Disclaimer: I don't want to start any fight against Google Fanboys. I'm just asking because I didn't find a direct answer to my question and maybe someone who already started working with it (or any googledev) can give advice.
Google recently announced Material Design Lite 1.0 and the project has been starred over 9k times on Github in a few days. I read some posts [1, 2] comparing MDL vs Twitter Bootstrap and I don't understand why anyone outside Google's headquarters should consider start working with it.
As they said:
“We challenged ourselves to create a visual language for our users that synthesizes the classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.” – Google Material Design Introduction
So, why are they releasing MDL? I just don't see the point on wasting time on learning/switching to a new frontend framework which offers much less than the existing ones. MDL looks different, modern and has nicer transitions. That's all? Is there any technical advantage?
The answer is, it depends on you.
Do you want Material Design at all? If so, MDL is well worth looking at. If you clearly don't want MD, then of course MDL isn't your cup of tea.
MDL is not a full framework. We aren't trying to cover every little thing you do in development. We provide Material Design components as closely as we can to the specification. You need to play around with it and see if it has what you need and whether it fits with your design goals.
The technical advantages... Depends on your wants. The component handler is a really cool way to handle modularizing your JS out. This however isn't close to the only option. There are plenty of other ways out there. So once again, you should play around and see if you like it.
Material Design Lite is very enticing for anyone building a site or application targeted at people who are in the Google-verse as it were. Speaking to Android developers/users? Chrome people? Then MDL is an enticing choice of libraries to apply to your site to make them feel at home. However, anyone else who simply wants to add Material Design to their stuff simply because they like it also would see a big benefit from MDL.
At the end of it all, MDL is a tool to help people who want MD implement it into their sites and applications. If you need to ask why you should care, then it seems MDL just isn't for you. That's fine. There is plenty of design choice out there to chose from. Just be consistent within each project you build.
Related
Why Neto/Shopify use their own templating language instead using any popular popular language ?
When you have your own templating language you have full freedom to implement or limit the logic of the language to meet your needs.
You don't need to wait for a third party update in order to implement new stuff or objects.
Why do you think Samsung creates clones of google apps on their phones? To create an experience that they can control in some way and if they like to change or add something to do so and not to wait for google to do so. ( and some other things but that is outside the scope of this question )
Since liquid was a Tobias Lütke creation ( co-founder and CEO at Shopify ) and now is an Open Source project it was written in specific fashion in order to meet specific needs and those needs seems to be fitting for Shopify and other platforms as well.
Being popular doesn't mean being better! This is the wrong way to go.
WordPress is the most popular platform, but is it the best one - NO! There are a lot of hole provided by plugins, poorly written themes and some times core issues. While it's easy to use and extendable it opens a lot of doors for issues if you don't manage it properly.
Beats by Dre is the most popular headphones and quite expensive, does they sound as good as the price tag put on them - NO! You can buy the same quality headphones ( even better ) for less, but you are paying for the brand.
Creating new languages in the coding world is ALWAYS a good thing It might be a chore to learn it if it becomes a standard but that means that it provided something that the other popular languages didn't and this pushes the coding world forward. It's a much better alternative than to be in a standstill like when we had only jQuery and there were no new stuffs to excite the developers.
Now we have so much different things that you can choose the direction you like to go and you won't be able to learn all of them even if you try, which is a great thing to a developer who likes to grow.
Conclusion:
Being different is OK as long as that fits your needs and you are not doing it just because it's popular to be different. ( so true IRL now too :D )
This reasoning from their Github Wiki lists some of the reasons. Why Liquid Templating Engine ?
Liquid is a template engine which was crafted for very specific
requirements
It has to have simple markup and beautiful results. Template engines which don't produce good looking results are no fun to use.
It needs to be non-evaling and secure. Liquid templates are made so that users can edit them. You don't want your server running code
that your users wrote.
It has to be stateless. The compile and render steps have to be separate, so that the expensive parsing and compiling can be done
once; later on, you can just render it by passing in a hash with local
variables and objects.
It needs to be able to style emails as well as HTML.
I want to do my final year project on augmented reality geo-localization,
Please tell me, from where to start ?
what technology to learn ?
what are recruitments to development this kind of application ?
