Here at NeuroSpeech, we figured out the problem with forms based business applications that frustrates developers and change management is not only time consuming but its quite boring job to do.

Although WPF/Silverlight does offer very customizable UI designing platform but when we go on the field to develop ling of business applications, we realize that initial development hardly takes any time but maintenance is very difficult.

AtomForm has been designed to offer a standard rich business class user interface along with various advanced validation methods and the change management is very easy as “AtomFlexibleGrid” offers simple row layout concept that is offered nowhere today.

There is lot of buzz about LOB Business Form Layout for new platforms WPF & Silverlight, both capable of displaying rich content and extend functionalities of existing components so better then ever before.

XAML is better then earlier Rapid Form designers where you need to drag and drop within an IDE and the layout management becomes so complicated because no IDE is perfect. I remember upgrading from Visual Studio 2005 to 2008 and now 2010, most of our ASP.NET and WinForm projects would require lot of effort to work seamlessly in newer versions. The worst of all is, modifying layout without IDE becomes way to difficult.

In this presentation, I collected all important aspects of Business Form that we encounter in our day to day life and the complexity of forms make life terrible when clients request changes that takes hours on any IDE that sure breaks lot of code graphs and makes existing working system as completely useless code junk.

In UI Atoms, we at NeuroSpeech tried make set of components that are very easy to operate while going through tough change management.

Looking at the innovation driving inside Silverlight, it is getting more attention then the former WPF. However having very similar syntax and .NET as base platform, both WPF and Silverlight are very different in approach, design and use. Today lot of developers live in dilemma of WPF vs Silverlight and it has now become a great trade off as similar to speed vs size.

Lets compare the need and features of both and make the trade off very easy to understand.

History of Microsoft Development Platform

We all loved Visual Basic, what did it provide? a rapid development platform to make quick business applications. By business applications I mean, the one to track your purchases, your activities which are just probably relational database and reports. Business Application makers didn’t have to worry about device drivers, system services, hardware and component versions.

Visual Basic provided very thin layer of application development for rapid turnaround time of small scale but huge in demand business applications. These applications require very less programming language expertise but more of business expertise. But it had limitations, you could not create a huge resource intensive application like CAD programs, Media editing programs, servers, games etc.

On other hand we had Visual C++, a huge development framework with possibility to do almost everything that was possible on Windows Operating System. Where you could fulfill need of any program, be it CAD, games, media editing, or servers etc.

But the development time required was very high, performance was great and the intelligence required to create system applications was very high. Getting talent to build such applications weren’t easy and even it is not easy today, because you need real in depth knowledge of how every part of the system functions. There is more dependency upon device drivers, component versions and there was no drag and drop.

Apart from any other platforms existed so far, Microsoft clearly and distinctly divided development into two major categories. Rapid vs System, or Native vs Thin applications.

Evolution of .NET

Ever since c# came into existence, we started seeing quick shift from tedious MFC/COM/ATL to c#, because all technologies were simply extension of c/c++ and each needed separate runtime to exist. Even still today, some of my components are written in ATL/COM and compiling them in newer version of Visual Studio is always pain. Compilation time is huge.

Where else, .NET based project took less time to compile, even the 1.0 versions are still in use and still in good shape.

Earlier it was expected that it will only replace the Visual Basic segment of programming, but somehow all devs started liking it and preferred it as an alternative to ATL/COM/MFC as its native capability and speed provided easy development and quick turnaround.

Windows Forms did provide an alternative to Visual Basic. But there was lack of more powerful, GUI interface in .NET. So came WPF. Not only this, .NET being neutral, the compiled apps are independent of 32 bit or 64 bit platforms.

Windows Presentation Framework

As we clearly see, Microsoft has its plan to make WPF as its primary GUI framework against all Win32 components. WPF is very easy to write as it is very simple XML, XML is very easy to read, and its very easy to organize, even the editors and compilers need less overhead in parsing and taking decisions based on XML.

The challenge here was to imitate almost everything that existed in Win32 inside WPF, and WPF became very feature rich, but once again it requires more intelligence to write complicated and big applications. Having talent already expert in HTML+JS area, and transforming them into WPF talent was little difficult.

