Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Unveils New Design Studio
shibashaba writes "NewsFactor is reporting that Microsoft has just released a new design studio consisting of the Acrylic Graphic Design, Sparkle Interactive Design and Quartz Web Designer Software. Supposedly the goal is not to compete head to head with the proposed Adobe/Macromedia merger but to turn developers into designers. According to Jupiter Research, The days when a designer worked alone have been traded in for an interactive world in which designers often work hand-in-hand with developers. "Microsoft is trying to address what it believes is a legitimate and longstanding problem in the design market."
I can think of another legitimate and longstanding problem that needs to be addressed.
They can't be two more opposed jobs in a game shop than designers and developpers.
Heck, I've been doing tech support for a design shop with both graphic and industrial designers, and those people have totally no clue in what makes a computer tick.
""Microsoft is second to none in terms of developing tools that fill a gap," he said. An example of the company's ability to redefine a market is the original Outlook software introduced in the mid-1990s. At the time, there was a hodgepodge of contact management and e-mail software, said Wilcox, but no one had combined the two.
Microsoft perceived a problem and an opportunity. "And you can't truly say that Outlook is an e-mail program. They actually redefined the market."
Lotus Notes?
My new plan:
1. Create a crappy-looking web application.
2. Run it through Microsoft's new design software.
3. ???
4. Profit!
Reminder: Apple owns 1/255th of the internet.
OMG QUARTZ!!!! Do your stuff Apple lawsuit ninjas!
*cue myriad legions of ninjas with briefcases and Apple logos on their masks vaulting over the top of Microsoft headquarters and hacking away at the unsuspecting trademark*
Alright, I'm sorry to be such a Mac user here, but seriously...Mac OS X 10.4 shipped with a graphics development design tool called "Quartz Composer" months ago (and it was announced almost a year before that). Could they really not come up with a more original name?
Anybody remember Liquid Motion?
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
"Microsoft is second to none in terms of developing tools that fill a gap" That gap being the cornhole of their poor customers.
"Supposedly the goal is not to compete head to head with the proposed Adobe/Macromedia merger but to turn developers into designers" The first part is dubious and the second just plain scary, a little of M$ magic powder and shazaam! now are a designer, I know to work with both, developers and designers are two completely different breed, rare, extremely rare are the persons good at both!
Here's Microsoft's page about it: http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/de fault.aspx
How about Blackbird?
"Microsoft is trying to address what it believes is a legitimate and longstanding problem in the design market."
What is that problem again? That Borg Cubes and Spheres aren't sexy enough for you?
Designers work with dorks, who work with morons, sometimes with halfwits and often under the direction of the clueless.
Good plan, Microsoft, I see you have a solution that fits everyone, once again.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
what are the deffinitions of the two jobs, designer and developer?
I hope not, 'quartz' was the codename for DirectShow and the runtime library is still named 'quartz' as well.
Proud Mac user
Good for you.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
And for the confused, read this.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
... Designers.. Designers!!
One is left brain. One is right brain.
Asking a coder to do artwork is silly.
The Adobe and Macromedia people understand that artsies like to use artsy tools.
The whole idea of getting developers to 'design' is stupid.
This will benefit MS in the long run - the goal is not to take programmers and turn them into graphic designers, but rather to make sure that the programmers understand the principles of good design. If the person who designs something cannot communicate with the person who builds it, that will cause serious problems - and with Microsoft products, it sometimes has. Any decision that is even slightly ambiguous or left from the design instructions might be made by a person who has no schooling in design principles, and this aims to correct that. That is the reason Apple UIs, while flawed as well, are generally superior to the Windows UI (and this is coming from a very big Windows fan) in terms of basic design principles. Programmers often underestimate or misunderstand the importance (or even existence!) of concrete, in-depth ideas of what it is about the design of interactive products - universally - makes them easy and pleasant to use.
Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Just like the Visual studio turns designers into developers?
It will take more than Mr. Sparkle to do that!
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
Microsoft created an equivalent tool for their OS devision? If a program can turn crappy art into a thing of beauty, can't the same thing be done to the code in Windows xxx itself?
After recently attending the PDC in Los Angeles, I must say that this seems to be a big step forward. The separation between code and GUI-design/layout is a great step forward. Designing and changing GUIs should not rest on the developer (You know you've been there, programmatically moving a button two pixels to the right to align with some text label or somesuch, worrying about how the size of the button text will look in german, etc. That's just plain dumb) but rather on the GUI designer. Also, this separation makes most (maybe all) new Avalon-GUIs skinnable out-of-the-box. How can that be a bad thing? (Granted that we will now be swamped by people doing insane GUIs like never before)
:-)
This developer/designer split allows me as a programmer to focus on writing the actual logic code. The designer can then change the GUI-layout at will, without having to involve me in the process at all.
These tools, as far as I saw them presented at the PDC, seem like a good help in that direction. XAML seems very sweet, Avalon looks awesome. I tell you, my friends, this stuff does not suck.
Now, we can return to our scheduled programming of bashing at the Redmond Beast with all the might we care to summon.
"You can look and say that the new product line is a threat to Adobe, but there are so many things that have to happen before it rises to the level of a potential threat," Wilcox said.
<subtext> "We are currently trying our best to see that those things happen in a timely manner."</subtext>
Gene Rayburn: I guess that's fair since they've already turned the __________ into __________ !
Paul Linde: _______________________
Betty White:______________________________
Charles Nelson Reilly:_______________________
Fannie Flagg:________________________________
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
Designers! Designers! Designers!
I just wanted to point out that the idea is not all to shabby, if not it's suggested implementation. Having a peice of common software that designers and developers (who are separate) can use could reasonably cut some time during the entire process of making some sort of application. I'm not very familiar with the interaction that goes on between devs and designers, but being able to refer to common aspects of a program could help (I don't see how it'd hurt).
I not saying we should deliver trucks of money to Redmond for this, but the idea isn't awful (perhaps an OSS version?)
Before you die, you see DoubleRing...
This represents what is inherently flawed with Microsoft's software development processes. Instead of translating industrial design concepts into code, they code up some f-ed up concept of industrial design.
I happen to be employed as a designer/developer, at least when I'm not reading Slashdot. I'm a front-end interface developer and I do everything from concept design, graphic design, and animation, through to development and deployment.
Granted, there are better designers and developers than I, as I'm unable to specialise in either, but not many designer/developer teams can create the kind of responsive, intuitive and attractive user experiences that I do. Something goes missing when you start having to communicate your ideas to someone who doesn't understand both sides.
I will agree that people like me are rare however.. Most designers look at me strangely when I start talking about code, and most developers have absolutely no sense of aesthetics or design.
