Updates to Silverlight and Blend

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As posted here by Ryan Stewart, there are updates to Silverlight which include a few changes to API as well as some controls, which are included in the most recent service pack to Blend 2.5.

The push and pull between Flash and Silverlight hasn’t truly begun but Ryan and Scott are both talking about how its “almost there” in terms of Silveright’s eminant dominance (or that’s my summary).

The interesting thing that I would like to mention is the current job listings market.  More and more, a web designer is required/requested to know CSS, XHTML, XML, Javascript, and Flash.

When will XAML be added to this list?

*throws hands up*

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Creating a UI – not sure if this is how others do it, but the way I work is to have the overal base set on 1 page.  Give it the look and feel that it needs in the end or at least on a very basic level.

“This goes here, its about this size, it needs to have an element that is this size next to something like this with this radius, with this type of a menu to the side.  Oh, need the the little arrow thing indicating a drop-down.  etc.”

There’s more to it, like the orientation of how its put together – is it going to expand downward when “adding” a new item?  Ok, then stack panel, is it sticking here no matter what?  How is that button going to look when its hovered over, active, or inactive?

All of these thing are the beginnings of something more… whole.  Once they’re together at least in a rudimentary sort of form, custom controlling the… (insert word of choice) out of it until there’s almost othing left on the original screen.

From there – its detailed creation time.  Inactive, mouse-over, and active alike.  Personally, I like to also make these things “work” – as in, opening Visual Studios and getting the custom control to behave when running my mouse over it and clicking.

Makes it so that when I present it to the client, it may not actually… transmit, record, and display data, but at least the UI is somewhat interactive.

Problems come in though – Hitting F5 from Blend to run the program and if the tiniest thing is off, it either won’t load or… it will but –  *growls*

One might say that there is a very very nice use of “white space”.

Seattle’s D2ig

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This past week I’ve been working with a group of other locals and we are starting a group dedicated to Silverlight and Flash designers and developers.  The intention of the group is to cross the knowledge gap between the developers and designers.  When in the process of creating just about anything, you often have both teams working seperately but on the same project.   A lot of time goes into both sides and when working seperate its obvious the issues that might arrise.

The focus of this group is to allow further understanding of the processes and ideals.  With developers and designers being on the same page, more time can be focussed on making better products to further the user experience across the board for web, desktop, and mobile applications.

So if you’re in the greater Seattle area, please visit SeattleD2ig.org