I'm a designer primarily and programmer secondarily so I'm not usually knee deep in the code. I am trying to design my wireframes with the components (and therefore CSS attributes and values) that the developers will end up using while implementing Angular-Material.
The problem is, Ang-Mat has 0 documentation on the actual CSS specs that create the components. I have to inspect and parse through source files to find out just a simple hover state color value for a button. The advice I'm given is to go to Material documentation.
In the Material documentation though, for example, a "Text Button" has padding of "0px 8px" but in Angular-Material the padding for all buttons (with text at least) is "0px 16px"...
This is just ONE inconsistency I've discovered and it is immensely frustrating. Can anyone help me figure out the best way to get the CSS specs that Ang-Mat ACTUALLY uses?
Also, why is it so complex to adjust simple things like padding? I design for enterprise applications so having things like a form field be blown out to over 60px tall is just so unusable for my designs, but my developers keep coming to ME to figure out how to style the components, but Ang-Mat documentation only advises adjusting color and font values when customizing components....
If anyone has a tip on a better framework for enterprise solutions, please let me know. I'm reaching the end of my wits here with everything on Earth being mobile first and designed for online stores and social media.
Just the fact that so many people think "Enterprise UX" is just UX done by a corporation is so frustrating. HELP!
Material spec on a Text Button
Ang-Mat spec for the same button
Related
Hello I am building forms over and over in iPhone and iPad apps:
Custom UITableViewCells for labels with input
Localization for labels, placeholder text and section headers
Validation that marks the cells red or something and does not allow "Submit" if form is incomplete
Clicking in the cell activates the editable text box
Next / previous buttons
Reliable across devices, orientations, iOS versions
I can't imagine I'm the only one doing this. Is there a mature framework or something that can drop in and use? Could you please comment on how you use this library with designs other than vanilla UITableViews with your own colors etc.?
Take a look at IBAForms - an open source project from from Itty Bitty Apps. I haven't used it yet myself, however I believe it does most of what you want, except for validation. Here is the github page: IBA Forms
It hasn't been maintained in a while, but if you're looking for a forms library - it's mature and works. At the very least, it could be the starting point for something you take further.
Update: There is also Chris Miles' EZForm library, which is very nice.
Update #2: Have also started checking out QuickDialog, which seems to be very popular.
Update #3: Nick Lockwood has created one called FXForms
Update #4: Martin Barreto has created one called XLForm
I don't know if this counts as an answer, but i use Sensible Cocoa - Sensible TableView (STV) for this purpose a lot. It's not a "forms" framework (on top of UITableView) as such, but it can be used for this purpose in a very flexible way. It still requires some coding to build a full-fledged form but the UITableView/UITableViewController boilerplate code is reduced to a minimum. Unfortunately the developers bumped the price tag quite high with version 3.0, so i'm actually looking for a STV replacement right now. (I'd stick with STV if it wasn't for the price!)
I don't know of anything that combines all those features, but I recently open-sourced my validation library PMValidation on github, which I used developing the iPhone app Imprints. PMValidation comes with many basic types suitable for validating forms, and in fact that's what I originally built it for.
Using the PMValidationManager class you can easily listen to UITextViews or UITextFields, and update whatever graphical widgets you want via notifications. It's very modular and easily extendable, should you have more unique needs. It's under the MIT license.
There seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there. It might be that support has increased recently, or changes to adobe.com/air have made some information difficult to find - but I can't track down a definitive list of things to avoid.
I know that actionscript won't run in loaded SWFs, I know that some people say that filters and blendmodes and halo components won't work. I've also read many posts saying they will (at least that blendmodes will, and that halo will run, but slowly so still use spark)
I have a large amount of AS3 code to plan for upgrading to work on iOS, but at the moment I have no idea what things will break (or what things will break when those things have been fixed!)
Is there a list of unsupported APIs, or iOS dos and don'ts?
Thanks
:S
First, yes. Externally loaded SWF's will not run. You can however embed SWF's/SWC's into your project and include them inside of your package.
As far as Flex components, stay away from Halo. You should use Flex 4.6 and stick to components with mobile skins. I recommend downloading Tour de Flex http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/tourdeflex.html to get an idea of whats available.