" to turn developers into designers. "
Don't let your Vet perform your dental work and don't let your dentist neuter your pets .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
All of you Linux zealots insult these products right off the bat, but offer no alternative of your own. Welcome to the back of the line. Enjoy your stay, all the while proclaiming your superiority.
Well, you see, the folks in Redmond are so unaware of anything outside of, well, Redmond, I'm sure that they where totally unaware that there was anything related to graphics named anything like "Quartz". But now that they know, they plan to rename their product "Microsoft Hubris".
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Acrylic Sparkle Quartz
ASQ ?
ASP ?
Mmmmmmm ?
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
So now we have designers in the mix does this mean we'll be seeing a "Azure" Screen Of Death?
Adobe's software apps aren't exactly "artsy" tools. In my design classes, with my fellow college students, who are considered to be part of the tech generation, most students can't stand Adobe programs. Though they are all similar in nature (once you learn one, you can understand them all), they are still a pain to learn. Even those of us (like myself) who understand technology - to the point that we see it in our sleep - would like anything that could provide an easier experience, and be simple. The perfect app would be designed Keynote or Pages, with the speed of an Adobe app, and provide the visual response that Microsoft Office 2003 has when you hover over a control (without the crashing that goes with it). Visual feedback is good in my mind, as long as it doesn't slow down the app. Apple doesn't do enough of the "hover" effects, I think.
It's even called the same thing and does the same thing. They might have been hesitant to acknowledge its existence.
Just a thought : you're a coder, you're definitely _not_ a designer, generally speaking. Coding means being extremely analytical and thoughtful about the process, as opposed to designing which is being empirical and holistic about a user's thought patterns. Wanting to turn the first activity into the second one makes as much sense as wanting to turn the car engine design job into the steering wheel and board design job.
While certainly for large teams it makes sense for people to specialize, and for you're hard core programmers to not also handle the visual design.
However, I think it's a cop out to claim them to be so totally different and "asking a coder to do artwork is silly".
I work with many people who are excellent coders and who are also excellent designers. In fact, some of the best programmers I know are also artists (painters, photographers or musicians) and can do excellent web and UI design.
So, if you're a coder who can't do art, that's fine. But if you are a coder who can't do art who wants to, don't let these guys discourage you.
And to Microsoft, the more tools the better. Maybe one will actually be good.
I'm a graphic designer, at least I was trained as one, too often these days I am a code monkey and sometimes project manager. My office is split about 50-50 between Macs & PCs because even though I greatly prefer my G4, I know that the great unwashed tend to use Windows so all my work has to be be tested on that platform. I absolutely loathe walking across the room and sitting down at the PC to do anything. It is clunky in ways that are literally painful.
If Windows is Microsoft's idea of aesthetics and craftsmanship, I'm not even curious enough to look at this.
Did anyone bother to check the source here? Newsfactor consistently prints the worst, most factually incorrect tech site out there. They make Slashdot look positive responsible.
oh, let's bash this new product that we have no direct experience with!!! ...
... oh wait, this is /.
not exactly the mark of an educated person.
no one is trying to "turn developers into designers". the point of all this is to have graphical tools that fit in with the existing visual studio environment... so developers and designers are all using common ground to develop applications.
maybe it will suck.. maybe it'll be decent. time will tell... but don't jump the gun quite yet.
I'm one of M$'s largest critics, but as someone who has been in the trenches of the designer/developer relationship (aka unmitigated disasterous fiasco), what they are doing is worth a shot.
It may not work, but I think it will. Of course the normal trolls will discount it, but this has indeed been a longstanding problem, and it's good to see someone addressing it.
Even if M$ gets the jump on OSS here, they're blazing a trail that has some potential to make the development process easier, and there's something to be said for that.
One of the worst products I ever worked on was one that was "designed" by a "designer" who wouldn't have known "third normal form" if it came up and bit her on the ass and said "Hello, I'm third normal form".
It was a web-based UI that was "designed" by someone using Visual BASIC as their design tool, and then we had the "opportunity" to try and build the damn thing in Java in a browser-portable way.
I'd rather walk on broken glass than work with that person again.
The UI we ended up with bore no relationship to the underlying data organization, and was basically all over the map when it came to unrelated items glommed together. Gee, it was pretty, but it was also totally unusable.
I'd have to disagree with you - it *completely* matters for a designer to understand what they are designing for; if they don't, the result is going to suck, and suck hard.
-- Terry
I do not have tons of computer expertise, but I am also dumbfounded as to why there is no competition for Exchange Server and it's client, Outlook.
To me, it seems as though open source developers with the expertise to create such a thing would be interested in a scheduling environment that they can share with their family and friends.
I guess life just isn't that complicated for most people.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Interactive is a poor word choice; the word you want is multidisciplinary.
from Quartz Web Designer website: "[...]gives you all the powerful tools you'll need to produce high-quality, standards-based Web sites the way you want them."
That comply with what standards you say? IE 6?
I get it, I see, it was a joke right? These Microsoft dudes are killing me...
"Microsoft has provided a solution which will magically change my crappy looking stick-figure graphics into polished works of art."
And maybe pirates will stop pirating and start creating instead.
Now graphics can corrupt my XP box, not just email! Thanks Microsoft!
I vote "mis-modded". I think you were trying to be funny. But there is a serious point here, nonetheless. Allow me to retort:
First of all, this "left brain, right brain" thing is just nonsense. Ask a neurologist. There's a popular myth that revolves around separation of brain function into creative and analytical thinking. The problem is that is complete bullshit. If you take a normal brain, there are "creative" centers in both hemispheres, and likewise with analytical skills.
Biology and evolution don't divide skills up into "creative" and "analytical" categories. The binary division of the two is a human conceit--not without its uses, but it has no place in talking about how the brain works.
Now, THAT being said, "left brain" and "right brain" are, regardless of science, common rhetorical devices used to divide people into analytical and creative categories. Lots of people have aptitudes one way or the other, so it's easy to think that you're naturally one or the other, and that's the way God made you, so be it.
But I think that's bullshit, too. I know far too many incredibly creative engineers, architects, and coders--look at www.hackaday.com if you can't think of any you know, yourself. And I know a hell of a lot of artists and musicians who sat down in front of Photoshop or Pro Tools for the first time as said "Ah-ha!" and did brilliant things.
I'll bet that a lot of people discover one particular aptitude early and focus on that, failing to develop other skills. When I was 12, I was about as good of a programmer as I was a piano player or a painter. But since I spent a lot of time coding, guess what, I'm a pretty damn good coder and a shitty piano player. That doesn't mean I couldn't have been a good piano player, just that it takes years to get good.
