beTech :: Evolve Already

Please say hello to Michael Prichard, the owner of Willow Tree Consulting and a Flex developer!

This is a quick update for you regarding our Flex Discovery Group meeting next Tuesday. A detailed agenda will go out on Monday. This week the annual Adobe MAX conference is happening in San Francisco, so expect big product news to come soon from Adobe. Don’t forget the focus of this group is to build a Flex Application together utilizing: multi-page forms, web services, web cam inputs, validation, video, video cue points, animations, file uploads, wysiwyg editor and more! Place all code here: http://code.google.com/p/flexdiscoverygroup/ .

MEETING DETAILS:

When: Tues, Oct 28th, 12:00pm - 1:00pm

Where: Brown Science and Engineering Library, http://www2.lib.virginia.edu/brown/, [location see map: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/map.html ]

Who: Everyone is Invited and encouraged to share ideas and parcels of finished or unfinished Adobe Flex work for discussion purposes.

Please join us for a presentation on XUL on Wednesday,October 15th from 10:00 - 11:30 am in Clemons Library, Room 407.
What: Introduction to XUL Development
When: Wed. 10/15, 10:00 - 11:30 am
Where: Clemons Library, Room 407 (to the left of the reference desk)
Who: RJ Bruneel
Introduction to XUL Development
An introduction to XUL development and discussion about what worked while RJ worked on a XUL project for Opensource Connections. XUL (XML User Interface Language) is Mozilla’s XML-based language that lets you build feature-rich cross platform applications that can run connected or disconnected from the Internet. These applications are easily customized with alternative text, graphics and layout so they can be readily branded or localized for various markets. Web developers already familiar with Dynamic HTML (DHTML) will learn XUL quickly and can start building applications right away.  

RJ Bruneel is a seasoned Software Developer since 1997 currently working for Opensource Connections. 

For more information about the location, check out http://www.lib.virginia.edu/map.html

Thanks to all who came out this past Tuesday to the presentation and usability lab tour hosted by Dr. Stephanie Guerlain and Dave Bauer of the Engineering School HCI program.

Cindy Walters, of the ITC Advanced Technology Group, and Brevy Cannon, of UVa Media Relations, were kind enough to send me their notes from the event. These are available for download at the end of this post. Also available below is Dr. Guerlain’s Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Course Notes document. This expands on the topics covered during her presentation and introduces some fundamental concepts applied in the study of HCI—usability and user testing included.

The large turnout on Tuesday indicates there’s a strong interest in usability testing at UVa. I hope everyone who attended was able to come away with something useful. I also hope this was just the beginning of something enduring, and that we’ll all soon find ourselves regularly conducting usability testing.

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Partly as a follow up to Steve’s recent post on Snap, and partly because ’tis the season for receiving as well as giving (;-), I recommend checking out Widgetbox. It’s the best round-up on the web of all the neat little widgets, like Snap, available for use in your website. Interestingly, Snap doesn’t seem to be listed there yet.

A sample of some of the most impressive goodies to be found at Widgetbox includes:

• Grazr — A free publishing tool for feeds. Quickly and easily display RSS, RDF, Atom, and OPML files on any Web page so they can be viewed by any visitor to the site.
• Meebo Me! — A chat client that you can embed directly in your page.
• Mapsack map — Allows you to embed an interactive google map on your blog.

Oh, and for those hoping Santa will bring them a cute furry companion this year, there’s always the CuteOverload Cutetracker if the big guy doesn’t deliver.

This little Ajax app from Snap has been, quite literally, popping up all over the web lately. And now you can enjoy it here on the beTech site. Just roll over some external links and marvel at how the Snap Preview Anywhere tool provides a handy little screenshot of the page linked. It’s useful, it’s easy to implement, and it’s cool! Of course, we just had to give it 3 snaps, in a circle.

Though user experience (UX) design isn’t necessarily bleeding edge technology, its a crucial factor of any technology’s success, particularly large complex information systems like the web. Considerations like information architecture, usability, accessibility, and aesthetics, applied in the right way, make a user interface really sing. So, it’s only natural that beTech should toss UX into its mix while trying to stir up tech enthusiasm at UVa. Right?

Let me know you think so by joining me (and hopefully many others) in the Byrd room of the Harrison/Small building at noon Thursday January 18th for the first beTech User Experience Group meeting.

The beTech UX Group aims to bring together UVa website and software producers to pursue knowledge of UX design best-practices through special beTech events and initiatives. UVa webmasters, web designers, software designers, programmers, media producers of all types, and communicators will all hopefully find something useful in the focused community and opportunities this group has to offer.

Some of the pursuits and issues we’ll address include:

• User Interface Design
• Information Architecture
• Usability Engineering
• Interaction Design
• Web Accessibility
• Human Computer Interaction
• Information Visualization
• Graphic Design
• Multimedia Production (A/V, Flash, Animation, Games)
• Writing and Editing

A few timely initiatives ripe for the beTech UX Group to start, if we’re so inclined, include:

• Creating a first-class central web/software usability testing lab available to the entire UVa community
• Creating and stewarding a website that showcases the best of user interface design at UVa
• Recruiting and regularly engaging representatives of UVa website user groups (students, faculty, staff, alums, etc.) to provide them a persistent voice in our website design processes

Needless to say, a lot of what we’ll chew on will be in regards to user testing and ways of gaining insight into user needs. But fear not starvation of your creative soul; we’ll seek plenty of juicy design and communication nourishment as well. Ugliness and miscommunication, after all, are user experiences we want to avoid creating.

So come on out on the 18th, and bring a lunch (á la beHungry.) Currently, we don’t have a presenter lined up. But in the interest of getting this group rolling, our first meeting can simply be a time for casual camaraderie. And it might be set against a backdrop slideshow featuring user interface design patterns, just to inspire a little focused conversation. Of course, if we can snag a presenter, the format is certainly open to change. If you are interested in presenting or have a good presentation/workshop idea, please email me at jml4n@virginia.edu, IM me at (AIM) runamonk7, or give me a call at 924-7099.

I’ve been a cautious fan of Macromedia Adobe Flash paper since it first came bundled with Contribute 2. There are a variety of applications where a PDF simply isn’t the best solution for content delivery, but it’s all you have to work with. Flashpaper does a nice job of bringing PDFs to the web in a Flash SWF container that can be embedded in a page, and offers some useful functions on the built-in toolbar.

I used the Flashpaper component from driverjase to create a wrapper for the flashpaper document. The component exposes over a dozen options in the API that can be used to customize the toolbar, scrollbars, and view settings.

You can see the result on the Inside UVA page.