The MossyBlog Times.

Australian Silverlight & Expression 3 Tour.

scbarnes — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:39:00 GMT

I’ve just locked in my dates for the Australian Silverlight & Expression 3 Tour.

Session Details:

Silverlight & Expression 3 launch is an important moment in Microsoft's timeline, as this is our V3 moment!. In light of this point in time, Scott has vowed to ensure all within his beloved home, Australia, get a deep insight into what just happened in both Silverlight and Expression 3. Not only will Scott cover off some of the new stuff, but will highlight some of the existing brilliance within these products through examples and commentary of how the old and new features came to be (as well as hints to both product's future).

In this session you not only will hear all of this, but this is also a perfect opportunity to lobby for what you want to see in Silverlight & Expression 4! - Yes, not only did we just finish work on 3, but we're keen to get started on the next version - given Scott's team is on the planning team, this is a great opportunity for you to influence the future of Microsoft's UX Platform

The Dates:

Sydney – SSW .NET User Group.
July 15th – 6:00 PM
click here for location & directions.
Adelaide – SA Code Camp.
July 18th – 10:45 AM
click here for location & directions
Brisbane – QMSDNUG.
July 21st – 6pm
click here for location & directions.
Perth – SDDN User Group
July 22nd – 6:00 PM
click here for location & directions.
Melbourne – SDDN User Group
July 23rd – 6:00 PM
click here for location & directions.
Canberra – SSW .NET User Group
July 28th

Luncheon 12:30pm
click here for location & directions.

Presentation 4:30pm
click here for location & directions.

Then on the 31st July I fly back home to Seattle for a few more months of hibernation. I plan on doing this tour every visit to Australia if the above goes well.

If you are confused etc with the above don’t hesitate in emailing me or twittering me with questions.

Function, Form, Fashion – Shanemo.

scbarnes — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 03:56:06 GMT

Shane Morris, who for the few left that don’t know is one of our User Experience Evangelists in Australia. Shane’s actually got a deep background in Usability and is a lot of his fingerprints on our upcoming release of Expression Blend – Sketchflow.

He seems to have recently done a presentation on “Function, Form and Fashion”. Although it’s only in slide deck format, I’m damn curious to see the vocals behind this interesting discussion.

Check out the deck for yourself via Shane’s blog.

Customer Experience and the 3 F's

View more OpenOffice presentations from Shane Morris.

I promise when I’m home in Australia to get Shane on camera at some point, to get his thoughts on more around Design + Microsoft in general. Shane has taught me a lot about design and I often think he’s got way more to offer us than his role provides time for.

Definitely get face time with him if you are in Australia (especially at ReMIX AU) and make sure you watch his blog closely. He’s got the gift and definitely gets design – better than I do that’s for sure.

Add this to your RSS Readers: http://blogs.msdn.com/shanemo/

Design First, Engineer Second.

scbarnes — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 03:38:10 GMT

A lot of the time folks write off Apple customers as simply being MacTards, fans that are so pre-occupied with Apple and less about the products they make. In part that can be true, I’ve meet some extreme ignorant fans, but in general that’s not true at all.

I’ve meet a lot of fans of Apple who can’t stand the company, but embrace the products they design. I’ve asked many creative souls who in Apple they worship the most, Steve Jobs isn’t on the list as much as Jonathan Ive is. It’s interesting to note this, as competition isn’t important as much as why folks CHOOSE to compete. I’m a fan of Jonathan’s work, as what i’ve read about him is that he seems preoccupied with design first, competition / politics last – seems healthy in a positive way?

Industrial Design is fast becoming the differentiator in today’s technology markets; it’s not just about the magic of software it’s also about how the software experience is presented outside the binary owned domain. Everything from the packaging through to the device it’s housed in all play a collective role. Short change one component to this formula, the rest can suffer.

It’s not easy either, if you look at the first generation of iPods compared to today’s iPhone, there is a radical change in not just ergonomics but visual design inside the software. Evolution is something that you have to fight your way through when it comes to products, it’s not about V1 or V2, but often V3 can be your sweet spot. I like to call this the “Goldie Locks” effect in that as a child I was told the story of “Goldie Locks & the Three Bears”. Basically by her 3^rd attempt at eating the porridge, it was “just right”. Its amazing how often this formula seems to happen not just in Microsoft but all brands really.

I look at the Zune from where it’s come to where it’s heading and I’m at peace with it. I feel our Zune team get design, the shame here is it’s not available outside the U.S (something I hope will change).

I look at the XBOX Team and Project NATAL and it again, I’m at peace with it all as they are looking to focus on the experience and less on the technology per say – games are funny incubation of innovation at times.

I look at the next version of Office and am amazed at how clean it’s fast becoming. Same with Windows 7.

The point is this; we have become used to judging “new” from how it looks not so much how it acts. If we see a new product come out that’s based off the old, it’s main focus is on how it looks and less what it does new – that comes later and is of equal importance.