Comments are still a little thin, but I suspect we're going to hear a lot more people complaining about how coders can design, and designers can't code. I say, right now, fuck that. I know far too many people who bridge the gap, sometimes iat surprising moments. There are smart people, and there are not-so-smart people.
So who knows? Maybe there's something to this idea of "designer-cum-developer". From the tone of the comments, it doesn't seem like anyone's tried it, much.
"bring your Web sites to life with sophisticated CSS design"
is meant to be read: support for quirks mode and obfuscated code.
"Easily design to standards and optimize your sites for accessibility and cross-browser compatibility with built-in support and validation for Web standards"
meant to say: design for IE >> validate >> if (ie6) { CSS(); } else {echo "Best viewed with IE 6"; }
But unfortunately, this article is mostly drivel from an industry analyst, an occupation requiring the IQ of a rock and the communication skills of a ferret. They aren't talking about making designers into developers or vice versa.
i temid-2622/DesktopDefault.aspx :
... "These tools enable designers to explore a wide range of creative options ... and then to integrate those designs seamlessly with developer code..."
It's about making the workflow better between designers and developers.
http://www.designertoday.com/tabindex-1/tabId-28/
"Incorporating design concepts into the development process has typically been difficult due to communication and technical gaps between design and development teams."
It's not about eliminating designers, it's about cutting out a huge source of miscommunication.
That this is going to be like turning your average Joe into a web designed; a la "Front Page".
Is it just me or did Newsfactor just completely miss the point and then make one up?
Newsfactor says "Microsoft wants to turn developers into designers." They also mention how Microsoft wants to eliminate the role of the designer.
Microsoft says it's to "Facilitate collaboration between designers and developers...." They talk about separating code from UI design and creating a back and forth channel between designers and developers.
I think I'll go with Microsoft's line, since they are actually the ones who wrote the software.
Please stop confusing design with art.
J
I think you've got it backward. I think what they're trying to say is Designers!, Designers!, Designers! are Developers! Developers! Developers! too. They've noticed that a good part of the time spent making software is the UI/Designer people who don't usually know how to program trying to direct the programmers, who don't usually know how to design. Programmers hate fiddling with making the UI elements do what the designers want them to do- they'd rather be solving the big problems. If only the designers had a tool for designing UIs that worked like the tools they know and spoke a language that the programmers could do something with...
Slashdot is getting really bad. Here is a recent article that appeared on the same thing! Are the editors that hard pressed to put up something interesting and new? Perhaps they play Darkwatch all day and have a perl script or something going through submissions and randomly posting one so that they can continue with their games.
So Microsoft is actually trying to eliminate my job? Thanks guys. I guess I shouldn't take it personally, they're trying to eliminate my employer with OneCare. I guess since I'm not making them any money because I don't have an MSDN seat selling a copy of this suite to the people who do instead makes sense.
The fact of the matter is that effective organizations already have good communication between designers and engineers. I'm sure I'm speaking with a bit of self-interest but I don't think it's fair to the engineers to expect them to take on all of my work too, everywhere I've been they've seemed plenty busy.
I think the real motivation behind this is that these tools will be far easier to use with Vista's developer tools so that people that are already designing with other tools need to buy a copy of this. So basically you can spend 20 minutes recreating the exact Vista shiny chrome effect or crank it out in 30 seconds the Microsoft way.
Christ, do you have any idea how bloated your ego sounds?
Granted, there are better designers and developers than I, as I'm unable to specialise in either, but not many designer/developer teams can create the kind of responsive, intuitive and attractive user experiences that I do.
"Responsive, intuitive and attractive" are all design properties.
Something goes missing when you start having to communicate your ideas to someone who doesn't understand both sides.
Then I'd suggest that you have a problem communicating. Show me a developer that cannot understand "responsive" and a designer that can't explain it. Show me a developer that needs to care about "intuitive and attractive" beyond the designer showing him where to put something.
I will agree that people like me are rare however.
Somebody with a massive ego but no real clue? Ten a penny.
Most designers look at me strangely when I start talking about code
Why are you talking to designers about code? Again, it sounds like you have poor communication skills and compensate by assuming that nobody can communicate effectively with "the other side".
Designers concern themselves with the interaction between the user and the computer. Developers concern themselves with the mechanics of making the interface work according to the design. If either cannot do that effectively, then they have no business in the job.
WELCOME TO LAST WEEK MORONS
Supposedly the goal is not to compete head to head with the proposed Adobe/Macromedia merger but to simply drive them out of the market by making the ability to work with overwrought, hacked-together Microsoft Word macro style code a "requirement" of Flash-like software.
Did you notice the dude on Microsoft's page? He's bent-over. I call THAT interactive.
"Could they really not come up with a more original name?"
Kquartz Komposer.
Then they became Engineers, who made things practical.
And now they are turning into Artists, to make them beautiful.
Oh, well...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You can download a free version of Microsoft Expression "Acrylic Graphic Designer" if you feel like trying it. Here is a link... http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/gr aphic_designer/default.aspx
Next up from the Microsoft design team:
Glitter Happy Fun Messenger
Bubbly Bunny Chocolate Word
Giggle Tehe Goodtime Player
Candy Candy Popcorn Exchange
Just more attempts to kill inoperability betwixt things that are not Microsoft. "Sparkle"? Come on. That said, having developed in flash for the first time recently, I can't help but hope it dies a slow and painful death.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Why do you people hate Microsoft so much?
I think software developers have the same percentage of good designers as the population at large, and vise versa. I've known some coders who were incredible graphic designers. But most of those people are not going to be interested in something like this, they do their HTML by hand :P
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Don't tell me what developers can and can't do.
Who the fuck do you think you are?
One is left brain. One is right brain.
Which side of your brain supports being an fucking moron?
Asking a coder to do artwork is silly.
Yuor a funny fuck.
The Adobe and Macromedia people understand that artsies like to use artsy tools.
So these artsies understand interface design in a way that mere developers can't. And these artsies use Macromedia products because the products themselves are artsy. Not because they are the best tool for the job? Whatever you say, you funny fuck.
The whole idea of getting developers to 'design' is stupid.
YUOR STUPID.
Does this mean we're going to have Ballmer screaming, "Designers, Designers, Designers!"
*dramatic pause*
"Developers, Developers, Developers!"
...who've had the displeasure of implementing a design recieved by designers, I'd love to have some sort of tool that would allow us to interoperate. I don't want them to touch code with a ten foot pole, but I would like for them to have a means to do UI design and for me to just "hook up" code triggers to that design. It's fairly easy enough for static dialogs and such, it's much worse for things created programmatically, or how things look during some operation. More often than not I've found it easier to just get some images of how they'd like it to look and do it myself.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
What's with your fetish for "Third normal form"? I'd never heard of it, but then, I'm not a database monkey either...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Actually there is involved some art in coding but its still only needs a plain text editor
My PhD supervisor thinks I'm great at design, so by deduction, my technical career is absolutely fucked.
