Marco Casario | RIAvolutionize the web

How the mobile user experience evolves and changes for enterprise mobile application

On the first days of 2007, Comtaste, my company, will announce the release of a enterprise mobile project/initiave. It was a project we've worked for about 6 months usign Java ME and Flash Lite (we made 2 different version of it).
We spent a lot of time, other than testing and developing, in choosing the user interface graphics, trying to offer the best in terms of user experience and usability.
The main aspects we considered in designing our mobile app were :

• limited size of the display
• how the user will use the features of your application (the context)
• low device performance

So we started with 3 different layouts and we conducted some usability tests. As you can see from the images below, we created 3 different layouts that makes use of different graphic elements.
Other than our tests, we read all the resources given from Nokia about mobile user experience and usability (don't miss all the Nokia documentation about mobile usability).

In order to reach our goal we changed a lot of elements of those layouts. Icons, texts, visual aids, photos and UI elements. For our mobile designer was a difficult challange.
We chose the 3rd layout and the lesson learned at the end was : for enterprise mobile applications use less graphics over text elements but supporte navigation with visual clues.

On the first days of january I'll publish all the detailed information on the application developed.

Flex 2.0 Enterprise Services and ColdFusion: CFUnited interviews Thomas Burleson

Today I received the newsletter from CFUnited with this interview on   "Flex 2.0 Enterprise Services and ColdFusion - 203" with Thomas Burleson.
I shared it with all of you, it's interesting :

Michael Smith: This time we are talking with Thomas Burleson about his CFUNITED-06 talk
"Flex 2.0 Enterprise Services and ColdFusion - 203". So why should a
developer see your session video Thomas?

Thomas Burleson: While the Flash IDE (Flash MX Pro, Flash 8 Pro) will remain the primary tool
used by graphic designers to create flash movies, Flex is the premiere tool
used by developers/programmers to quickly create flash content for
commercial and business solutions.

MS: Why is that?

TB: It is code based rather than designer based. Just like ColdFusion is a tag based
language to generate HTML, Flex is a tag based language to generate Flash.

MS: So is Flex 2.0 better than Flex 1.5 was?

TB: Flex 1.5 provided a robust framework and GUI components and significantly
reduced project issues of complexity, team-development, and creating
reusable components. But Flex 1.5 also presented challenges with
installation, extensibility, and required a J2EE application server to
deliver flash content compiled from Flex projects. Additionally, Flex 1.5
license agreements were required and their CPU-based costs were non-trivial.

Flash Lite search engine

Ryan Unger, punchkickinteractive.com, has created a customized search engine using Google Co-op that searches only sites that will have relevant content relating to Flash Lite.

You can see his work here : Flash Lite Search Engine

The future of Rich Internet Applications

Ryan "Nostradamus" Stewart shared his 10 Predictions for Rich Internet Applications in 2007.
This is the top ten:

1. Vista is going to raise the bar for experiences across the board.
2. Adobe's Apollo is going to be much better than expected.
3. Microsoft is going to make inroads into the design market.
4. The Designer/Developer workflow will get some mainstream press.
5. Apple is going to make a play in Rich Internet Applications
6. Competition for technology in the online video space will heat up
7. Flex becomes the primary technology for building Rich Internet Applications.
8. "WPF/E" will have a higher penetration than Apollo.
9. The Mozilla platform and Apollo will fight for the cutting edge Ajax developers.
10. OpenLaszlo is going to be a beacon for open source developers looking to build Rich Internet Applications.

It's a great overview of next-year technologies.
Thanks friend  ;)

My contribute to Adobe Flex Cookbook initiative(so far)

I love the idea behind the  new area on the Developer Center, code-named Flex cookbook, where Flex developers can share best practices and code.

I listed all my contributes to Flex cookbook written so far :

Improve performance of Flex Builder 2 IDE
by Marco Casario on November 17, 2006

Flex Builder 2 is great and powerful IDE for developing Flex applications. ...

Managing with multiple XML namespace in Flex 2 applications
by Marco Casario on November 15, 2006

Flex 2 allows developers to define different xml name spaces in order to in...

Creating a reusable instance of an embedded image class
by Marco Casario on November 13, 2006

Create a dynamic instance of images you can change at runtime.

Override the Application style properties
by Marco Casario on December 19, 2006

Reset all the default properties for the Application container

Installing Flex Data Services 2 on BEA WebLogic 9
by Marco Casario on November 20, 2006

Learn how easy is to install Flex Data Services on BEA WebLogic

As Craig Goodman wrote : "The cookbook needs you. During the seed phase, we'll open it up to interested members of the community to start posting and sharing their tips and code. This will be a time for you to give feedback and help us make items easy to find, publish, and share. Want to participate? Please contact us if you'd like to be involved in this upcoming seed program. We'll keep you posted on our progress!"

2 free seats for Flex 2 course in Milan for FlexGala registered users

I'm pleased to announce an offer put by Comtaste for offering 2 free seats for the next Flex 2 course in Milan for the FlexGala users.

All the detailed information are published on FlexGala site :
http://www.augitaly.com/flexgala/index.php?cmd=newsreader&id=39

FlexGala with worldwide communities listed on Flex Developer Center

Adobe has listed  all Flex communities worldwide on Flex Developer Center:

Share your development knowledge, see what other developers are creating, and ask your coding questions in the Flex development community.

FlexGala is the Italian Flex community :) and actually exceed more than 380 registered members !

Nokia S60 site updated and S60 Newsletter December issue

There are lots of updates and improvements on S60.com. The application wishlist is a totally new feature, where you can submit your ideas for the kinds of applications you wish you had on your phone -- whether they're brilliant or far-fetched, they might inspire a developer.

You can also now sort S60 applications by compatible phone in the downloads section, saving time when you're looking for something for your device in particular.

They've also improved the S60 phones section with better usability.

Adobe 4th quarter fiscal 2006 announced

Adobe presents the rocording of the Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2006 Earnings Conference Call.

This presentation contains forward looking statements, including those related to planned product releases, revenue, gross margin, operating expenses, operating margin, other income, tax rate, share count, earnings per share, and future growth and market opportunities, which involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.

As you can see from this slide, Flash Lite grows more and more, reaching 150 milion devices shipped so far :

Flash Lite Friday Digest #14: : a compact weekly overview from the world of Flash Lite

Alessandro made a great job for the new Flash Lite Friday Digest #14 .

 
Flash Lite Friday Digest is a condensed and organized set of links that help users to get a weekly overview on the Flash Lite mobile world.

You can find all Flash Lite Friday Digest post on my blog