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Technology

Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality

Added on 19 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Many people enter the inside-out world of augmented reality (AR) by doing something as ordinary as visiting a major city like New York and trying to get to a local friend’s favorite pizza shop, somewhere deep in Brooklyn, via public transportation. Standing in Times Square on a summer evening, they might hold up a new smart phone and pan it slowly around the Square to see a pointer to the nearest subway entrance overlaid on their phone’s video display of the buildings around them.” (Joe Lamantia – UXmatters)

Document Design Matters

Added on 10 August 2009 Peter Bogaards
“The classical approach to the data aspect of system design distinguishes conceptual, logical, and physical models. Models of each type or level are governed by metamodels that specify the kinds of concepts and constraints that can be used by each model; in most cases metamodels are accompanied by languages for describing models. For example, in database design, conceptual models usually conform to the Entity-Relationship (ER) metamodel (or some extension of it), the logical model maps ER models to relational tables and introduces normalization, and the physical model handles implementation issues such as possible denormalizations in the context of a particular database schema language. In this modeling methodology, there is a single hierarchy of models that rests on the assumption that one data model spans all modeling levels and applies to all the applications in some domain. The ‘one true model’ approach assumes homogeneity, but this does not work very well for the Web. The Web as a constantly growing ecosystem of heterogeneous data and services has challenged a number of practices and theories about the design of IT landscapes. Instead of being governed by ‘one true model’ used by everyone, the underlying assumption of top-down design, Web data and services evolve in an uncoordinated fashion. As a result, a fundamental challenge with Web data and services is matching and mapping local and often partial models that not only are different models of the same application domain, but also differ, implicitly or explicitly, in their associated metamodels.” (Erik Wilde and Robert J. Glushko)

Service Modeling Language 1.1

Added on 8 July 2009 Peter Bogaards
“This specification defines the Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 (SML) used to model complex services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. SML uses XML Schema and Schematron. (…) The Service Modeling Language provides a rich set of constructs for creating models of complex services and systems. Depending on the application domain, these models may include information such as configuration, deployment, monitoring, policy, health, capacity planning, target operating range, service level agreements, and so on. Models provide value in several important ways.” (W3C)

Architecting User Assistance Topics for Reuse: Case Examples in DITA

Added on 26 May 2009 Peter Bogaards
“Single sourcing and its pragmatic flip side, reuse, remind me a bit of the early days of the personal computer. Everybody wanted one, but many weren’t sure what they would do with a computer if they got one. Even among seasoned user assistance architects, single sourcing and reuse remain elusive concepts. I recently heard someone at an STC chapter meeting define single sourcing as producing the same document as both a Help file and as a PDF file. Basically true, but one would hope there is more to it than that.” – (Mike Hughes – UXmatters)

XML Fever

Added on 25 June 2008 Peter Bogaards
“The Extensible Markup Language (XML), which just celebrated its 10th birthday 4, is one of the big success stories of the Web. Apart from basic Web technologies (URIs, HTTP, and HTML) and the advanced scripting driving the Web 2.0 wave, XML is by far the most successful and ubiquitous Web technology. With great power, however, comes great responsibility, so while XML’s success is well earned as the first truly universal standard for structured data, it must now deal with numerous problems that have grown up around it. These are not entirely the fault of XML itself, but instead can be attributed to exaggerated claims and ideas of what XML is and what it can do.” (Erik Wilde and Robert J. Glushko)

XProc: An XML Pipeline Language

Added on 7 May 2008 Peter Bogaards
“An XML Pipeline specifies a sequence of operations to be performed on zero or more XML documents. Pipelines generally accept zero or more XML documents as input and produce zero or more XML documents as output. Pipelines are made up of simple steps which perform atomic operations on XML documents and constructs similar to conditionals, iteration, and exception handlers which control which steps are executed.” (W3C)

Form Follows Function and Achieving Thereof

Added on 26 March 2008 Peter Bogaards
“Forms can be dreadfully tricky to style and structure properly. Several articles that are out there focus on best practises for building forms using HTML en CSS. This article focusses in a non technical fashion on the use of meaningful nomenclature and how form semantics relate to elements that current markup standards have to offer. It may help you recognise structural patterns and to compose forms properly.” (Cornelis Govert Adriaan Kolbach – cornae.org)

The future of XML

Added on 8 February 2008 Peter Bogaards
“The wheels of progress turn slowly, but turn they do. The crystal ball might be a little hazy, but the outline of XML’s future is becoming clear. The exact time line is a tad uncertain, but where XML is going isn’t. XML’s future lies with the Web, and more specifically with Web publishing.” (Elliotte R. Harold – IBM developersWork)

The myth of content and presentation separation

Added on 16 August 2007 Peter Bogaards
“One of the hallmark attributes of web standards-based design is the concept that proper use of semantic (X)HTML and CSS completely abstracts the presentation of a site from its content. One key real-world benefit of this separation is that come redesign time, one only needs to change or replace the CSS stylesheet, and needn’t lay so much as a finger upon the hallowed grounds we call markup. I’m here to say that this mantra isn’t much more than a fairy tale.” (Jeff Croft)

Ajax and the Old World

Added on 9 March 2007 Peter Bogaards
“Today, complex layout methods have made it possible to borrow from interaction patterns of desktop applications, including drop down menu bars, expanding trees and tabs. It’s this exact inevitable shift of desktop application design patterns to the page metaphor that has more than often led to confusion amongst both web designers and end users. In this era of AJAX en RIAs, the possibilities for user interface designers have become infinite. Hence the question arises: Have all of these developments actually led to an improved user experience?” (Cornelis Kolbach – cornae)

Form-Content-Essence: Designing Markup for Information Representation

Added on 8 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“To define a web-format that addresses existing problems and requirements, and will last, needs a lot of work and consultation. XHTML2 is close to ready now, and will go to last call this year we expect. XForms is already in widespread use. Even if XHTML2 is not available in browsers, it is excellent as a content language that can be transformed on the fly. Several large companies are already doing this. (Steven Pemberton)

12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards

Added on 4 October 2006 Peter Bogaards
“#1: Everything you know is wrong… sort of; #2: It’s not going to look exactly the same everywhere unless you’re willing to face some grief… and possibly not even then; #3: You will be forced to choose between the ideal and the practicable; #4: Perfection is not when there’s nothing to add, but when there’s nothing to take away; #5: Some sites are steaming heaps of edge cases; #6: Longer lead times are inevitable; #7: Coherent and sensible source order is the best of Good Things; #8: Descendant selectors are the beginning and end of genuinely powerful CSS rules; #9: In the real world, stylesheet hacks will get your project across the finish line; #10: Working around rendering bugs is like playing Whack-a-Mole; #11: When you’re drowning in CSS layout problems, make sure of the width and height of the water, float without putting up a struggle, and get clear of the problems; #12: Background images will make the difference between the plain and the tastefully embellished.” (Ben Henick – A List Apart)

AJAX Seminar

Added on 1 August 2006 Peter Bogaards
“By now there isn’t a software developer on earth who isn’t aware of the collection of programming technologies known as AJAX. But you can’t bank awareness. So, how in concrete terms can you take advantage in your own projects of this newly popular way of delivering online content to users without reloading an entire page? How soon can you be monetizing AJAX?” – including a webcast by JJG. (SYS-CON Media)