We do judge a book by its cover, and as such we really need to tackle the design first and focus on engineering second. If you target where you want to head and then focus on how you get there, at least your goal is more weighted towards innovation and less on limitation.

I think Apple has taught Microsoft a valuable lesson in the past 3 years; it’s a healthy amount of competition as well. Adobe is also teaching Microsoft valuable lessons as well.

We are a company that has had a lot of engineering culture ingrained into our DNA – yet in the past 3-4 years I’ve seen the design discussion change from being this quiet blip on the radar to being a more focal point in discussion.

I’m not a fan of the the new Bing logo, it just irritates me at how the proportion is off, yet I’ve seen a healthy debate internally on the subject that has made me extremely proud of how Microsoft is changing its approach to design. I’m not happy with the outcome, but will happily accept this given the result was we approached a conversation differently to what I would of ever thought years ago. In the end I concede that Bing will be measured by how well it helps folks search not so much on what the brand looks like.

Engineering only gives you so much of a head start, as it can usually be matched, design however is something that if you copy becomes obvious as well the initial moment had already passed.

Design can interrupt you in a positive way. Its downside is that it’s not open to “rinse & repeat” formulas.

It’s better outlined here:

http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/a_new_map_for_design/

Interview with Mark Coleran.

scbarnes — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:11:18 GMT

I just finished watching an Interview Adobe Evangelist Lee Brimelow put together around UI’s for the movie industry. It occurred to me tonight that I did an interview with the great Mark Coleran in Jan 2008 but never published it!. To help carry this insight into Hollywood and the software industry, i thought I'd publish it tonight.

Coleran Reel 2008.06 HD from Mark Coleran on Vimeo.

1, Who are you? And what is it you do?

Hi, I am Mark Coleran. I am a visual designer who has worked over the years in graphic, motion and interface design. From print work through to television and film. These days I am working in software development for a small company in Canada, Gridiron Software.

The primary are that I specialized in over the years, has been to design and animate the computer screen displays, that either look like real computers or non real interfaces, on anything from hand held gadgets to huge wall screens in movies.

2. How did you get into the Movie side of things in terms of UX Design?

Completely by accident. I was a graphic designer, and dabbled in 3D. I was working for a special effects company at Pinewood studios, visualizing stunts as 3d animatics. We had a few devices to build that required interfaces on them and it introduced me to the area. They were being built by another group called Useful Companies and I pestered my way into a job with them.

3. Your work is something that is easily considered bleeding edge, the future if you will. How do you even begin to architect the design for this and does the Movie folks brief you on this?

I am not sure it is as bleeding edge as it may at first appear. By the nature of most of the films and the requirements of the interfaces in those films, we do make them look a lot better than they might look if they were a real device. It is a visual medium and your primary task is to tell a small part of the story, sometimes very quickly. For that reason they can be very graphic, more so than real systems and work in very dynamic ways.

The design and architecture tends to come out of those requirements, combined with the requirements from production as far as styling and story telling are concerned.

4. Pablo Picasso reportedly once said “Good artists copy. Great artists steal”, I’m sure many interactive artists around the world have stolen a piece of your idea’s via Movies into real world software? How do you feel about this and does it motivate you?

I have no problem with it at all. Any designer has done this themselves (if they are being honest). If you can provide a small bit of inspiration to someone then that is fantastic thing. We are all influenced by each other and most people don't 'steal', they borrow, combine, adapt and craft until they come up with something new. Then I see that and take inspiration (or steal) from it myself. I do object to straight plagiarism. Not so much in what it is itself, but that it is a lost opportunity for someone to do something creative, even if it is heavily inspired.

It does motivate you, to keep at it, knowing that.

5. In the movie “The Island” Sean Bean sits over a table like surface and interacts with it, this was the movies yet Microsoft has surface which is real? Did you see this coming, if not does it freak you out that some of your work has come to real life?

There has been alot of confusion over the table in The Island. Most people have no idea of developmental timelines and the table itself was not a guess at what might be. It was actually production themselves who had said it was going to be a table type screen. There was a guy called John Underkoffler from MIT involved as well working on how people might interact with such a device. No doubt some influences came from the work going on there, including that of people like Jeff Han. I myself when I got involved at the design stage, looked over a massive body of work previously done on these type of devices and desktop. It was a relatively easy process to draw elements together and combine in such a way as to make it look like a realistic device.

There is never anything particularly prescient about most of this faux technology. It is all out there, but just not widespread. I look at what labs and hobbyists are doing in basements. We get to make it up and make it look real a few years before it hits the shops. It is just there for the looking.

It was already real life, but perhaps with a few rougher edges.

6. Following on from that question, where should UX head tomorrow? In that a lot of our interactive models follow some pre-set formulas, what should we do unbalance this further in order to push ourselves harder to do better?

Now there is a question!

As I am now involved heavily in real UX/UI work, so I have developed an intimate and sometimes painful understanding of the area.

If anything I think UX should become as divorced from engineering as possible. Not in the sense of not working with engineering, but that solutions should not be defined by engineering parameters.