Bugger.
boakes.org
With both Acrylic Graphic Design and the Metro document format my life should soon be hell. Publisher and word are bad enough from a printing or reprographics point of view but two new file formats that will not play nice with any other non-microsoft or old-microsoft programs. Will not play nice with rips, platemakers and other specialized equipment and won't easily convert into something that will.
I could be wrong here but so far, Microsoft's history in this area is not good.
That is some ugly box art. Ugly bux art for a design product is never a good sign...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
One is left brain. One is right brain.
Asking a coder to do artwork is silly.
Actually, both are artsy type of brain activities. Hence why good programmers usually have a good ability to work from both sides of the brain as well.
Go look up Bridged Brains, there are a lot of people out there that can use more of both sides of their brain at once, even if you can't.
Oh, also, these tools are for designers for the most part, not developers, developers take the output of these tools, shove it into Visual Studio for example, and code the backend to these interfaces.
With MM bought by Adobe, Adobe is the de-facto monopoly in design packages right now. Now if competition grows, Adobe/MM might just come clear with improved developement tools that run on Linux aswell.
Then again, MS will either release a product that is so uber-shitty that only the most hardcore MS Developers will use it or it probably will build a product that hat "proprietary lock-in" written all over it. So Adbe won't have any competition in the first place.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Let me guess: in 1999, some Microsoft marketing employee fell into Bill Gates's cryogenic tube and they finally found him and thawed him out?
Acrylic, Sparkle, Quartz, all used before by others for their own software inventions. C'mon Bill, where's that famous Microsoft innovation?
in an amazing corporate move, 3 common nouns are now trademarked terms. These words are now only to be used with permission: Acrylic, Sparkle, Quartz In their place you are permitted to say: water based paint, twinkle, SIO2
I'm just here for the sigs
I happen to be employed as a designer/developer
You're what would be called a "technical artist" in the game development world. They're sometimes extremely useful for helping to glue parts of a project together. It can be a lonely position that places you between two worlds, but not fully in either of them. Loathed by programmers for having enough knowledge to damage the codebase, loathed by artists because you can patiently and accurately explain why using a 8192x8192 32-bit uncompressed texture for the app's splash-screen logo is a bad idea.
I've also never worked on a project that had more than one technical artist - I'm starting to believe that if you manage to get two technical artists in the same room (let alone working on the same project), they'll react and cause an explosion which destroys the universe.
most developers have absolutely no sense of aesthetics or design.
Oddly enough, user interface design was part of my Comp. Sci. degree - there's a whole subsection of Computer Science dedicated to man/machine interfaces. Most programmers (well, a few anyway) would agree that the most important part of a program as far as the user/client is concerned - is how the program interacts with the user.
The best programmers (or maybe just the ones who actually have a computer science degree) understand this. They may not be able to design an icon or choose a color scheme (which is where you should come in), but if pushed they should be able to make a basic UI design that is usable, neat and efficient. Neat and uncluttered UI design tends to help produce clean code anyway...
... Microsoft walks the talk.
My other post is a First.
Allowing contemporary developers and designers a more effective method of communication is incredibly valuable. Yet more importantly, I think this tool finally marks the industry's official acknowledgment of "interactive designers".
By "interactive designers" I'm not referring to developers who are self-taught photoshop gurus, or designers who know how to alter a script. I'm talking about professionally trained graphic designers who have been schooled in human behavior (psychology / sociology) and software development.
I was totally blown away by the Sparkle demo that was posted to Slashdot last week. Nevertheless, Sparkle is just a tool. It's not going to teach developers the idiosyncrasies of visual communication, and it's not going to teach designer's programing logic. It'll set some boundaries and drastically speed up prototyping.
However, once companies start utilizing tools likes Sparkle, AND start hiring legitimate "interactive designers"... we should start to see some see some really cool shit. "Design" is not something that should be separate from development. Designers and developers / engineers need to be on a design team from stage one.
It's common practice to a) engineer and or conceptualize functionality before considering interactivity and ascetics, and or b) design pretty concepts that are impractical to develop. Both of these approaches don't make any sense.
If you ask me, a software development "dream team" would be composed of adept developers with some schooling in industrial design, and adept graphic designers with schooling in human behavior and computer science. When they'd start a new project, they would enter ideation, design, and development stages together... and they'd have some tools like Sparkle readily available. Because, well, Flash and Photoshop interactivity prototyping is a soul sucking vortex that needs to die. Seriously.
Yet, this won't start to happen until interdisciplinary education becomes common place.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Coffee, meet screen. And I'm not even drinking some coffee. Probably future coffee, and in a month or so I'll have to pour the coffee into a wormhole so the coffee can come out of my nose today.
;)
I really need to stop rewatching that film
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/de mos.aspx
We can still use "Acrilico, Chispa y Quarzo". It's on my native language but i dont mind you people using them.
a) newsfactor totally got it wrong
b) from the promo video, i understand a main feature (at least for the web edition) is visual XAML design with a GUI designers are used to.
c) from the screenshots, the GUI does NOT look bad at all.
d) i'll give it a shot for two reasons: to see how quick you can (re)design a working XAML app, which is a totally sick adventure with the competitor, Macromedia Flex; and to see what MS means when saying "standards based".
And I am in the exact same position as you're in. Just because I was a web designer and wrote flash people think I enjoyed it. The truth is I enjoy laying out things more than coding arrays.
Designers look at me like I am some kind of hard-coded half breed while developers looks at me like a softcore sissy pooh who can't do recursions.
And yet, I feel completely fine as my current job needs exactly my type of people who knows enough of both that delivers. Will I be a successful graphic designer in the end? I think not. Do I have bills to pay? Well.
In the software industry there are obvious benefits - it's clear to anyone implementing an resource based windows dialog that not enough of the design can be changed without resorting to code. The designer needs a deeper and more integrated toolkit in order to enable modern, well designed products to be implemented and modified cost effectively (read: without writing lines of code to change the color of a few pixels).
Of course, MS will probably f**k up the execution of this, as other posters comment, by doing a poor 75% non-standard solution and changing their minds before it matures. Then companies can misuse it to change UI arbitrarily every release and break standards, leaving users confused. Good design practice is ever more important. But the idea is correct. Fingers crossed.
You make a good point, but from what I can tell, these apps won't help make that happen.