As far as blend modes go, I'm not really sure. I haven't used them in mobile yet. However filters are supported but they are expensive. For drop shadows on rectangles there is something called RectangularDropShadow. This is actually a component and therefor less expensive. However it can only be used on rectangular groups.
You should have access all of the AIR API's. You will however be restricted when using some of File related classes since I don't believe you can leave your Appliaction Storage Directory.
One big performance tip I can give is to use AS3 over MXML whenever possible, ESPECIALLY when creating item renderers. Use BitmapImage over Image whenever possible, again especially in item renderers. Use cacheAsBitmap whenever you have images that don't change often. And stay away from any Flex component that doesn't have a mobile skin.
You may also want to read up on View and destruction policies.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex-mobile-development-tips-tricks-pt1.html
This link also has some more performance tips
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex-mobile-performance-checklist.html
I was looking into creating iOS-apps (especially for the iPad) with the Adobe-Flex framework. It looks very promising to code apps this way.
Is it possible to create own controls/widgets? In the far future I might want to create my own kind of gantt-calender or whatever. Is something like this possible and are there any good tutorials/book out there?
Thanks in advance!
UPDATE: I want to create iOS Components that I can use in Flex. Controls, that are not aviable by default in Flex. Is that possible? By derivating or something?
UPDATE 2: In the meanwhile I found FlexLib to be useful. How hard is it to create stuff like this on your own? Especially for mobile devices. Are there any good tutorials, books, etc. out there?
Yes, you can create your own Controls in Flex. They are commonly called Components. I suggest you start by reading the Flex Docs on how to do so. There are also plenty of other resources out there. One is a screencast series that I created for The Flex Show. Here is episode 1.
You had asked:
How hard is it to create stuff like this on your own?
It depends on what the component wants to do. The commercial components we've built at www.flextras.com have taken from three to twelve months to build. Our Calendar is built from scratch, but most of the other components extend existing Flex Framework components.
The Flextras stuff are architected for reuse. A "single use" component for a specific app can be built in 1 hour [and up].
Once again, the purpose of a component will affect how long it takes to build.
#chiffre
Ok, maybe I am guessing wrong but "iOS controls" makes me think not to "flex controls".
Anyway with Flex 4.5.1 you can add any controls you want, the only thing that you must count (and this counts a lot) is performance.
Read especially about item renderers since scrolling list is not so fast on iOS and how you can make use of cacheAsBitmap.
Also keep in mind to always use light controls when needed if not extend base controls like UIComponent or Sprite and not Button if you just need a rectangle.
Here are some links
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/06/adobe-air-2-7-now-available-ios-apps-4x-faster.html
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/mobile-development-flex-flashbuilder.
I am looking to build my own component and have no idea where to begin. I have some Delphi books but they are old and outdated, and am looking for some recommendations on tutorials/books to help me do this. The component will be pretty simple, basically 2 labels and an image. I need hundreds of these in an array, so I thought a component would be the best route. The text will adjust based on width etc, and have some mouseover events. So basically, where do I begin?
I am using Delphi 2009, this will be a win32 app.
Thanks!
You can order Ray Konopka's book Dev. Custom Delphi 3 Components - PDF for 25$. It's a specialized book on the subject and very good for a beginner too.
The main principles behind developing components is:
Whether the component is visual or
not (Does it need a Canvas to paint on)
Does it need a window handle or not (visual or non-visual)
Once you answered those questions you can look at Delphi's source code for examples.
As far as I know, Delphi Component Design, by Danny Thorpe, is still the best book on the subject. Component design hasn't changed significantly in the last 15 years, so whatever books you have probably aren't as outdated as you think. There are three things to keep in mind while reading older references:
Names of certain units have changed. There's no DsgnIDE anymore, for example. It's DesignIDE instead.
Design-time code is strictly separated from run-time code now. This means you can't use DesignIDE in your component's unit, or else you're barred from using run-time packages. Older Delphi versions didn't have this technical restriction (although it's always been a legal restriction), so old code examples you find might need to change a little bit.