It should also become divorced from the systems that it runs on. Why should people learn a system rather than simplify a task they want to do (the original point of computers?)

It should become about creating something that people should never be aware of. Each and every 'experience' (I hate that word!) should be a non experience. It seem to have been forgotten that we are building a tool to perform a task and that the task is everything. I don't have a good experience with my hammer. I just hit a nail with it and a good hammer doesn't make me think twice about doing that. The tool should be almost invisible in relation to the thing that people are trying to achieve. Simplicity and transparency.

Focusing on the task at hand and nothing else is the key, not a model, pattern or formula. If you try and fit the task to any of those rather than the other way around, you have failed.

There will always be compromises but my guess is that the real progress will come when those compromises are no longer tolerable.

7. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Many different places. Games, film, graphics, engineering, architecture... it is a list that could go on for ever. The key for me has always been to look beyond the project and process that I am currently engaged in.

I also try and engage in other activities that have a certain synergy with what I am doing. In particularly photography. To look, see and compose can teach you a lot that you can employ in other areas.

8. What are some things that irritate you with Software UI today? What are some things that you love in Software UI today?

For the sake of diplomacy, I am not going to name names!

Some of the things I dislike...

Complexity, unnecessary decoration, high contrast, bells and whistles, RTFM, software that makes me feel like an idiot - that blames me for its designers mistakes, imposition, bad metaphors... or just metaphors, implementation models.

Metaphors in particular. A metaphor nearly always feels forced. A real world equivalence that does not always work. There have been great examples of their use in the past but they seem to be regularly over used these days. Stretched almost to breaking.

What do I love... that there is a whole new wave of people creating well crafted simple applications, focused on doing a few things, very well. They are showing a lot of established people better ways of doing things and I hope they get the success they deserve for that. Key elements would be focus, environment, simplicity and context.

I unfortunately can't put a single mainstream tool that I use on a day to day basis in that second list.

9. I believe that a good UI will invoke an emotional connection that far exceeds function. What is your belief?

I agree and disagree with that. As I stated before, I think that the UI, as well as the UX should be almost invisible in comparison to what people want to do.

The simple fact is that the user is in an environment and that environment has to be a good one. A nice place to be. People spend a lot of time and effort on the physical environment that they live and work in, yet have almost zero control of the one they do the vast majority on their work. It is supremely important that we get that right and make it good place.

However, that must never become something in itself. Personally I think the creation of an 'Experience' is a failing. It must be good as such, but once something becomes an experience rather than just a part of the process, it starts to get in the way of the task and goal at hand.

If we can create something that never gets in the way of what people want to do, without encumbering them and where appropriate helping them, then we will naturally get that connection.

10. If I were able to assemble every single UI/UX Designer/Developer in the world into an area where you could tell them something, what would you say?

Users will rarely ever be designers, but designers always have to be the users. Without an intuitive grasp of the problem you are trying to solve, it will always be a best guess no matter how much you listen to the end user.

More of Mark:

Mark’s Showreel
Mark’s blog (http://blog.coleran.com/)
Mark’s Flickr Page.
Mark’s twitter username - http://twitter.com/coleran

I have many more interviews like this that I did in 2008 that I'll publish online. Lee’s inspired me to tackle this area head-on as no matter what brand of tool you opt for tomorrow, interactive design is really about the work guys like Mark produce. It’s the part in a movie where you go “damn that’s freakin nice”.

ILM, Pixar, OOOii etc are all companies I’d leave Microsoft in a heartbeat to work for – as these brands are my main source of muse.

Thank your for you time Mark!

Are you confused about Windows Azure?

scbarnes — Tue, 12 May 2009 05:48:55 GMT

In my daily life here in the land of Microsoft Headquarters, I often interact with a whole variety of developers & designers from many places both local and far.

I was talking in the hallway the other day with one of the guys in the Windows Azure team around how folks are groking the Silverlight + Windowz Azure integration.

I was asked “How are you finding folks in your space approaching Windows Azure”.

For the first time in my career, I had no answer (which a smart ass like me is a rare thing heh).

my response:

“…ya know, I have absolutely no idea, I've not really paid too much attention to it all and just assumed someone else was on that case..”

It’s now Monday and the question bugs me as I rarely let questions like this go undiscovered.

So with that, I have but one question for you the reader:

What part of Windows Azure are you struggling with? do you want to know more about how it and Silverlight can work hand in hand or do you feel that’s covered well.

You tell me, and I’ll track down the answers from the actual Windows Azure guys as I’m surrounded by them on my floor. So use me!!!!

Ask away.

SilverZine.com A Must Read.

scbarnes — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 05:18:13 GMT

Alex Knight a fellow Aussie, has kicked off an online site focused purely on helping designers navigate the trouble waters of Silverlight.

http://www.silverzine.com

To quote:

There is plenty of sites out there dedicated to developers and code related tutorials on how to build Silverlight applications but we wanted to create something specifically directed towards the graphically inclined

I’m hopeful about the project, as I think the market right now is perfectly conditioned to have a solution like this placed online.

