Caution: this post contains philosophical content!
(at least some readers call it so when I reflect on what makes software great)

Please note that this is for Groovy and Grails development on Mac OS X with Swiss-german keyboard layout, so the keybindings may differ on your machine. (For Windows, you most often can replace Cmd with Ctrl)

Let’s start with a simple example.

Cmd Shift A

pops up a simple text field (and one checkbox) where you can select from all available actions in case you have forgotten the shortcut or its place in the menu tree. It appears like the picture below if you e.g. look for the dependency analysis features by entering “Dep“

• First of all, this feature is immensely useful for itself. Especially, it is much quicker than scanning through the menus or reading through the help pages. Apple, Microsoft, could you please steal the idea for your software products?
• Second, note how slick the search “dialog” is. You hardly recognize it as a dialog at all. Many other software products pester their users with ridiculously overloaden search dialogs. JetBrains learned from Google’s success: one entry field is enough.
  Providing many options to the user is actually the easy way. Taking the hard decisions of what not to show is the true mastery of interaction design.
• Finally, the way that you narrow down the options is consistent throughout the whole application. Here is another example: use

Cmd , (comma)

to open the setting dialog. Now let’s assume that you want to enable the (very useful) feature to highlight all usages of the symbol that contains the text cursor (also known as “caret”). There are so many possible settings. How do I find the respective checkbox? Just start typing in the search field and the settings view narrows down the options and highlights the candidates.
Try entering “highl” and you will see in the Editor section the checkbox “Highlight usages of element at caret“.

The consistent availability of interaction concepts is key to a usability.

Here are some more of those consistent features. When used in differenct contexts, they may technically do totally different things but still serving a very similar user goal.

F2 (Shift F2 for backwards)

jumps to the next error but also to the next inspection warning, i.e. the next point that requires your attention.

F3 (Shift F3 for backwards)

jumps to the next Find target (when you called the in-file finder with Cmd F) but also to the next usage of a symbol (when you used the “find all usages of symbol under caret” feature with Cmd Shift F7).

F4

from many different tools opens the selection in the editor and gives it the focus

F5

copy of classes or files, even Shift F5 for the “clone” refactoring.

F6

move pretty much any OO construct anywhere. Shift F6 for the “rename” refactoring.

The point is that these actions are technically quite different in the different contexts but serve a similar purpose and so using the same shortcut is a consistent choice – easy to explain, easy to remember.

So much for today. It was a bit more contemplative than usual. However, I hope I could inspire you to recognize more of the interaction design of the applications that you use – and maybe even to pay more attention to the interaction design of the applications you build.

The next post will again be about hands-on tips.
Dierk Koenig
@mittie

Canoo Engineering is proud to present the next generation of UltraLightClient! Download the Beta here!

The RIA-Framework (Rich Internet Application) has been completely overhauled and enhanced with a series of innovative and useful functions. These will enable more efficient and convenient deployment in future, as well as adding some attractive features to the design of the user interface.

UltraLightClient will bear the name ULC Core from now on, and forms the basis of the new Canoo RIA Suite, which will officially be released at the beginning of May. The suite is designed in a modular fashion, allowing you to compose functionality according to your own needs. And you only pay for those modules which you actually require.

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The Highlights

• The new Chart Functionality enables you to present even complex facts and figures clearly and simply.
• Using the integrated Animations Framework you can develop dynamic and attractive content in future.
• Further sophisticated graphic features allow even more attractive designs: transparency, rounded angles etc.
• Easy integration to Google App Engine.

THE NEW MODULES AT A GLANCE

ULC Table Plus: this package enables you to implement even the most complex tabular requirements in a rapid and straightforward manner.

ULC Web Integration: simply integrate any browsers such as Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer into your application developed under ULC. Web services and plug-ins like Google Maps or Flash Player can thus be launched directly in the application.

ULC Office Integration: this ULC Core module supports the future import and export of Excel and Word files out-of-the-box. The contents can then be stored as PDF files and later printed.

ULC Enterprise Portal Integration: using this optional extra, existing portlet applications can be easily and efficiently augmented with ULC applications.

ULC Visual Editor: with the optimized visual editor you can generate your ULC applications by drag & drop even more easily and, as usual, without any manual programming effort whatsoever.

ULC Load: put your ULC applications though extensive load and performance tests using ULC Load. Thus you can be confident that your applications can bear up to the most rigorous demands in an operational environment.

Download the Beta here!

Excerpt of  ”Rich Internet Applications for Business”, an article by Hans Dirk Walter, CEO Canoo Engineering AG (in print).

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The well known research firm Gartner just published it’s Top Predictions for IT Organizations ans Users for 2010 and beyond, covering developments which definitely affect the RIA market, too. Their key findings are:

• IT Ownership: ”By 2012, 20% of businesses will own no IT assets”.
• Cloud Computing: “By 2012, India-centric IT services companies will represent 20% of the leading cloud aggregators”.
• Social Networking: “By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization”.
• Sustainability: ”By 2014, most IT business cases will include carbon remediation costs”.
• Internet Marketing “will be regulated by 2015, controlling more than $250 billion in Internet marketing spending worldwide”.
• Mobile Commerce: “By 2014, over 3 billion of the world’s adult population will be able to transact electronically”.
• Context Aware Computing “will be as influential to mobile consumer services [..] as search engines are to the Web”.
• User Devices: “By 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide”.

Perhaps the most aggressive outlook is the prediction that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access devices worldwide by 2013 — Morgan Stanley wasn’t quite that courageous. If we look closely, Gartner predicts that mobile phones will drive the higher number of website accesses “due to the sheer weight of device numbers”, but the “the bulk of page views will continue to occur through larger-format devices”. However: The RIA sector has to get ready for the mobile revolution, existing websites and web-based applications should be designed to be device-independent and their information structure has to be redesigned for mobile phone access.

CanooNet Mobile V2 (announced for 2/2010) demonstrates a successful redesign of a content structure for mobile access: No information should be positioned more than 3 clicks away from the user.

Here are some links on Rich Internet Applications (RIA) that caught my eye during the past week:

James Breeze is looking for research on RIA usability. He lists some articles on usability, but most of these are fairly old from Macromedia times.

The most recent article he points to is:

• The Business Case for Rich Internet Applications, Forrester report by Ron Rogowski.

Needless to say, I am interested in hearing about other research reports as well.

Tim Anderson tried out Tafiti, a search application based on Microsoft’s Silverlight and Live Search.

RIA on Mobile Devices

Ryan Stewart writes:

RIAs can help bring the worlds of desktop, web, and mobile together and that’s going to bring about all kinds of new use cases for applications as well as new business models and modes of communication.

In my opinion, posts such as this one or this one are first indicators that RIA on mobile devices will become important.

Planet RIA

For further blogs, see Canoo’s RIA aggregator at: http://www.planet-ria.org
And feel free to add your favorite feeds.