Because of the meager info in the article about what Quartz ([insert obligatory way-to-not-steal-names-from-Apple-technologies jab here]) and Acrylic do, you might want to take this with an additional spoon of salt, but I know that Sparkle is meant to be something like Flash. If you sit down any random guy with Flash they're probably less likely to build a good UI than if they were sat down with Visual Studio or why not Interface Builder. (Because Flash has a ton of drawing tools, and then a few widgets, whereas the others just have widgets, and maybe a 'box' control if you're really nice.)
It's to my understanding that UI designers and programmers alike should work with standard widgets like buttons and text fields first and foremost. Polish is nice, and in a lot of ways essential, but if you're trying to build it as you go, you're deluding yourself. The first 95% or so of the time on a project, you should *always* concentrate on the UI before the sizzle. The sizzle's insanely important, but not more insanely important than a well-designed UI. Maybe I could see Sparkle as a nice UI prototyping tool, if anything, but it doesn't sound like that.
Design should be about usability, the man/machine interface, and aesthetics should be subjugated to that end.
If you would bother to check out the products (this video for example --> http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1153 87 ) you would see that their primary goal is to allow a REAL designer to work seperately from the code jockeys to do his job, further abstracting the UI from the backend of an application.
If you have never DESIGNED a huge GUI project then you will not appreciate the huge step forward that this represents.
If you have DESIGNED a GUI of any type and can not see what a leap forward this will be, I can only assume that you are among the legions of Microsoft supporters that throng to slashdot, or you really do not know the job of a designer.
++ Jesus loves you as you are;
++ Cuthulhu thinks you need barbeque sauce!
http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/ProductFeedback/view feedback.aspx?feedbackid=79b6b239-02a2-4ea2-9e75-1 ddd91a870e6
Several weeks back while in the waiting room of a doctor's office I read an article about Microsoft in Forbes magazine.
In a nutshell Bill Gates is upset that Google has become the sexy place for the IT elite to work and Bill Gates is upset that Microsoft seems to racing to catch up with other companies instead of being a leader in the industry.
The story in this thread seems to be another iteration of the source of Bill Gates' angst.
Microsoft is trying to catch up with what Adobe already has. Microsoft is following. Microsoft is not leading.
Somebody at Microsoft has failed to communicate, hear, or accept a simple thought. If you want to be a leader you have to stop being a follower. You have to lead to be a leader.
Instead of following other companies innovations in a game of catch-up you lead by coming up with your own innovations and letting other companies in the industry follow.
Now your company is a leader. Now your company starts looking like a place where the creative IT elite might like to be.
Mr. Gates, Mr. Ballmer, if you want Microsoft to be an industry leader don't begrudge other companies their innovations or their victories. Come up with your own innovations.
Solve problems that other companies have not worked on or identified yet. That is what companies who are seen as leaders do. That is what your rival Google does.
Sparkle has been featured on slashdot before:
0 9/16/0016214&from=rss
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/
The article contains the link to the channel9 presentation. What you will learn is that:
Microsoft is not trying to turn developers into designers and/or vice versa. They are trying to bridge the gap between designer and developer. This means that a developer can mock up an application just to see that the code does what it's supposed to, and a designer can drop in a design on top of that, and "it will just work". This is quite similar to how web-applications are developed if the template system is good enough; the developer does his thing, the designer does his thing.
The problem with desktop applications today is that a designer will probably submit a design to the developers, who have to slice the UI and write some kind of skinning library to properly display it. Making changes to this creates the need to redo all this work. And sometimes the skinning library might not do what the designer envision in the first place.
People are whining about how painful it is using apps that "designers" have created. Sparkle makes it easier to create designer-designed applications, but because the turnaround from designer to working app is shorter, it's a lot easier to see what actually works. So it should be easier to make designer-apps better; probably a lot better than developer-designed apps.
Look at the video, it's good stuff.
"You can get excited about it, but it is too early to tell how well it will be adopted."
Actually, Mr. Wilcox, you can get excited about it. Me, I'm going to be grouting my nostril-hairs with a dremel. Sounds less painful than using products that originated with PaintBox.
Seriously, though... stick with what you're good a... er, I mean, what you've spent all that time perfec... um...
Okay, keep handing out the same old buggy stuff. Just stay out of us creative guys way, how 'bout it?
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
"Responsive, intuitive and attractive" are all design properties.
Yes, but a designer doesn't develop the responsive interface, they usually create static designs and need to communicate to the developer how the interface reacts to the user, and I've seen developers get that wrong all too often.
Why are you talking to designers about code? Again, it sounds like you have poor communication skills and compensate by assuming that nobody can communicate effectively with "the other side".
I never said nobody can communicate effectively with "the other side", I merely said that someone with intimate knowledge of both sides would have a better chance of communicating with both sides, and if they're in charge of both design and development there is no need for that communication at all. It appears that I'm not the one with the communication problem in this case.
As to why I'm talking to designers about code, again it's about communication (that you seem to think I lack) - often programming constraints mean constraints are then placed on the design, and I like to explain to designers why something can't be done. Usually they're grateful for this, but sometimes I go a bit over their heads.
To that other poster that was brave enough to post that he had both the ability to code and UI design, I say bravo! You are a rare person indeed with a rare skillset. Make sure your employer knows that you can do both. Remind them at nearly every opportunity. Once you get the chance to show you can do both, then it can be a fight to keep the work from piling up. Because that is what they will do, pile it on you.
At my last job, every programmer besides me hated doing website and graphic design. I welcomed it. What little bit there was (CSS programming and web page element design) was a welcome change from writing code day in and day out. Finally my boss threw a small design job at me. They must of liked the results. After that, nearly every design job was mine and I was brought along on business trips to steer the conversation in ways that fit with good design.
But the seperation between coder and designer is there. Most of my programmer friends are literally amazing at what they can churn out for functional code in an afternoon. Not many of them know anything about the basics tenents of UI design. Another set of my friends are amazing artists and/or web site designers. Throw a bit of scripting or programming at them and they just freeze up.
There are people out there that can do both. I believe these skill sets can be cultivated. My older nephew is showing tendencies of having both. In that regard, I am trying to give him plenty of opportunity to excel at both abilities. I showed him how to do web programming. He got pretty excited about that. Then I showed him scripting actions in NWN builder, he never really liked that much, at least from what I have seen so far. Unfortunately he is diagnosed and is taking medicine for having ADD. I fear that if he isn't given the right opportunities at the right times, he will just give up and not be very happy with himself.
Maybe that's the overriding goal of Microsoft here. Give people the tools that allow them to stretch their wings and see if they can enjoy both. That's the beauty of computers. Why not use it?
Yes indeed. The X Window System showed us just what excellence in graphic design you can get when you leave it to furry-toothed programmers whose computer permanently displays a screen filled with green-on-black terminal sessions, plus a minimised Opera for their pr0n.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
All these criticisms...