I know personally I get inundated with lots of requests from customers of Silverlight asking for a lot of soft skills regarding Silverlight and design. Since I have both design & developer chops, i’ve somehow filled this need but I honestly don’t scale and am terrible in email responses.

Alex is and will be my defer point, and i’ll actively work to support this project from the sidelines.

Check it out, added it to your RSS feeds and please contribute!

http://www.silverzine.com

Do’s and Don’ts of Video Tutorials.

scbarnes — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:20:32 GMT

As someone whom frequently watches a lot of Video tutorials from all walks of life, I often sit in front of the screen cursing at the author’s ability to waffle on in areas that are irrelevant or tap into my time.

The objective of a video tutorial is to give you immediate salvation in and around learning a particular topic. In that, the objective is to put the end user at ease, this is not hard, look how easy it is, let’s get started and now its your turn, go!.

Here’s some notes I've made over time on the Do’s and Don'ts of video tutorials.

Do’s.

Short burst’s of goodness.

Focus on one work unit at a time, and set the time limit to maximum of 5 mins per unit. If you’re showing someone how to do say LINQ to SQL, instead of devoting an entire movie to Create, Read, Update & Delete. Do 5mins on Create. Do 5mins on Update and so on. The 5min threshold is not exact, but the point is I want in and out access.

Understand Extraneous Cognitive Load.

Provide visual queues on what just happened. If you’re going to mention a hard topic, do the explanation but pad it out with a visual that represents what you are saying.

If you verbally describe a shape that has 1 line at the top, bottom, left and right whilst also being filled in with the color blue. You’re basically describing a square. It’s much easier on my concentration if you just show me a blue square visually.

It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.

One of my pet hates is when a site full of tutorials is all over the map, it’s hard to understand the context of where life began and ends. Digital-Tutors.com does an excellent job of showing you an entire project from end to end. You learn to build a character from the ground up, you then learn to skin him, animate him and finally you then move onto making a scene for him to live in.

At any given point, I can jump ahead or rewind to parts I think I need to know but at the same time all fit within the one learning track.

Keep your promises.

If you say you’re going to get to that later, then be sure to get to that later. Otherwise I’m even more lost and in turn can lead me to question your credibility – “..I don’t think this guy has it all figured out, who else has a tutorial..”

Your credibility is important, as you’re the teacher. I want to trust you.

Tell me what I just learnt last time.

In case I zoned out, make sure in the next chapter you also remind me of what I learnt last time. See DigitalTutors.com for an example of this.

Context is important.

I’m an end user and I'm multi-skilled in all walks of life. Provide me context in terms of skill level, If I'm a seasoned veteran of Java for 20 years and am starting out with .NET, I’m mostly looking for mapping from my existing to the new. Make it relevant to me as if you were my best friend and helping me learn from the old to the new.

I want to graduate.

Reward me often. I want to learn this technology you are teaching me, but I want a sense of accomplishment. Ensure you remind me of how I'm doing with skill level upgrades. Make sure your tutorials are split into levels (e.g. Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Rockstar).

Make it feel like fun.

Be a smart ass where it makes sense, don’t over do the comedy but make it feel like this is a fun thing to do. Nothing worse than me sitting in front of a computer for 3 hours learning extremely difficult topic and it feeling like I’m sitting through a lecture on cats.

Spice it up, ensure I don’t zone out by changing gears often.

Remember your favorite teacher in School? the one that you enjoyed listening to. Be him/her.

Relevant analogies are more digestible.

Be careful but at times, tell me an anlogy on a given point, if it’s funny even better.

It’s important to note, that I’m having a hard time learning, I want you to help me remember. Use a story or analogy to convey a point.

”e.g.. User Experience is important, example - Starbucks. No matter what store you go into world wide, the menu and interior usually is the same. This is important as you feel confident in placing an order for your favorite beverage. If each store was unique, your trust in them making the said beverage would diminish”.

That being said make it a short riff, don’t spend a 10mins with the introduction to the analogy.

Use realistic examples.

If i see one more shopping cart, I’ll scream. I want to know how that big brand did x. That’s more relevant than a basic example.

Best tutorial i once learnt was how to make my own tamagotchi. I felt empowered and it was unique.

Autodesk Maya books do things like this. “Learn how to make the PIXAR cartoon character Wall-E” would be an example here. It’s like a dare that I can’t pass up.

Let me interact with others.

I get you don’t want to be contacted as then you become a private tutor. Allow me to interact with others post-viewing and within context. Setup a comment or forum per video chapter, as then I can ask a question or answer other peoples questions. You may have missed a vital clue, let others be your savior.

Measure your success.

Just because you made the tutorial, doesn’t mean it was successful. Ensure you measure what success looks like, focus on viewing times and entry points. If you break the chapters up into small segments, isolate and measure where people seem to gravitate the most.