If you want to perform Geo-Localisation and use GPS, I wouldn't recommend using Unity. It's arbitrary coordinate system can be a bit confusing and difficult to make an app using GPS that's reliable enough.
For Augmented Reality, you can't use anything like Oculus Rift or Google Cardboard, because those are Virtual Reality headsets and have no way of allowing the user to see the real world. Augmented Reality peripherals are things like Microsoft Hololens or Google Glass, neither of which are commercially available but there are cheap knock offs that are. AR can also of course be used on any mobile device, since they all have a camera built-in and chips powerful enough to process all the tracking data.
As for making an actual app, the best thing you can do is have a go. Analyse your market, see where the gaps are. If you want to make an app for a specific OS that isn't cross-platform, I would recommend learning some Objbective-C (for iOS) or Java (for Android), if you don't know any already.
For cross-platform, I would say something like Xamarin would be useful for making an app on both the major OSes, it was recently made free by Microsoft and you can essentially make one app in C# that works across all devices.
For the Augmented Reality itself, there are frameworks out there that can be used for your purposes. Things like Kudan, Vuforia, Wikitude, etc. Some of them offer free versions of their software. You can use these to deal with all the tracking and projection side of things so you don't have to go about creating your own AR engine.
The best thing to do is probably to sit down for a few minutes, or hours, and think about what you're going to do. Figure out what you want the end result to look like, then work backwards and think about the best way to achieve that goal. Eventually you will arrive at the language and engine you want to use to make your life as easy as possible and then you can get started learning from tutorials online and getting your app out into the world.
you can check my tutorial about geo-based augmented reality solution on Android: https://www.netguru.co/blog/augmented-reality-mobile-android
I have presented there the basics and how to start with simple implementation.
Well a good starting point would be to ask yourself few questions:
What type of devices, you plan to work on(oculus rift, google cardboard, Microsoft Hololens, web etc)?
Augmented Reality is achievable in both Web-Context and Application-context. Which route do you want to go for?
Depending on these questions, if you choose to do a normal application based on a device, then depending on the device(Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, Microsoft Hololens), you would need to grab their specific developer kits and learn how to develop apps using the documentation. For Oculus rift and Microsoft Hololens, you would need the respective Headsets inorder to make an app in that, but If it comes to google cardboard, all you need is you mobile phone with a good processing power.
There is another way to work on augmented reality applications, that is by doing a Web Application using some amazing javascript libraries like Awe.js, Three.js and JSARToolkit.
You can google about them and find out more.
One of the more accessible ways to learn Augmented reality is Project Tango.
Devices are around $500 last I checked and you can use a free version of Unity + Project Tango's free plugin:
https://developers.google.com/project-tango/
Which ever hardware you pick I'd recommend checking out Unity3D as it seems to be the platform of choice for AR/VR at the moment. There are other options... this just provides the most flexibility based on all of the platforms it supports.
Side note: I have no affiliation with Project Tango and am in fact working on another platform... but it isn't as accessible at the moment.
I work in a small organization that has built an enterprise SaaS solution. Up until this point our workflows have had no programmatic interface. We're moving to a model that will allow for an end user to do anything programmatically that can be done in the UI. I'm looking for suggestions in terms of the language/framework that you would use to build that programmatic layer.
From an organizational perspective I would like the current UI team to also have ownership of the API. That team is familiar with PHP, Rails, and Javascript. Our current back-end code is written in Scala. I'm leaning toward not doing the APIs in Scala because it doesn't seem like the right tool for the job and the lack of subject matter expertise around it on the UI team.
From a functionality perspective most of the APIs will be fairly simple database operations (CRUD) with perhaps some simplistic business logic applied on top (search for example).
I'm a bit intrigued by using Node.js for this as everyone on the team is really strong with Javascript. That being said I don't just want to hop on the semi-new technology bandwagon. Because it is enterprise software, unit testing frameworks, reusability, and extendability are all important considerations as well.
Any suggestions?
I realize this question was about technology options, but there's a fundamental concern that seems really important to call out:
From an organizational perspective I would like the current UI team to also have ownership of the API.
While this sounds like a logical approach, it may not work out well unless you're UI team is made up of really solid engineers. SaaS API development is arguably one of the most challenging aspects of modern software design. A great API will make everyone's lives easier, while a poor API will bring your system to its knees and leave you completely clueless as to why.
