different-sized versions and tweaking the frontend to pull the correctly-sized version (it’s not hard to do this, just extra work/complexity that shouldn’t be necessary in the first place).
TGI Black Friday Featured in Maxim Magazine
Just in time for the release of 2011′s TGI Black Friday App, Maxim Magazine has featured it as part of their Black Friday spread. Check it out. The 2011 app is now available in the App Store and also in the Android Market, download it now!