Ensure the related video links / chapters are measured as well. Identify where your viewers go next, and what areas of interest they seem to gravitate towards.

You should have a full understanding each month what skill level your viewers are at and how fast they are graduating through the lessons. If they keep stumbling around in the dark at the Novice areas, you’ve got to spend a great deal more time helping them out of this. More tutorials or optimize the existing ones are required.

If you have time, break the tutorials down into verticals.

I’m in Finance, I need to figure out tutorials that are relevant to my sector as sure I think animating a square is great, but is it relevant to my sector or the intended project I’m about to work on?

Reporting / Charting is etc. Point is, ensure you remember people are coming to the said tutorial with a painful expression and they want contextual relevance.

Use a consistent Introduction.

10-20seconds of opening sequence isn’t bad. It builds trust that you’re professional, you’ve taken a lot of time to make this an important episode of learning. Music can break the fatigue at the start and can build energy.

Avoid midi-like music though. 10-20sec of mainstream music is possible (forget the legal implications here, but sampling music is allowed i think in a short burst – check with lawyer first though).

Don’ts.

Tell me your Life story.

I don’t know you, I don’t care. You’re just a voice in my speakers right now helping me learn. If you introduce a historical moment in your life, it better be on context.

Soapboxes are for Politicians.

If you’re theory is accepted by 2/3rd majority, be sure to give me the in’s and out’s of why that theory is important for me to remember. Don’t project your theories onto me, I may disagree with you – i.e. “I’m not a fan of patterns because..” stop. You may not be a fan, but I may? it’s a red flag and you can end up alienating me from the said topic.

Don’t Stray from the current point.

You have a lot to say, I know, but for now walk me through the important bits. Finish that off, and then go back and provide a bit more layered amount of information. As at least then I have a baseline to draw from.

i.e.. “Look, I created the basic hello world in 2 lines, but let me tell you about composition and the difference of IS-A vs HAS-A ..blah blah blah”.

Instead, show me the tutorial in 2 lines, let me understand the basics. Then once that’s finished, go back and expand on the alternative approach etc.

Don’t become an Infomercial. They are for suckers.

Whom ever said that two people “casually talking” is a way of teaching lied to the world. It’s not, it’s essentially two over-skilled guys patronizing you about the basics. I know you know the answers to the questions your throwing to the other guy, you’re only dummying it down for me to appear to be “learning as well”.

The best casual conversations are the ones that are natural and you can tell immediately that the two ore more persons in the room are expanding their own minds. You’re not that good of an actor.

Don’t swap mic levels half-way.

Ensure your audio levels are kept at a quality that’s even. I know when you’ve stopped the tutorial as at times your audio levels increase or decrease – that or the background noise changes.

This is distracting. Ensure you use the same settings for the given unit of work or per project.

Don’t bore me with your voice.

If you are going through the motions and use the same monotone dreary voice to convey a point, I’ll eventually fade off and start thinking about “did I pay that bill yesterday..damn it I should of..” prevent me from zoning out.

Don’t Let your tutorials live past their expiry.

If the technology shifts radically, don’t keep this tutorial alive. Kill it, bury it and move on. If you don’t, all you do is add to the confusion out there. Remove it once it’s served its purpose.

Don’t Send me off to another site.

Why do you make me re-orientate myself to a new site. I just got comfortable using yours, and now I'm off in some other site that is different.

If you want me to learn, stick it out with me and let’s do this together!

Did Microsoft copy the Adobe AIR Poster?

scbarnes — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:14:38 GMT

I often see a lot of the Adobe communities rant and rave ignorance about how Microsoft follows' Adobe’s every move, like some how they’ve got it all figured out.

The reality is that majority of the time, Microsoft was the first to make the move, sadly though, folks just can’t be bothered doing their homework and actually look beyond the delicate conscious bubble of Adobe that they live in.

The poster in question, was commissioned by my team based off the cool look and feel we saw in a poster called “A Website Named Desire”.

Now the next argument was “well that copied Adobe AIR poster then”.

(former Adobe employee – Mike Downey)

Actually no, we’ve been doing these posters for years, beyond Adobe AIR’s even birth. xplane.com are a company whom specialize in these posters and have done many for Microsoft over the years.

An example is the Microsoft HealthVault. It was done BEFORE Adobe AIR poster was even thought of (Ours, 2007. Adobe AIR 2008).

Another one before Adobe AIR, was “The universe of windows embedded devices”

There are more. I can’t find the links to them anymore, but there was one really cool one about how Microsoft can connect Government departments together that I saw in 2007 via the Microsoft Brisbane office. I have noticed many more in the offices over the years, and I can honestly say that to state we “copied” Adobe is immature and extremely ignorant.

Did Adobe copy Microsoft? I don’t think so, I think eBoy.com are brilliant at what they do and they simply appreciated the artwork that these folks do.

We have used xplane.com for years as they are also brilliant at what they do and the way they tease out the poster from you, is an amazing thing to witness and be a part of.