As a quick example, if you don't solve the end user's needs in the right way, you're likely to force a number of n+1 problems on them (and thus, on you.)
There is a bunch of great material out there about how to design great APIs and even more about the pitfalls of designing a bad one. Generally speaking, most of the UI devs I've worked with, particularly ones that are only familiar with scripting languages, are not people I would entrust to API design. Instead I would utilize them as customers (in a Scrum sense) who guide the design by describing end-user needs.
I faced something like this on a previous project, where we ended up going with a combo of Esper and our own DSL written using ANTLR 3.0. Our biggest concern with using a fully funcional runtime, was sandboxing the user's code.
That said, I think Node.JS would be one of the easier ones to sandbox and it fits your needs. Maybe using something like this: http://gf3.github.com/sandbox/ or looking into Cloud9's code to see how they keep things safe. I also like that with Node.js you could give your users a pretty niffy editor using Ace.
Also check out this post: How to run user-submitted scripts securely in a node.js sandbox?
I maintain in-house business software for a living. Technologies included here are Java, Struts, Spring MVC, jsp, wicket, and a few others. I think it's time to branch out and learn something new.
I am hoping to show myself with a side project that writing code can, in fact, be fun (in some plane of the universe), and that I haven't wasted the past few years of my life doing something I can never love or have fun doing.
I'm thinking of having a fantasy-sport style web site - obviously much, much smaller with regards to features and all that. I was hoping I could get some recommendations for the newest or cleanest frameworks that will allow me to accomplish such a project. My goals are to work on following a real development process instead of just hacking a bunch of crap into an already crappy application on a daily basis. Also I will strive to follow best practices and create good, clean, understandable code that I don't shudder at the thought of having to modify. It's hard to do this at work, because the software I work on has already been developed by 50 guys from various continents that never took the time to design anything before jumping into coding.
I would need a simple database to store users and their picks for each event. Also at my job, the login security is all handled by another group completely. Do people usually write their own login systems from scratch, or are there open source utilities for that as well? I'd be interested in those, as my site will need to have a user login system, and be secure.
I had ruby and rails installed on my computer the last time I conjured up the motivation for this idea, but that was nixed by a hard drive crash. I figured before I just jumped straight to rails for this idea, that I would get a few other opinions off stack overflow to see if people liked something else that I didn't know about.
Also, if anyone has any good resources for how to think about OO design, I could brush up on that as well. I'm looking for anything that will help me to just think about the design from the start and how to get my thoughts into a diagram. I'd like it not to focus so much on patterns and other principles as much as just how to get started and actually put my thoughts in a professional document that I can use to build my project from. I tried to practice this prior to a card game that I wrote, and it got way too complicated way too fast, and the results ended up being not so great.
I’m more familiar with Django, although like you, the only frameworks I’ve really used are the Java/Struts/Spring/JSP, etc. The automatically generated administration interface in Django is amazing coming from these, and it comes with its own authentication system too.
Unless you’re especially predisposed against Python, I think you should give it a go.
Ruby on Rails, Python on Django, PHP on (not sure -- maybe Zend? or CakePHP?), are probably the most popular frameworks if I understand correctly that you want to learn a new language. If I misunderstood you, and you'd rather stick with Java, GWT seems pretty cool -- it's the only real way to avoid "explicitly" writing Javascript (if you DO want to learn and use some Javascript, I personally am in love with Dojo, but jQuery is substantially more popular: those are two good popular frameworks you should consider, though there are others of course, like for all languages I mentioned so far).
One advantage of picking Python and Django is that they work particularly well with Google App Engine (and with Dojo, too, thanks to the cool dojango project!) -- GAE supports JVM too, now, but it's supported Python for a much longer time and the Python side of it is more solid and complete at this time. So, if that's the technology stack you choose, you get to develop and deploy for free, on highly scalable infrastructure, at least until your app gets more than a few million page views per month -- and you really minimize your system adminsitration hassles, all you do is basically to code and write one simple configuration file.
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Human factors design (meeting psychological needs in UI design)
What should a developer know about user interface design, usability and less technical aspects of human computer interaction?
What knowledge of usage scenarios, user behavior patterns and the psychology of user to computer interaction should we embrace to design effective software that helps users solve their problems in a natural and uncomplicated way without building barriers and creating obstacles?
