Microsoft Blend
Vectir : The only remote control you will need
Feb 3rd
When I had my old Sony Ericsson K750i it had a feature using which I could control Windows Media Player or any other compatible media player using my phone over Bluetooth. It was quite a useful feature as I didn’t need to buy a Windows Media Centre remote to control the media players. Besides, its just one less device to deal with as K750i used to do it all.
After buying my Nokia N79, I was missing this feature a lot & was looking desperately for some application which could give me this or similar feature. I tried various application for my N79 but either some of them refused to connect or just didn’t work. Few days ago I tried Vectir & to my surprise, it worked flawlessly with my N79 & Windows 7.
Vectir works by installing the application on your system & installing a small Java based app on your mobile phone. All you have to do is to start the application on your PC and then start the application on your phone. Once the Phone app has started, it will search for your computer, after which you can connect either automatically or if Bluetooth serial port service is not installed in the computer then by setting a COM Port manually.
It also supports connecting via WiFi but this I wasn’t able to test as I don’t have a WiFi card in my desktop.
Once configured, you can also change the keypad shortcuts to your liking. This I liked as now I have almost same keypad shortcuts for both Windows Media Player & Media Centre.
What I like about Vectir is that it doesn’t come in your way when using. You just start the application on your computer & it can continue to work in the background. I would have appreciated if it could run as a service, as once configured, we don’t need to see the configuration part again.
Since Vectir is still quite new & considering Windows 7 was jut released, I hope the developers do decide to include some features like jumplist support in future as the entire right click menu of Vectir tray icon can come in a jumplist.
A more native UI to Windows 7 would also be appreciated though its not as important currently because once running, users will hardly see it again as it runs completely transparent in your system. The entire UI of Vectir is made in WPF & being a .net application, not only it is fast but also secure & efficient on RAM.
Currently Vectir runs with any mobile phone supporting Java based apps whether it is normal keypad based or Touch Screen. It is one app which you should sure try before buying a Media Centre remote for your PC.
You can download a trial and check how good it works for you.
Facebook & Twitter : The GX way
Nov 22nd
Twitter & Facebook are all the rage these days. Almost everyone I know is on it even if they are not active there. A friend of mine recently joined Facebook who is a long time Orkut user & her first question was “How do I talk to someone on Facebook? Where is the scrapbook?”. I have to say, Facebook is sometimes confusing, no wonder they released Facebook Lite recently.
When I am using Twitter or Facebook, I prefer not to go to there website to do the thing. I am a person, who prefers to navigate through the web using conventional desktop application, which is why despite of having GB of space in GMail & Windows Live Mail, I still use Outlook. Likewise, here are two applications I use for Twitter & Facebook which I liked at first try only.. & have good potential on the Windows 7 platform both made using SilverLight
Twitter = Sobees Lite
Sobees is a WPF & SilverLight based client for Twitter, Facebook & MySpace. Although only the twitter component is what I use as the Facebook part of Sobees isn’t up to the mark for me.
What I like about Sobees is that it supports integration with Windows 7 Superbar & Jumplists, lets me change the layout as I want & update my status on multiple services at once only. I can have a single column layout which is what I prefer with Tabs on top or Side or a Multi Column layout… anyway I need. This is something only DestroyTwitter gives (As far as I know).
Sobees also shows a notification in the bottom right hand side when there is a new update. I can also update my status using the jumplist too.
Being WPF based, it uses hardware acceleration to which makes scrolling through large lists easy. Most important thing due to which I like Sobees compared to any Adobe AIR based Twitter client is the ability to change the font size according to what I like. Text make up as a large part of the Twitter experience so more configuration in text is a always a better feature compared to Adobe AIR where text fonts are at a predefined size only & do not scale with change in Monitor DPI.
Sobees is currently in Alpha phase & yet provides amazing Twitter experience, final version should be available soon with support for DirectWrite & Direct2D.
Facebook = Fishbowl
I found about FishBowl through a tweet of fellow MVP Manan Kakkar. Its a desktop client for Facebook released by UXlabs@Microsoft. Another awesome app made with SilverLight & features optimised to Windows 7. I always wanted to use a desktop client for everything & Fishbowl does that for me & Facebook.
From what it seems, Fishbowl is using DirectWrite for the text.
Scrolling through the lists in Fishbowl is better then Sobees, so I guess Direct2D isn’t enabled in Sobees yet. But since Fishbowl is able to scroll through long lists easily, I am sure other apps can do it too.