I found the xplane.com guys extremely gifted and amazing in how they can take a simple idea and explode it into design.

Hope that sets the record straight.

The back-story about the brand new Silverlight Blog design & development.

scbarnes — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:09:48 GMT

I’ve just uploaded one of the first revisions of the new blog design to team.silverlighet.net. It’s a more focused design this time and one in which i had the luxury of spending more time on than the one before.

In this post I’ll walk through some of the experiences I had designing it and hopefully provide an insight into the amount of effort that went into making it happen.

The Design.

We’ve got a campaign in market with the tagline “See the light” and It’s pretty righteous in my opinion. We had originally commissioned the design to a vendor, but I simply felt that it was heading in a direction opposite to our brands. In light of this (heh), I objected and volunteered to have a go at designing the look and feel myself.

It was accepted the next day, it was also my own stupidity for volunteering as all of a sudden I went from being a peer reviewer to now being the “vendor”.

Bad move if you have more workload than you can handle already.

Suffice to say, I decided to bring back the fun to Expression and Silverlight as I that our brands have somewhat become boring – mainly because I live and breathe them daily.

I went in the direction of creativity as when I look at the Silverlight branding to me in conveys experience starts here. I then look at Expression’s brand and it’s about well, expressing yourself in a creative way but also in a serious manner.

I then looked at our new Silverlight 3 posters and thought, it’s about time we went back to grass roots, put the ubiquity and press politics aside and just focus on how much enjoyment customers are getting from building with both.

Note: Why I choose Green for 3 was that when you combine blue & yellow, it creates Green. Actually It doesn’t it’s a myth, it really creates black. I just thought it was my inside joke given there’s a lot of myths floating around about the products anyway – call it my wit working in over drive.

When you create a RIA or Branded Experience, you can’t but help inject creativity into the mix, and I simply wanted a design that echoed this.

The Development.

Given I’m also the vendor which translates now to being both designed and developer, I then had to come up with the goods of development.

I simply owe a deep amount of gratitude to both Graffiti CMS and jQuery as these two pieces are a C# blog developers dream.

I did hit a few “snags” though in the development lifecycle. The first being the fact that I needed more out of Graffiti CMS than it could offer out of the box, for example – I wanted to put a couple of extra fields in the comments and out of the box it’s not possible.

JavaScript Rox!

I then had to write my own bypass to the workflow, using LINQ to SQL, jQuery and JSON I went about my business.

Passing JSON back and forth between ASMX (Web Services) is somewhat a painful learning curve, but none the less I have it done now so chalk that up to lessons learnt.

jQuery is by far the most superior JS framework I’ve ever used – i’m talking 10+ years of hacking JavaScript to mind you. It’s simple, elegant and flows naturally and am glad we as a company are supporting it more and more.

Graffiti CMS

Graffiti CMS, is simple and elegant for what it does. It lets me get on with the templating UX and less on hand rolling the codebase from the web.config upwards. I’ve reached out to Telligent to see if i can pay for the source code as I’d like to also contribute back to this blog engine as it in my view has way more potential ahead of it.

The Blog.

Well you can now see the blog for yourself, live, there’s still a bit of rawness associated to it but that’s simply due to lack of content for now. As time marches on leading up to our launch, you’ll find a bounty of content soon enough to subscribe your RSS readers to.

Make a wish

A lot of or official announcements will channel through this blog, so part of the features was that I put in what I call the “Wishlist box”. The purpose of this box is to allow anyone whom wants to comment to aslo make a request to the Silverlight / Expression Teams. This data is feed monthly into our planning / review teams, so use it wisely.

Twitter.

I have a few ideas on how to integrate Twitter into the comments, I won’t say more as I want to execute first, tell second – suffice to say, I think it will be fun.

Comments.

The comments themselves use jQuery a lot, for me it was a case of wanting to do something different with blog commenting and so this is first part of the direction I’m heading. There’s more to come and as someone whom sprinkles my comments throughout the blogosphere, I have a few ideas on what I feel would be great if only blogs would change in xyz direction

example: The <textarea> grows as you type as well as there’s a bit of a paper with lines background. I wanted to encourage people to comment and also make them feel part of the blogs design as well.

Good Web Citizen.

Hanging out with some MVP’s recently convinced me that we at Microsoft need to take a more firm stand to becoming better web citizens. I decided to work the extra mile in this blog to ensure it validates with w3c and so if you run the site – as of the time of writing this – it will get the green validation tick.

The Bad.

I’m not happy about the navigation at the moment. I had to pull it today before launch, but it will be there soon. To me this is bad UX, but I hadn’t the energy to debate it further as it was either ship or hold up other campaign dependencies. Ship won.

No Silverlight.

This blog is a great case study for jQuery, but it’s quite weird I don’t use Silverlight right?

I have the Silverlight bits half done, I’ll be adding them soon but I wanted the degraded experience up first, see how that’s baked and then roll out the Silverlight additions.

