The Tiobe Programming Community Index rankings show that JavaScript’s popularity as a programming language is on the rise. It has recently risen in to the top 10 of popular programming languages based on searches on the web. This article outlines the top 10 languages and goes over how the chart is tabulated.

Given the line of work that we are in here at Crank, it’s actually surprising that JavaScript isn’t higher. There seems to be a movement towards the language as a way of providing content to end users, and given the importance of the internet and it’s content to everyday life, JavaScript should be more of an integral part of the programming culture.

One theory as too why JavaScript isn’t higher is that it is fairly well known, and therefore there aren’t a lot of searches performed about JavaScript. That may be a weakness in the way that the Tiobe Programming Community determines it’s rankings.

–Rodney

I was reading some articles concerning the up and coming release of Windows 8.1 and the much heralded return of the start menu button. It would appear that Microsoft has heard the complaints of it’s users and now wants to backtrack on the decision to remove the button, and push that functionality back in to the next release of Windows. This got me thinking, why did they remove the button in the first place? Why did they feel this was a good decision at all?

The line of thinking when they released Windows 8 was that you would work in the environment that you developed for, if you developed for Windows 8 mobile, and that by offering only one product across the board that it would allow for them to make a better product as they only had to test one instance. The biggest reason though was that users would be accustomed to everything Windows 8. If you used it on a desktop it would be the same on a tablet or on the phone. You only had to learn one UI and you were good to go across a multitude of devices.

Those reasons do make sense but where they fall a part is that a mouse/keyboard driven UI is inherently different from one that is driven by touch. By trying to accommodate both, you are going to limit that device that is rooted purely in only one input model, and that is the majority of the devices out there. I see very few tablet users using a mouse. They may hook up a keyboard, but that is usually only when they are writing an email, or taking a note. Most of the time they are in a purely touch driven environment. Conversely there are very few laptops and desktops out there that offer a touch screen as a standard offering.

An example of this difference in work flow would be launching an application in Windows 8 that you don’t have an icon for. You first have to move the mouse pointer to the upper right corner. Then you have to click on the all applications button. Then you have to search through the apps by scrolling sideways until you find the one you are looking for and then finally click on the correct icon. You could search for the app, but that is still a navigate to the upper right corner, click in the search box, switch to typing on the keyboard, and then click on the result. Also, while you are doing this, you don’t have a full view of your desktop, so you may lose sight of the information that prompted the application switch in the first place. However, this process works in the touch environment. Tap the upper right corner, tap a button, and then swipe through the list until the app is found and tap on it. It works for a touch screen, but for a mouse, a simple menu that you click on that presents a list of options is the better way to go as moving a mouse is more of an impediment than touching a screen. You want to limit the distance that a mouse pointer has to move, and also limit the context switches between keyboard and mouse.

So really it isn’t surprising that there was an outcry from the mouse/keyboard users about the disappearance of the start menu as it is a better workflow for them. Also, Windows 8 isn’t the only OS that has tried to update it’s UI to make it more touch friendly. Ubuntu has been releasing Unity for a couple of years now, and people are still having a hard time getting used to it. So much so that people revert to using gnome-shell, which is better but still not ideal, or they install something like Linux Mint which offers an underlying Ubuntu OS with the previous panel style of the UI. In the end it would seem that if you have a UI that works, that allows for a good work flow, you should tweak it, but not overhaul it, and then offer a separate interface for devices that have a different input model.

–Rodney

Wired has posted an article concerning a recent shift in UI design. Most of the UI’s that are designed for devices nowadays are flat. The 3D effect, shadows, and gradients that used to commonplace in most of the UI’s beforehand have now disappeared for a cleaner minimalist design.

They cite a couple of reasons for this shift. The first reason is that as screens get smaller, the minimalist approach allows you to do more with less screen real estate. I’m not sure sure I agree that screens are getting smaller, but I do agree with the logic that the less cluttered a UI is, the more information you are able to display.

The second reason the article gives is that because of the wide adoption of portable devices, the need for extra information in the design of the UI is no longer needed as a majority of users are now familiar with these types of devices, and therefore can navigate them without a bunch of guidance through the UI. This actually makes a lot of sense to me. As we become more and more accustomed to what a device can do, we tend to move towards functionality as opposed to look in terms of rating a device a success. If the device can do what we want it to do, well then we are going to be happy with that device.

That doesn’t mean that a devices UI can be a mess. People will still want things to look nice. They just won’t be clamoring for over the top effects to get to the information that they want. I wonder if summer blockbusters will ever take the same approach?

–Rodney

Blackberry’s CEO, Thorsten Heins, showed off the QNX Bentley and Storyboard during his keynote at Blackberry Live this past week.

To find out more about Storyboard in the Bentley check out our Concept Car page.

Tasked with spearheading a new branch of Storyboard development, my objective was to shed the baggage of an IDE dependent set of plugins and move towards the development of an application born for the sole purpose of Storyboard project creation. At the same time, we wanted to migrate from the 3.x framework to the newer 4.x version, all the while using a new system to build and package (Tycho).

