Tomcat Manager for Mac OS X 0.9 released

Download and enjoy, it is bundled and works like a standard Mac OS X app. The UI is not so nice right now but we have major changes planned. The core functionality is working fine however. We have also considered porting it to various Linux flavours just for fun (would require little change).

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Tomcat Manager for Mac OS X released to the public

Tomat Manager for Mac OS X is a minimalistic application for starting and stopping Tomcat on (you guessed it) Mac OS X I started developing it internally at Knowledge Values for business people who needed to use Tomcat for demoing purposes. Instead of typing obscure commands in the terminal the application would allow them to start and stop the server with the click of a button. Knowledge Values was nice enough to release the source on Source Forge. My colleague Leonard van Driel has joined me and we intend to continue developing the application but hopefully we will get some help from the nice people in the open source community.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/tomcatmanager/

I'll post a runnable version of the application shortly which doesn't require subversion and Eclipse. The shebang is released under GPL 3.0.

Back from Design by Fire 2009

Just got back from Design by Fire 2009 in Utrecht. It was great fun. The two definitive highlights were Robert Hoekman Jr's talk on Interaction Design Framework and James Box and Cennydd Bowles from Clearleft talk on The Music of Interaction Design.

Robert Hoekman Jr. talked about how how Usability testing doesn't provide reliable results when done with small samples and that Design Patterns only solve micro-problems. His solution is instead focussing on bigger sets of design problems by grouping Design Patterns into bigger proven Interaction Frameworks, e.g. the pagination pattern might be part of the Catalogue Framework. It was quite thought provoking and a good incentive to by his and Jared Spool's book Web anatomy. He backed up his thoughts through the results of Rolf Molich's Comparative Usability Testing

James Box and Cennydd Bowles talked about using music as a metaphor for interaction design and user experience. Music shares many aspects with UX such as it's asynchronous nature and it's social codification. It think the talk was more of an experience than something to be retold. Hopefully someone filmed it.

10/GUI Multi-touch user interface

Redefining the way we interact with computers is a pretty ambitious task as far as things go, but that's just what R. Clayton Miller is looking to do with his so-called 10/GUI project, and he may just be onto something. Miller begins with the notion that the traditional mouse-based interface lacks the "interaction bandwidth" afforded by multitouch interfaces, and that touch-enabled desktops (or laptops) are inherently problematic since they can't be used for prolonged periods of time -- even a flat surface will do a number on your neck if you use it all day. To solve that problem, Miller proposes separating the touch surface from the display and placing it below the keyboard in the form of a large, hybrid capacative / resistive touch panel. That's just the beginning, however, and Miller has also devised a whole new interface that makes use of all your fingers, and a new linear means of displaying windows that strikes a balance ease of use and the ability to manage numerous applications. Of course, there are some drawbacks -- you'd still likely pull out a mouse for Photoshop or a marathon Left 4 Dead session -- but we'd certainly be curious to see how this would play out in practice. Head on past the break for a full video overview.

[Via Slashdot]

Continue reading 10/GUI interface looks to redefine the touch-enabled desktop

Filed under: Desktops, Software

10/GUI interface looks to redefine the touch-enabled desktop originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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My girlfriend has an Android, I have an old SE

My girlfriend picked up her new HTC Magic yesterday. It's not activated yet so she hasn't really touched it. I, on the other hand, have been playing with it ever since. It is by no means an iPhone when it comes to UX but on the other hand it doesn't tie you down with a 2 year plan. There are many minor things that bogs down the UX, the weird effect when the phone is turned from being held horizontally to vertically and vice versa for instance. On the iPhone there is a nice graphical effect but on the HTC Magic the image is blurred for a second and the phone freezes then it shows the screen in the new mode.

I do feel that the iPhone is restrictive in the sense that I can only get my apps from the Apple App Store and that applications needs to be approved by Apple's seemingly random committee before release there. The Android suffers from none of those things, however (which was discussed at the last IxDA Café) the vast majority of people probably don't care (those remaining 80% which we are actually designing for according to HFI).

I did write a little application for it just to try it out. Sadly the development environment does suffer from the same problem that most Java based development systems suffer from - the lack of a proper graphical development environment for creating the UI. You can specify the UI an XML but that is not what I would call usable. There is a program that is called DroidDraw but it is by no means Interface Builder. The default environment for developing applications is Eclipse and there is nothing wrong with Eclipse for writing code but I switch to NetBeans whenever I have to design a user interface for a Java application.

Another problem is that that for being a touchscreen device it has way to many buttons. The way that Apple solved it with gestures is simply a lot more pleasurable to use. In a way it makes me think of the third generation iPods with the row of buttons on top of the scroll wheel. Simply put, there was a reason that apple placed the buttons inside the wheel in the following iteration. However Apple is in an unique position since they have control over both hardware and software.

Now that I ranted on about the things that I didn't like I must admit that my experience was positive overall especially considering the pricetag. I am actually contemplating buying one myself since I do not think my company has any plans of upgrading me from my old SE K850 to something modern.

UX Cocktail Hours Amsterdam

UX Cocktail Hours Amsterdam:

"This is a group for User Experience practitioners(**) in and around Amsterdam who would like to attend (one or more) UX Cocktail Hours in the neighborhood. The goal of the cocktail hours is to get together informally, share news and ideas through short presentations, meet other UX practitioners, chat about work, the weather, "koetjes en kalfjes" (chit-chat), and have a drink (or two). Most Cocktail Hours these days are held at the offices of a local UX department and the drinks and some snacks are usually sponsored."

I missed the last one but this evening a managed to secure a seat. It is going to be an interesteing evening filled with UX/UI an possibly beers at Fabrique. Visit the Yahoo group

New Musical Romance: Peter Fox

German Music at it's best! I first came across this when I went back to Berlin i February for a short weekend. How wouldn't stop three Swedish men in a small car driving from Amsterdam to Berlin for a one day visit? Back then "Schwartz zu Blau" played non stop on the telly.

Retro Gaming Museum

French Government Lobbied To Establish Retro Gaming Museum:

Now there's an idea we can all agree with!

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