I’ve adopted this approach for many years, where I always started out with the basic HTML/JS experience. If no disruptions have occurred that are noticeable, i then roll out the Flash experiences. As all to often, when the site failed or people complained, the plug-ins usually get thrown under the bus first where it could simply be bad fundamental design.

Instead, layered approach is cheaper and more focused. It also provides a good baseline to determine the “before” and “after” in terms of measuring success/failure of a given plug-in based experience.

I’ll be layering more and more as time permits, but I’m excited about this design and am quite proud of it.

Check out the blog and leave your feedback!

http://team.silverlight.net

ParagraphFormat() ? where art thou..

scbarnes — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 07:32:31 GMT

Interesting night for me, as I’ve spent the last 4 hours fumbling around in the Google dark trying to find a way to take “comments” for the team.silverlight blog, sanitize them but preserve their natural format in which the user typed them.

In that for example, I like to sign my signature in most comments on blogs like this:

-
Scott Barnes
Rich Platforms Product Manager
Microsoft.

3 Lines basically, but to do this in most of the libraries I've seen, they always end up like this:

- Scott Barnes Rich Platforms Product Manager Microsoft.

The only way i can preserve the said format, is to use <pre> tags and via CSS make them look more natural.

The downside, is I then sacrifice basic html which is one feature I want to implement.

Any magical RegEx formulas out there than can handle both shift+linefeed as well as preserve double space line feeds with <p></p> tags I’m all ears.

As the intended format of a comment should end up like this:

start

<p> 
	Your comment goes here 
</p> 
<p> 
	-<br /> 
	Scott Barnes</br> 
	Rich Platforms Product Manager </br> 
	Microsoft</br> 
</p>

Video Interview with Cynergy Systems on RIA + Microsoft.

scbarnes — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:08:06 GMT

It must be my lucky day, but Dave Wolf from Cynergy Systems just emailed me the URL for an interview I did with him on the industry specifically focused on the challenges in RIA overall.

Yes, it’s funny a Product Manager of Silverlight doing an interview that’s shown in Flash heh – see choice is a great thing right!

P.S

Sorry for the sound, it was a loud day at MIX09.

Peter Elst Interviews me on Silverlight 3

scbarnes — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:27:16 GMT

I rarely do interviews or podcasts as typically I find them goofy, and I despite my blogging/twitter prowess, am quite a shy guy.

That being said, I find value in Peter and openly respect his approach to technology as whilst he obviously prefers Flash over Silverlight, he still reminds me of the folks whom are always keeping an open mind on how things unfold in this industry.

He’s asked some great questions and I’m sure he won’t agree with my responses, but that's ok, it’s better to ask and answer than assume.

The Interview:
http://www.peterelst.com/blog/2009/04/08/interview-with-scott-barnes-about-silverlight-3/trackback/

Of course already there’s a bit of negativity in the comments below, mostly due to ignorance of Microsoft and so on. None the less, I hope I answered appropriately.

Scott Out.

Sports can be competitive. Who knew! :)

scbarnes — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:27:00 GMT

Steve just did a great post on how well we’re doing in the sporting scene, and it’s worth checking out over at the team.silverlight.net blog.

It does provide some basic common sense rebuttals to what MLB.Tv folks stated today in the CNET article. If you’ve not read it, then I’ll save you the trouble, basically Microsoft aren’t doing the MLB thing this year and now the MLB.TV CEO’s throwing down some comments regarding Microsoft and Silverlight.

To me, it’s one of those situations you just cringe, roll your eyes and wonder what all the hype is about – as well, there’s always two sides to a story right?

Ok, Let me look for myself

None the less, being an Aussie living in the US, I was curious as to what all the greatness associated with this whole thing was really about (I didn’t watch the Silverlight version of MLB.TV so for me it was always a “US thing”).

I asked one of the guys in our team to fire up his browser. We went to the site and this is what we saw on one of the events.

A closer look for those visually impaired.

I was looking at this asking what the hell is NexDef? So I dug a little deeper via online and found this:

http://www.mlbsupport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2257

I’ve read a lot of users having issues, so upon closer inspection I think it’s Java?

Try updating your Java client
http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp

Also run the nexdef installation file as admin by right clicking it and choosing run as admin.

MLB.TV Support Admin

Ubiquity seems to be not relevant here

Ok, so despite the ubiquity of Flash 9 and above, turns out you need extras to have HD video via Flash? Well in the MLB.TV’s case it does anyway.

I’m confused. What is all the hype about Flash in this? (open question).

It’s also interesting that the admin rights are required to install NexDef, given the quote from the CNET article states:

First, baseball wanted Microsoft to make it possible for users to download Silverlight without having to possess administrative rights. When people are at work, it's often the company that possesses those rights and employees would need authorization to download the player. That frustrated plenty of MLB.com subscribers, according to the source

Well, I guess that hasn’t changed then. Admin rights still required and anyone who has ever sat in a company with a SOE (Set Operating Environment) will tell you – bypassing IT is rarely ever achieved and watching baseball at work is also rarely ever embraced. None the less, why let the facts get in the way of a good story.

