December 2007 - Posts

• Hi, I'm a ???

  Besides creating confused laptops, Nathan Dunlap and team also create very cool user experiences. Check out the VisitMix video and hear Nathan talk about some of the Mac + Vista tips, tricks and techniques IdentityMine uses. Posted Dec 17 2007, 11:15 PM by Chad Brown, IdentityMine - Recognizing our team. Filed under: WPF/E, Nathan Dunlap, Silverlight, WPF Controls, Blend

• The New Iteration - XAML Love

  Very nice whitepaper from Karsten Januszewski and Jaime Rodriguez. This is the type of communication we need to see more regularly from Microsoft. Hopefully the type of information that will grow the WPF ecosystem. Anecdotaly - I had the pleasure of spending a week in Spain at TechED Barcelona. I was there to talk to people about our WPF Controls. However, I spent the vast majority of my time educating enterprise developers on the need for good design and the user experience. Tim Sneath comments on the challenge at hand: "A lot of desktop application development teams I've seen, particularly in the enterprise, don't even include a formal role for a user interface designer." The reality is...Without an appreciation for these things the value of WPF is diminished. Some time ago IdentityMine started out as a group of developers with design sensibilities. We soon came to realize that sensibilities were not enough. In addition, we found that throwing designers at a team proved challenging even when a technology such as WPF enables it. What we needed was an individual capable of bridging the genius of two very different talents. Ultimately what we needed became the integrator. It was a pleasure to read this whitepaper. I enjoyed the information about why WPF, specifically XAML is different in a good way. I also appreciated the acknowledgement that solving the workflow problem involves more than just technology but rather affects team makeup and orchestration. Of course I also appreciate a couple members of our team getting a specific mention. :-) Well done Paul Alexander and Robby Ingebretsen. Keep it up Microsoft. But also keep in mind that much of your ecosystem still needs to be convinced that the investment in technology, team and workflow is worth it. They need to be convinced that users and consumers want a change. They want to love their software. Posted Dec 08 2007, 12:13 AM by Chad Brown, IdentityMine - Recognizing our team. Filed under: WPF, blendables, WPF Controls, Robby Ingebretsen, Love your software, Paul Alexander