Do check out these apps, they are worth using specially if you are on Windows 7
Microsoft’s debugging tools for Internet Explorer
Sep 3rd
Most of the web designer & developers are using some sort of tool like IE tester or a separate machine running IE 6 or IE 7 to check for compatibility errors with these browsers. Also, historically it’s been hard to debug for IE 6 & 7 as we do not have something like Firebug for Internet Explorer.
Some of us already know about the web developer toolbar for Internet Explorer, but today Microsoft released a new visual debugging tool for Internet Explorer called Expression Web SuperPreview for Internet Explorer (Microsoft, please hire someone to come up with short names for your product). Its like IE tester but from Microsoft, means it has the native real engine of IE 6 & IE 7 not something emulated which some people think IETester has. (Its wrong though, IETester has the same DLL as IE 6).
The difference between IETester & SuperPreview is that in IE Tester you cannot debug or see which HTML element is affected & which part of the CSS is giving problem but in SuperPreview you can see the web page in IE 6 as well as IE7/8 side by side so it is easy to know which part is getting affected & then you can easily target that element. Like in the current screenshot, I am checking the rendered HTML in IE 6 & IE 8 side by side. If there is some anomaly in IE 6 but not in IE 8 then I know which HTML element or CSS is breaking.
However, this isn’t all that we require. This indeed is a great effort from Microsoft to move the existing web pages from IE 6 to IE 8 but it would have been better if we can get the functionality of IE Developer toolbar in SuperPreview. Now, that is indeed available in expression web 3.0 but that is a paid software, what if we just want to test & see what’s broken & fix is quickly.
Help Manual
Nov 13th
Few days ago when in Bangalore, I was looking for an E-Book for Illustrator CS3. I found a CHM file after searching a lot & then only I found that the default CHM Viewer in Windows Vista is still the same one as Windows 2000. On searching online, I found only one CHM Viewer application out there, good enough for what I as a UI Designer & Windows User would want. So I decided to make my own, following the latest trends in designing for Windows Platform.
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Presenting, what I call “Help Manual”. This application is made in simply Winforms but an also be made in WPF. It is simply a CHM & HLP Viewer, nothing else with basic functions that one would want from one such application like zooming the page & still fitting it in the application Window, printing everything using the IE 7’s print view etc. The following mock up was made in Microsoft Blend & edited by Photoshop.
Concept UI : Windows Shorthand
Apr 16th
I was talking to a friend of mine today who recently completed his MBA from I2IT Pune. He was telling me that he & his college & hostel roommates used to share videos, songs, documents & even chat on the college LAN. I saw the LAN Chat application he was using which was quite crappy & something came into my mind. The P2P protocol is already there in Vista inbuilt, & usable in the form of Windows Meeting space which can work through the Internet, so why not have a similar communication system for LAN. This can really help students in colleges with fast LAN connections or Organizations in saving Internet bandwidth costs. Since this chatting client will work on LAN only mean the bandwidth used will be internal & local, & always available without interfering or slowing down the real Internet Pipeline in the Institute. This is more like Yahoo Messenger made for LAN with many features omitted as they will not be required in LAN.
Presenting Windows Shorthand, a LAN Communication Application. Once started, it will automatically scan for other computers on the LAN provided they also have Windows Shorthand installed. Then it will display a list of all the available clients in an easy to see & manage friend list which can be sorted with groups etc much like what we have today with Yahoo Messenger. The menu bar is invisible but can be seen by pressing the Alt key. It does not need Internet at all. This is how the startup screen looks like.
Each & every computer on the LAN has a specific IP which in most cases is Static. Windows Shorthand will give the ability to each user to set a small profile for himself in Shorthand like a Nick Name & some details which will be saved in a XML file connected to the users Local IP address, now when someone else finds this user they will see his nick name & not the IP address or the computer name on the LAN. To chat they just have to double click & start talking.The user can set a status message for himself. There is a handy search field below the messenger list using which you can search for a particular user in a long friend list. This is how the Messenger List looks like.
Once you are chatting, this is how the Chat Window will look like. Users can transfer files, do voice or video chat or video conferencing & even have something what I call “Media Share”, which is more like Yahoo Messenger’s Photo Share just that it will show Video, Audio & Images.
That chatting font can be set in options as shown by the Gear Icon in the toolbar. You can also use common emoticons from the emoticon drop down menu.
It doesn’t need plethora of features as this is not supposed to replace any Internet chat client such as Google Talk or Windows Live Messenger. It is simply made for college students & organizations to communicate on LAN.
This concept is made using Microsoft Blend, Photoshop & Icon Workshop.
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