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Interactive Design!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Oh, I hope this guy is wrong. I'd agree that there seems to be a bit too much distance between designers and developers, but the idea of developers doing design work scares me. It's a different style of thinking and creativity, and most developers can't make that leap (I know I can't). Just take a look at the vast majority of open source projects for examples.
THINK! It's not illegal...yet.
Nooooooo...!
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
The copy, as printed, is:
"Microsoft is trying to address what it believes is a legitimate and longstanding problem in the design market."
This should have been:
"Microsoft is trying to address what it believes is a legitimate and longstanding lack of revenue from the design market."
Thank you for your patience.
People have been saying that for ever. Instead of really cool shit, we seem to perpetually just get the regular kind of shit.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
The whole purpose of UI design is to bend technology to the user - not to the developer.
The "longstanding problem" spoken about here is incorrectly addressed by the software and MS - and speaks worlds about why most MS programs/solutions suck.
Get your tagline off my lawn.
More often than not I've found it easier to just get some images of how they'd like it to look and do it myself.
Me too.
During the early design stages, I sit down with the end users and sketch pictures, brainstorming how the final product might look. This process usually turns up important (often unstated) requirements and restrictions. Makes my coding life a lot easier, plus I happen to enjoy design, so I get the best of both worlds.
-kgj
-kgj
I started in print design and production in the early 90s, then switched to interactive multimedia design in the late 90s--MS has always been a joke in this arena, and rightly so (FrontPage anyone?)
In the 'modern' standards era, why would you want to work with monopoly software whose parent consistently chooses its own proprietary standards that are not consistent with the rest of the computing world?
don't tell me to RTFA, and how they are planning such wonderful interopterability--I trust MS as far as I chucked my Dell desktop when I went 100% MS free a couple of years ago...
If you sit down any random guy with Flash they're probably less likely to build a good UI than if they were sat down with Visual Studio or why not Interface Builder.
I'm not sure that's what they're concerned about. The average person with no design sense will overdo it with any program you give them- photoshop, illustrator, you name it. That does not mean that designers who know what they're doing wouldn't benefit from something like Flash that gives them more power. The impression that I've gotten is that this is something like Flash but with something more powerful and programmer-friendly than ActionScript. It is (or at least it looks like) a nice prototyping tool- the thing is that with Sparkle, the prototype can actually end up being the final product. The point is eliminating the step where the designer sketches out what they want to happen and then makes the programmer re-create his sketch using programmer-friendly tools.
Neat and uncluttered UI design tends to help produce clean code anyway..
Posolutely! Here's my everyday UI:
$ _
Ugh. Aesthetics, and even the ability to create a "neat and uncluttered UI" have nearly nothing to do with good "design". Get your design degree at a reputable art/design school, build a portfolio, study the history of design, etc... and then come back. The specific use of typography, placement, shapes, colors, images, manipulation therof, etc... all are carefully decided apon, arranged, discussed, and formulated to provide a certain feeling, a sense. This is paramount. The importance of a clean and useful UI is learned over a weekend. Done. Good designers are very well schooled and are worth their weight in gold. There are far fewer of them than many think.
Most developers, however, do not understand the importance of good "design". They make the page easy to navigate, have clean code and feel they have accomplished their "design" in its totallity. It's what they do good. It's in their education, it's in their "blood". We rip those sites apart in marketing class. We look at anywhere from 5 to 10 a class to discuss these things. Every bit of it makes sense, and the research studies bear this out. A good business marketing team wouldn't let a lone developer claiming to be a designer with a portfolio consisting of "clean UI design" near their front door.
nd then when you ask them to program something, they have no idea what they are doing. All they've learned to do is drop UI controls on a canvas, and fill in the onclick events with simple statements. Sometimes writing IF statements and WHILE loops are too much for these guys.
What offends you most - the fact that these people don't know much about the sacred scientific art of programming, or that they don't need to know?
There's a lot to be said for efficiency and productivity. Not at any cost of course, but still, a lot to be said.
"They can't be two more opposed jobs in a game shop than designers and developpers."
:P~~
You, sir, are correct. Our brain, like the rest of our anatomy, is made up of two halves, a left brain and a right brain.
Graphic designers are examples of the artistic, unpredictability and creativity of "right brain" types. Software developers are very analytical and orderly, indicative of "left brain" types. After analyzing your statement above, we must come to the conclusion that you, sir, have no brain.
"Microsoft is trying to address what it believes is a legitimate and longstanding problem in the design market."
The problem with the design market IS software availability. Any schmuck with a computer and a fifteen hundred bucks can pick up Adobe CS and call themselves a designer. When really all they are is a computer user. Design is a school of thought and communication, and this fact clearly escapes MS.
The long standing problem currently facing the design industry is it's creditability. Design should be regulated as a profession. Only then will we see over saturation decline, and quality within the industry rise.
__
Thou hast besquirted me, O leotarded one.
... they created a word processor with over 1,100 commands, where type controls are two layers deep in the GUI, and where "Normal" view is not WYSIWYG.
Sorry, they may like to, they don't reliably achieve it.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
No, the goal isn't to turn designers into developers or vice versa. To anyone who has seen the Sparkle video the reason for this product should be fairly obvious. The point of these products is to allow the designer to interact directly with the developers.
Traditionally the designer would create a mock up which would be handed off to the developer to figure out how to implement.
While there are interface designers out there already, such as Glade designer and Interface Builder, none of them come close to touching Sparkle. Sparkle is effectively Adobe Illustrator and a UI designer built into one. The designer has full control over everything, including the ability to vastly alter the appearance of existing controls. With no code, the designer is fully capable of taking a stock radio button and modifying it's style to appear as a piece of paper which would rotate into view when selected. Can the Glade designer or Interface Builder do that? Of course not, a developer would have to write a new control to handle that sort of thing.
The point of Sparkle is to hand a designer a vector graphics editor that happens to create a real UI complete with controls that can be bound directly to the business models. The designer is no longer building prototypes and fighting with developers who themselves lack the graphical skills, the designer becomes, in essense, a developer who checks in and out code with graphical changes.
As much as you'd like to pretend, this is a paradigm shift. It takes the V of MVC and moves it's responsibility entirely to a different person. Nothing comes close to Sparkle.
It's what they do "well". But, I agree completely. As a sysadmin in a design studio that employs developers for a "total solution" type design house, (they call it... "creatology" TM). Every one of our developers that claims to be a "designer" (there are only a few), would be laughed out the door by our larger clients. Our smaller ones, the ones without a marketing team, may be swayed by their obvious lack of design education, or in the least the misunderstanding of it's purpose.