Strings are Unicode now, so as with all old code examples you find, there might be some invalid assumptions about character sizes that you'll need to recognize.
The biggest obstacle to writing components is that you're expected to use various protected members of the classes you descend from, but those frequently aren't documented, so you'll have to be much more willing to go read the VCL source code for examples of how various methods are used.
The easiest way to do what you want is to create a new form. Drop the labels and image and arrange them the way you want; if it suits your need, put them on a panel so they can be moved around as a unit.
Select all the components you want included (and including the panel if you chose to use one), and then click the Component item on the IDE's main menu, and select the "Create Component Template". (It's only enabled if you have selected components on the current form.) A dialog will appear asking you for a name for the new component, and the Component Palette page on which you want it to appear.
Take a look at this article, which describes how to build new components made up of a group of existing components.
Don't worry about your books being old.
Just about everything from the old days still works fine and what little doesn't is generally due to name conflicts or the addition of Unicode in the 2009 version.
They aren't Microsoft, they don't go breaking old code without good reason. In fact, take some code from the old DOS days--assuming it doesn't try to manipulate the screen it's likely to run with minimal fixup.
Don't worry about your old books! Since v3, Delphi hasn't changed much. This is why most of the programs compiled with D3 still compiles in D7 or even newer versions. And if it doesn't compile, probably you need to change a line or two, here and then.
I would recommend you to search other VERY simple components on Internet and see how they are made. Then make your own and post it here. Let other take a look at it and suggest improvements or spot bugs.
About your control's design:
1) maybe you DON'T need those two labels. You can just paint the text directly on the image. If you have lots of those components as you say, you may save a little bit of memory.
2) you may NOT want to have lots and lots and lots of images loading in one form. The overhead may be significant. What you can do is to load the pictures ONLY in images that are visible on screen - and you will put on screen ONLY 5-10 images (or whatever number of images you can show on the form without going out of screen). As the user scrolls down, you keep the same same TImage controls on screen but you load new (next) images in them.
3) You may not want to store labels and TImage in an array (I suppose it is an TImage because it seems you want to show them on the screen else you won't need labels - you need to explain your problem in more details if I got it wrong). But you can store a TBitmap and the text (that you want to display in labels) instead.
So, you may need to calculate how much CPU/disk overhead your hundreds of controls will create and how much memory they need. If you stay well under 1GB and the loading time is under 10 seconds, then it is relatively ok. IF not, you may want to think about your control's design before starting to actually implement it.
Hope this was helpful.
See ya.
I am working on BlackBerry user interface. But the BlackBerry UIs are less attractive compared to Android UI. I want to make my BlackBerry UI more attractive like in Android.
#Dave Markle is right, this is a fairly general question. Assuming that by 'attractive' you mean 'UI Controls that look better than the default' then you'll have to do a lot of custom control work. More an more in the BlackBerry industry it seems that leading applications are doing almost entirely custom UIs.
I won't touch on specifics of graphic design, that seems outside the scope of SO, but a good place to start is to get a graphics designer to put together some conceptual screens, and then as a developer your job will be to build controls to match that.
There are some tutorials on the net about how to get started with that. I've written a few - "BlackBerry UI - A simple custom field" is a good basic introduction on how to make a custom control.
And a correction to #Dave's comment - you can antialias text on the BlackBerry - though it's not well documented. For example, a 9 pt subpixel antialiased bold font, derived from the default system font:
Font.getDefault().derive(Font.BOLD, 9 Ui.UNITS_pt, Font.ANTIALIAS_SUBPIXEL, 0);
Well, after a couple of beers a lot of things look more attractive... ;-)
But seriously, I think you're going to run into some fundamental limitations with the platform you have. The iPhone, Pre, and (I guess?) the Android all have dedicated graphics hardware which can antialias text and perform complex animations with relative ease. Most blackberries don't.
I generally suggest to people that when they do a design, that they try to stay within the boundaries of the device they're designing for. For example, if you're writing an app for Windows XP, don't try to make it look like it might on a Mac. Stay with the style of the best-of-breed applications on the particular platform you're designing for. Maybe this answer isn't helpful, I don't know... But it was a pretty general question.