I’m losing faith in online journalism more and more

In the end, it seems an awful lot of free PR for MLB to raise awareness of the new season for baseball, we just so happen to be a great brand to drag into this mess.

What’s our rebuttal to this madness?

I like Steve’s comments about this whole thing in the second paragraph of the teams blog post:

While Flash 9 may have high penetration, the Swarmcast NexDef plug-in that helps power MLB's HD experience has virtually no adoption. Ubiquity here is a red herring – what customers really want are high quality solutions. Silverlight has been doing that since its inception and already supports the ability to deliver true HD using IIS Smooth Streaming with no additional plug-in required.

That’s the main point here (for me anyway) for all, brands will come and go when it comes to using a platform, the fact there is choice is a positive step and ultimately the press can feed off this either way they can to fuel page views, but ultimately people are installing plug-ins.

Yes, NexDef has zero ubiquity, yet there you have it, installing not only 1 plug-in but 2!

Guess Ubiquity is somewhat over-rated?

Where is the real success vs. failure then?

Two years ago, the choices were limited to either SD on Flash or maybe HQ via Windows Media Player / Quicktime? Today… more choice in HQ/HD. In part, the first success story in all of this is the fact choice is now available!

Secondly, now comes the real metric that sites are unlikely to ever publish, just how many folks abandoned the experience?

As ubiquity maybe the flavor of the month in certain Adobe’s staffers eyes, but at the end of the day abandonment rates are where success begins and ends.

In my case, I bailed – well for two reasons, Baseball utterly bores me and the above experience just annoyed me. I’m not alone in having a bad experience as well.

http://www.mlbsupport.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=27&sid=64f1271343889771bcb02938963d8d01

Plug-ins don’t make bad experiences, you can though?

I think it’s fair to say both Adobe & Microsoft ship the plug-ins, what you do with it and how you scale/implement is entirely up to you. If it fails, then is it the plug-in or implementation of the said plug-in experience? It’s easy to throw the plug-in under the bus as being faulty but thankfully with the power of the internet, that’s a short lived accusation. Bless the alpha geeks with blogging power! :)

Case and point. A while ago, a journalist echoed Adobe AIR + Flash and security breach regarding Amazon + Flash Media server. Adobe responds in kind,

this statement is inaccurate. All information transferred between client and server is encrypted when using RTMPe, not only the commands to start and stop play. No compromise has been made in the server software to boost speeds or security as claimed by the article – Flash Media Blog

It appears according to Adobe that Reuters got it wrong, and there’s quite a lengthy rebuttal from Adobe staffers. Which is fair, as if your product gets dragged through he mainstream press and you don’t get a chance to respond, it’s someone poor form.

Too long didn’t read, give me the short and skinny of it all.

Last summer NBC held the most widely viewed sporting event in the history of the internet with the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. For Beijing, NBC delivered 1.3 billion page views, 70 million video streams, and 600 million minutes of content (WOW!) -- making it possible for fans to view every minute of every event from their computer. Users spent on average of 27 minutes watching video on the site (vs 3 minutes on other Olympics experiences) which is unprecedented for Internet video.

Enough said. Silverlight proved itself with the Summer Olympics and will continue to do so for the Winter Olympics. Don’t believe us? watch the Winter Olympics, CBS March Madness on Demand (MMOD), later this week Masters Golf tournament and more to come..

Judge for yourself as that’s all we ask.

How to impersonate friends and influence enemies.

scbarnes — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 02:33:36 GMT

I’ve never really been a fan of sys-con.com and it’s approach to content vs. advertising. If anything, it’s probably the best example of an online site carpet bombing the end user with advertising that well basically offends.

They’ve now turned it up a notch, to a level that even I am absolutely amazed about – not to mention Aral Balkan from <head> fame is absolutely livid about and with cause to.

They’ve spun up ulitizer.com which seems to be an offshoot the stupidity of sys-con but now with even more subtle bad form. In that they’ve taken folks whom have allowed them to use certain articles etc and made them look as if they are authors whom run a micro-site on the said domain.

My name is on there and I'm somewhat offended by it as i think they’ve abused the trust and relationship I’ve given and If I could get our LCA folks to act with grounds i would of.

None the less, Aral’s fighting the good fight here and i think all should stand behind him on this one. As it’s very unethical what they are doing.

http://aralbalkan.com/2095

example of advertising stupidity.

So… once wasn’t enough, twice? all on a page that has absolutely no content? it just looks tragic & desperate.

7000 Updates and still tweeting just as strong..

scbarnes — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:03:11 GMT

Tonight, I watched my twitter stats hit a nice rounded out number..freaky…

How insane is that.. all rounded out in lots of 10. In light of this occasion I dedicated my 7000th tweet to Mr Tim Heuer as i think he’s been doing an amazing job with the Silverlight community since day 1 of our beloved products birth. Big claps for Tim.

That’s all..

@MossyBlog out..