On the other hand, we have very good designers here that wouldn't know a user friendly UI if it bit them on the arse. A "team", as suggested earlier, was our fix, and it works out great. They realize their differences, and work from their. But, I have to comment, a designer thinking they are a developer isn't nearly as bad as a developer thinking they are a designer. I have seen FAR more problems with the latter. They "can" make web pages, cleanly and with great UI's, which is where the problem lies. The page's "message" is almost always lost, the design "sense" is so completely wrong at times that it makes even me what they are trying to convey.
It seems like most everyone is missing the point of the product(s).
I worked on a dot.com product that was part of the magical push technology that never happened. We had had an office full of developers, and half an office full of artists/designers. There was quite a bit of work needed to take the artwork and designs, done in Photoshop, illustrator etc, and cut them up, slice them, and hand code ways to interface with the images etc, while providing an environment with motion that we wanted to present to the users. I'd say at least %25 of the work, maybe more was dedicated to making the design work in the program.
That is the market being addressed here. It is not to make a developer into a designer, or a designer into a developer, it is to give the designer a new set of tools that is more closely tied to the end product AND to make it so the developer does not have to convert the design work into something useable in code.
If you have ever taken an application web site designed in Photoshop all the way through to a running deployed application used by hundreds of users you know what I mean. Yes, it is doable today, but a significant portion of the time is spent making the design work with the code, and still layout and look good. These products eliminate the middle work. I'm all for it.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
You gotta hand it to MS. In this case they did't *directly* attack their competitors, they sneakily set up a new battleground just slightly outside the perceived domain of their competitors so now Adobe et al will have to come to them. Neat. Also, they pitch it at the PHB's budget, although not in an overt way that upsets their mainstay, the developer, although the subtext is plain to see for those with eyes to see:
PHB: Ooooh a new tool that lets Designers have more power. Maybe we can without a few of those Pesky Programmers(C).
Designers: Oooooh, something that lets me implement MY GRAND DESIGN without those Pesky Programmers(C) interfering with my GLORIOUS CREATION.
Programmer: Over my dead body.
My guess is that they'll try and do without the programmers, chaos will ensue and the status quo will be reinstated a few expensive months down the line. I've seen the same with Macromedia. It'll be OK for a prototype of the interface. Anything else will still require CodeMonkeys to fit it all together.
I'll laugh myself silly if this required *more* programmers and more expensive licenses and bigger and better lock-in.
This is Silicon Snake-oil with capital Ss.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
"She's a designer"
"She's a developer"
"She's a designer *AND* a developer"
=Stunned look=
Overdub: Forget it Jake, it's Microsoft.
==Fade to black==
Expression was a very cool graphics package - it did natural media effects, like Painter, but it did them with infinitely editable and resizeable vector representations. The piece I did with the demo (using the default brushes that come with the program) a few years back, when too broke to buy a full copy, was a lot of fun. When I had cash available to buy the thing, Microsoft had eaten Creature House and taken Expression off the market.
Like a lot of artists, I use Macs. I was afraid that whatever Expression turned into would be Windows-only, but my reaction to this actual release is still a hearty "fuck you, Microsoft".
egypt urnash minimal art.
Their office suite is a different situation, working towards a different goal. It started out simple and effective, but became bloated and more difficult to use. They did that so they wouldn't have to force out little niche features that people had learned to exploit so they'd think they had found a better way to do things. They turned a simple thing difficult.
With VS they started out fairly bloated, trying to make a difficult thing simple. They seem to have done an okay job at this, but to the extent that it has diminished the value of the people who use it.
The interesting parallel here is that they both achieve the same goal: Make the Microsoft product the perceived value. By making the simple task of word processing more complicated then they've increased the value of knowing how to use their products. Since their products had become the de facto standard before much of the current complexity was introduced then finding people who were well versed in using them became a must. Think about it, when did people start putting "MS Word" on their resume? Of course, a simpler solution would mean more value to the software, but it wouldn't be seen as such because they've already invested in advanced knowledge of MS products and continuing down the same path always seems easier.
I agree with you. The challenge, though, is convincing companies they need to hire someone with this skillset. Heck, it's hard enough now convincing them they need anyone with any kind of design background unless you also have a ridiculous list of programming skills as well.
I'm an interface designer who understands enough of how the programming part works to work efficiently with the programmers, but not enough to actually do their job. People are always appreciative of the work I do for them, after they let me do it. But it can be frustrating to convince companies that well-thought-out design can improve their products.
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
Please, this sounds so fruity!
C'mon. Everyone knows designers use Apple/Adobe/Macromedia. Designers want to use products that are cool. Microsoft is most definitely not cool.
Most of the negative reaction here is due to the statement "Microsoft wants to turn developers into designers", but if you read the article, Microsoft didn't say that. Some industry analyst just pulled that out of his ass.
What this new stuff really does is *disconnects* the UI design from the source code, so that a designer can use one tool to work on the UI while a progammer uses visual studio to put some code behind it.
So rather than "turning designers into developers", it really "lets designers and developers work together better". Or something like that.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Oops you said man/machine rather then woman/machine. debian-women's gunna get you! They will kill male free software developers untill they get their 50/50 Women/worthless-male split.
You see, even though men created free software... we are unworthly and must be chaparoned by women (this is where debian-women, linux chix, etc comes in).
The solution? Get rid of debain-women, linux chix etc. By force if you wish.
There's clearly an untapped reserve of users who need cheap, easy to use design tools. Adobe & macromedia are at the very high end of the market. Their tools are powerful, expensive and intimidating. Sure they have some entry level versions of some tools but these are individual tools, not integrated suits of tools.
Microsoft has cleverly spotted this opportunity.
Also, Microsoft already has much of the necessary technology in various office addons that most people don't even know about (e.g. MS Publisher, photo editor), various stuff from their research department (mainly photo editing), and other stuff like their movie editor. And finally with some acquired components you can build a pretty interesting suite that is not so capable as the high end offerings from Adobe and Macromedia but cheap and usable. That's a good position to start from and over time they'll be able to add features to make the product more interesting.
Ideal for home users that want to edit their holiday pics, ideal for small businesses wanting to make a brochure, etc. In fact good enough for the majority of people who own a photoshop license, a dreamweaver license or an illustrator license. It's amazing how many people buy stuff they don't need. At the office we have a few photoshop licenses. The most advanced thing that ever happens there is to crop a few photos and create some transparent gifs, that sort of stuff. All the artwork we use in our website is actually delivered by professional design studios. Only recently the use of the gimp was promoted for this kind of stuff.
The world is full of users for who photoshop (or it's lightweight derivatives) is overkill or who do not need the full capabilities of illustrator or who do not need to develop complex webpages in inDesign or dreamweaver and who generally feel intimidated by all of the previous tools. Yet these people want to create stuff. They don't want to shop for this tool or that tool. Instead they want the tools on their PC when they buy them. People are lazy, most of them never buy software after their new PC is delivered.