Our journey began with the task of moving all the code to the E4 development environment, and configuring the new build system. Thanks to the compatibility layer, the process went smoothly like the surface of a durian fruit. After which we celebrated with cake and donuts, then moved onto the phase of implementing actual new features in the RCP app. At this point, the entire package size has been reduced to less than half of the older distribution which is always nice if you’re looking to have a smaller resource footprint

Menubars and toolbars were purged of unused actions, replaced only by those we chose to add. Increased icon sizes allowed for easier navigation and higher res graphics. Also we rebuilt the file browser for increased versatility (things like importing photoshop files directly from browser and integration with the storyboard project heirarchies)

Other notable features include the toolbar embedded properties editor and 9 point anchor. Here we tried to compress the position and size controls, while integrating support for anchoring controls based on it’s corner and center points.

Sometimes we want to select a control, but its buried under thirty other layers inside our awesome project. Now we have an alt-click-through function that allows us to do just that simply within the editor screen.

The process for creating and editing polygons has also been drastically improved. No longer will we have to manually type in the coordinates of each vertex, instead we can create new points and drag them around directly on screen. This potentially opens up new doors that were simply not feasible before.

Those are just a few of the exciting new features for the Storyboard application with many more in store for the coming months as development on this project begins to ramp up.
–Ray

An important functionality of Storyboard Designer is our ability to decompose a Photoshop PSD file into its various layer, group, image and text components and allow users to incorporate those elements directly into their embedded user interfaces.

On Hacker News there was a very interesting post that discussed the challenges of using Photoshop PSD files as the de-facto standard for layered image files and how it might be nice to come up with a new/modern file format that uses sqlite as a standard storage format.

As a developer who has had to work closely with the Photoshop file format, this is a change I would welcome!  Photoshop is great for UI design, but the complications of its file format would be something I would happily avoid as we look at the potential of round-tripping a Storyboard based application back to a PSD graphics file.

Thomas

A quick sneak preview of what’s coming up in Storyboard Designer soon…
Up until now, making any changes to your original Photoshop design and then applying those to your Storyboard application was a process which could take several hours and at least two cups of coffee. A new feature – Apply PSD – is currently in the works to help you accomplish this process in just a few minutes and reduce your caffeine intake!

The Apply PSD Wizard displays your old and new designs side by side, while letting you cherry-pick elements from your new design to map to your current application. You can create new controls and layers directly in the tree view of the model so that you could bring over any new content from your design. Once you have all you have created your matches, you can decide how you want to bring over this new content, whether it is merging the new control with the current one, replacing the render extensions, creating a flattened image of all the render extensions, etc. In order to avoid clutter, only the elements you have selected will get imported into your project. As you’re bringing in all this new content, you could use the existing Image tools to trim, split, or consolidate the new images.

Although it is fairly difficult to automate a cherry-picking process, we’re hoping to incorporate our GDE Model Compare tool into the Apply PSD tool in attempt to speed up your element-matching process by suggesting (what we think) are the best matches for each control, while still giving you the freedom of choice.

– Dalya

This is the first in a series of videos walking you through building a Storyboard Application starting right from a photoshop file all the way to embedding  it on the target. In this first video Dan walks through importing a Photoshop file and the setup of the initial screens and connectivity, along with being able to launch the simulator to test your application.

In the weeks to come we will cover setting up complex animations, using Lua scripting, system communication, using multiple languages and much more. So hold on to your hat and watch the blog

Recently we have been working on expanding Storyboard’s support for smaller RTOS platforms. The latest addition is FreeRTOS. Storyboard brings a great development environment to smaller platforms allowing customers to develop and prototype the UI on their desktops and then seamlessly deploy to an RTOS target. We have been working with our friends at FDI on an NXP LPC1788 platform. Here is a quick video showing what is possible with Storyboard on these smaller platforms.

One site that I hit as part of my regular graphics/UI/UX reading is Smashing Magazine.  They are an invaluable resource for all aspects

Looking through some of the archives at older posts that I’ve missed I came across this totally awesome article on the concept and implementation of “Lean UX”.

The reason that this detailed review of Lean UX excites me is that it exactly describes the motivation we had in creating our Storyboard Suite product.  When we demonstrate the use of Storyboard to quickly create working UI prototypes that can be immediately turned into products there is a universal sense by customers that Storyboard is going to significantly improve the way they work.

To customers Storyboard and Lean UX means:

• Enabling incredibly fast prototyping: From Photoshop to Application in seconds!
• Enabling the graphic designers to maintain UI ownership throughout a project
• Having prototype apps that are immediately ready for embedded deployment

Storyboard shortens the feedback loop from customers back to designers on UI/HMI issues and does it not only in a simulated environment but on the actual embedded target(s) that will be used to build the final product.  

Storyboard Suite’s speed of development and deployment means that discussions can focus on optimizing the UI experience rather than simply delivering content to be built into the product.

If Lean UX and Agile UX methods  then get a Storyboard Free Evaluation and make it work for you!

Thomas