There is much more to design of software than building the architecture, implementing the requirements and creating a nice-looking interface. A beautiful interface may not necessarily be useful and effective, and vice versa, an ugly software utility can become a favorite tool for many users. What at least basic knowledge should a decent developer or designer have to smooth the user experience?
Please focus on one issue per answer, describe a problem, bring examples, how the user experience is impaired and what are the ways to address the situation.
I will start:
PROBLEM: Interfaces with lots of controls and options immediately on one screen can be overwhelming to users. They will have to waste time looking through all of them trying to locate the one option they need. They'll also get distracted in the process, see one more feature, go there to learn about it and maybe read help to see if it can solve their problems, then another one and so on until they are completely lost.
EXAMPLE: As a good example I will cite the Microsoft Word (as well as other Office applications) of pre-2007 version. The sheer amount of menus and options has always scared me. I managed to remember where were the options I needed most often but that's it. Everything extra, I tend to google for things I need to learn where this particular feature is located in the forest of options.
SOLUTION: Hide out all extra options behind a few menus and submenus logically structured for the user to be able to locate them through the process of logical thinking. The 2007 redesign has obviously taken the problem into account by grouping the options into tabs. I found many new options I needed without googling but just by thinking where it could belong and looking there. Not that it has always worked, but the improvement can be felt.
Now, what are your ideas?
Useful and effective interfaces are beautiful. Look at them as a UI designer, not as an art major. :-)
Simplicity; as few choices as can accomplish the needs.
Convention; follow patterns the users are already familiar with.
Observation; watch the users, and smooth the places they have problems.
Gentleness; write human-readable errors. Don't upset the users.
Consistency; do things the same way everywhere in the application. Have one person write all of your text, or write a standard that text must meet.
Learn to listen.
Users will tell what they want but not in the words that you're used to. Socialize, sit down, take your time and listen. Watch them work, ask questions. Bring up some ideas "How would you like...?" and listen to the replies. Don't assume that something would be better for them, ask them. Don't force them down a certain path because it's more simple to code.
Interfaces with lots of controls and
options immediately on one screen can
be overwhelming to users.
GMail has this slogan "Search, don't sort". The same principle can be applied to user interfaces. As you mentioned, users are already doing this themselves by googling for features.
Now the next step is to build support for feature search right into the application. Hit a keyboard shortcut, type a few keywords, and click on the feature you want to use. The IDE Insight feature in the upcoming RAD Studio 2010 does exactly that.
Problem: user interfaces often don't have a 1-to-1 correspondence to the domain model:
There are communication problems
because programmers talk about the
hidden domain model while users talk
about the GUI.
There are maintenance problems
because users are constrained by the
task-based user interface. They regularly need
to ask for "a new screen to do this" even
if the domain model may already
support it.
Solution: the naked objects architectural design pattern. To take this to the extreme you might even generate the GUI automatically from the domain model.
I know the question is a bit old, but I'm surprised to see that no one mentioned Joel Spolsky's excellent article : User Interface Design For Programmers. It's definitely something every developer should read. There are no especially brilliant or original ideas in it, it's mostly common sense, but it did open my eyes on some not so obvious points...
I suggest reading "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman.
I use to think asthetics were useless until I tried to sell my house. Sturdy foundation, 3 brms, 2 baths, 2 car garage, fenced yard, blah, blah blah - until I got rid of the stink from my 3 dogs nobody would touch it.
The more visually pleasing the app/site is, the more chance it will get used. Now a user will give it a try and determine if it does anything they want. Finally, how usable is it? This is a point when you will probably get more feedback.
Just like the house: get rid of the clutter, clean everything, start with a general color pallette and let the user add the crazy colors if the want them.
If you really want your eyes opened, take a course in Human Factors Engineering.
I have worked at a pharmaceutical company for the past two years and I think that the design of the interface is nearly as important as the functionality. Watching users struggle with old complicated legacy code is the primary reason for re-designing it. Functionality is seldom the primary reason for redeveloping code or replacing it.
Usability studies
Watching people use your code
Extreme programming (Delivering preview code intermittently throughout design process)
Are all essential to delivering code that not only meets the users needs but makes them happy and productive. At the end of the day, programs will only be used if they make you happy and productive.