And who happens to have a big influence on what is preinstalled? Right, Microsoft. Imagine how many people will toggle that nice MS Design Studio checkbox on the dell site (hell, why not it's only XX $ and I'll be able to do foo with it). Imagine how many companies will be tempted to spend a few dollars per desktop for this. It's easy money for MS. Even if it's only 1 percent of their users, that still is a huge amount of money.
You could argue that they are abusing their market position. You could also argue that other companies have simply failed to fill this gap in the market for years. Adobe only recently started to make consumer versions of their tools. You need to buy them individually and the full suit of tools is for high end users with big budget only.
Jilles
When I was 12, I was about as good of a programmer as I was a piano player or a painter. But since I spent a lot of time coding, guess what, I'm a pretty damn good coder and a shitty piano player. That doesn't mean I couldn't have been a good piano player, just that it takes years to get good.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. There is such thing as talent and natural ability. I took piano lessons for years but never "got it" and could never do more than memorize sequences of notes. I have friends who never took a lesson in their life but they "get" how music works and can hear a new song, walk over to a piano (or any other instrument), and play the song they just heard note-perfect.
Same with artists. I took some drawing classes in college and developed a small talent into a slightly-less-small talent. Then I went to work at a publisher and a designer friend showed me illustrations he did when he was 12 that was better than what I could do at 22. There are countless other examples.
OTOH, this same guy never "got" how to copy files from one floppy to another--the idea of "insert one floppy, copy its files to the desktop, insert the other floppy, copy the files from desktop to floppy, delete the temp files" never stuck.
OK, so maybe it's not which half of the brain you use, but there definitely is such thing as natural ability. The only problem here is that people think coding != creativity. Coding (or, more properly, programming) == problem solving, which takes a huge amount of creativity. Just because what programmers produce isn't aesthetically pleasing doesn't mean there's no creativity involved.
At the same time, all creativity is not equal. I'd be willing to bet that you could spend 5 years taking piano lessons or painting lessons and still be a pretty shitty player or painter. (no offense.) And that's the point the parent is making. Just because you're good at one thing does not make you good at another. You mentioned hackaday.com? Check out http://thedailywtf.com/.
Lots of people can have skills in more than one area. I like to think I'm a pretty decent coder and designer (though I accept I'm not as good as a specialist at either) and the best DBA I ever knew was also a great sax player. And don't come around with the tired argument that music == math, because it doesn't. Just because an octave higher = a string of half-length doesn't mean that music is inherently easy to understand for those who are good at math. I'm pretty good at math and pretty sucky at music, as were most of the other guys in my degree program.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
the first rule of Slashdot is don't question the Totem pole. Programmers at the top, then all the "worthless" people below that. BOFH types might try to put themselves higher but we know a janitor when we see one, he needn't have a broom in his hands at the time (and thus the powerless often spend their time mulling over revenge scenarios).
The second is of course that for the average Slashdotter his notion of computer programming is tied up in his own self-identity to a stupid degree. This is in fairness often because Slashdotters tend be relatively young, they are still on their first career in many cases (particularly now with regard the kids that missed the dotcom boom possibly not even fully within their first career and currently mired in working in technical support waiting for a break).
Basically you have to understand any comment about another career or employment path from that perspective. Designers were never going to do better than physicians and pure mathematicians (who get it in the neck just as much) were they.
FWIW I agree with you completely. Best programmer I know also co-edits a Philosophy journal and is a pretty handy watercolorist in his spare time. The funny thing is a friend of his who is a professional photographer is the next best programmer I've seen work. Even in the darker days after the tech boom he was turning down offers in favour of his art. But that would be regarded as somehow "impure" round these here parts.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
You're assuming that there's a market out there for "really cool shit". In my experience, shit is shit and there isn't much of a market for it unless you're fertilizing lawns.
The point is that, for 95% of the apps being developed, the bottleneck is not good visual design or integration of visual design with coding, it's usability and good task flow. All of the "cool shit" in the world won't make up for that and that's not what this suite delivers. For the one or two interesting apps that will be purchased by MSN, Yahoo, or Google (and are going to becompletely redone to make them scalable in the process, BTW), you're going to have hundreds of just as crappy apps with more complex interfaces, less obvious task flow, and overall shittiness - but they will Sparkle!
In addition, most of those 95% of the apps don't need Photoshop-quality skins either - they need a simple UI so that the data entry drudges (you and I included, if we enter data into a web app) that use them don't get distracted from their main focus - entering the f*cking data.
All in all, I really don't see the benefit here. It's a solution in search of a problem that doesn't exist. The solution providers need to be solving user focus and usability issues, not some unholy UI super-skinning scheme that might cause one in a thousand self-styled "interactive designers" to randomly stumble upon a single gold nugget while playing about with eye candy.
That is all.
"designer-cum-developer"
wtf?
I agree. I too would like to have a similar dream team when starting ne projects. It seems to me that if everyone could use the basics of such a system then getting through the first few stages of development would be much faster. Of course there is the down time in learning new software, but it could save alot in the future. My problem is this; if you go and train everyone for some new software, adn then somethine better comes out from another source, then you hae to go through it all again, and sometimes it seems half of our time is spent learning new stuff, only to have buggy apps replaced by another system to learn, and rather than collaborating to make things better and faster, more streamlined, we seem sto spend more time learning new tools. Sometimes I wished I owned a construction company. When they come out with new tools, it doesn't take months to learn to use them, only to find out the new ergonimc hammer is bugy and will be replaced with a new better, more complex to learn hammer a few months later.. m 2c J
How about backing them up with some examples?
I know that marketing types think the universe revolves about a constant sense of titillation, distraction, and personal inadequacy, but that doesn't necessarily result in anything that's well-designed. It results in something that people end up using or buying, not because it's good, but because they were motivated by whatever of the three aforementioned buttons were pressed.
That not what I was talking about at all. Cool for cool's sake is always a mistake.
Design is not about making thinks look "cool". "Cool" is a byproduct of intensive research, human factors, visual communication, etc. Good design is, quite literally, a science. It is NOT shinny skinned UIs and hot photoshop filters.
Interactive designers are individuals who understand usability, interactivity, and development. Yet, in addition to that, they are aware of the ways color, shape, hierarchy, form, balance, materials, etc can affect, direct, assist and communicate to users.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Agreed. A major problem with most current software is that it doesn't utilize usability conventions and metaphors that people understand without saying.
No doubt, revolutionary new tools will almost always require a learning curve. However, we could be doing a lot better.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"