Plus the way WPF was built, it was built more tight coupled with system operating system, just like the way MFC/ATL/COM were built. But WPF is very fast and very rich in features. It is now possible to write CAD, games and such high performance applications in WPF which can utilize latest hardware technologies.

And it is exact alternative for COM/ATL/MFC today.

Silverlight

Realizing that converting HTML+JS and Visual Basic devs to WPF was more challenging, silverlight pop in to existence, Which is very light weight, a smaller counterpart of WPF, although the syntax remains same, the ability to develop apps are limited in silverlight as it is not very tightly coupled with operating system.

However, you can develop apps pretty fast, but only focused on business logic, which here is one step ahead amongst all being platform independent. The devs are not required to have in depth knowledge of system, nor silverlight are more dependent on hardware, resources or other components.

But you cant develop high performance apps like CAD, games and media editing apps.

Indeed, it is an exact alternative for Visual Basic.

Conclusion

You need to choose WPF when you are creating any application of following type,

1. Interfaces with custom hardware.
2. You need to control memory and control the performance of app.
3. Create application that requires very high memory, CAD programs etc.
4. Connect to system components and used to manage system, hardware.
5. Want to connect to native system via COM/DLL interfaces.
6. Media (Audio/Video/Picture) editing applications.
7. Where your target audience can download and install .NET platform easily.

However you can use Silverlight for following alternative type of applications,

1. Provides smooth and quick animation on the web.
2. Make Rapid Business Applications, which can connect to your enterprise apps.
3. Make typical CRUD applications.
4. Registration, Dashboard type of applications.
5. Lightweight gaming and interaction websites.
6. Run in browser, with very small installation needed.

Coming Up:

UI Atoms from NeuroSpeech, a set of controls to develop rapid business applications on both WPF as well as Silverlight. A true alternative for DataForm on Silverlight and WPF, to have unified coding for Business Apps. Please click here to check the preview.

Apple announces iPad, a bigger version of iPod Touch. With a big screen of 1024×786 pixels. And it comes with basic need of surfing internet and be online. So called magical and revolutionary device does not support Flash and Silverlight yet. And most of business apps today, built upon RIA are running either on Flash or on Silverlight. And IT Devs are heavily investing in RIA technologies due to snail speed of WWW group. However, the device can replace a laptop for most of users who just spend time on internet doing their regular business, studies or entertainment. So lets analyze what will be future of Web for different type of users.

Students

Today students need a good web browser and an internet with lot of social media websites to study, interact, entertain and play games. Apple iPad is a best bet for students. Do they really care that it does not support Flash and Silverlight yet? Answer is no. They will certainly buy iPad, come to the website, and if it has Flash or Silverlight, they will call website’s support instead of Apple’s support and say,

Your website is not working on my iPad.

Sales Reps and Business Owners

Looking at the cost, and attractive looks, Sales Reps and Business Owners will buy iPad because they usually do not type anything great whole day, all they do is, look at websites, present demos (which are powerpoint or keynote), and access their office through online business portals. For all these purpose they will be very happy with iPad. However, once they come to your business app through online portal, they cant see Flash or Silverlight, they are not going to call apple support. They will call IT devs and say,

What the hell IT devs are doing, cant they make our business app work on iPad?

Independent Professionals

Independent professionals like Doctors, Lawyers, Photographers, Actors .. anyone who probably does not sit in front of PC for more then 2 hours a day, will certainly like to get rid of big laptop bag with 4-10 external wires and device connectors. All what they do mostly is, check their emails, surf the websites, fill simple forms on some business web apps and which they can do it on iPad. Today iPad may not have great drawing tools but some professional apps on App store will certainly provide capability of tagging, drawing and marking tools needed by these professionals. Today lot of business applications are on Flash and new ones are coming on silverlight. But iPad will not support !! , once again, they will pickup the phone to vendor and say,

Your website is not working on my iPad.

Who needs any of following?

Clerks,  Graphics/Media artist and IT Developers, which comprises of small part of computer users. Because their applications and workspace requires bigger screens and multiple devices, connectivity and computing performance. Apple’s iPad will be useful only to test the business apps and for other entertainment to this group.

It seems iPad will spread in Home Entertainment, Education and Independent Professional sectors very fast because of low cost solution. And that will shake the developer community.

Troubles for IT Devs

1. Current investment in Flex or Silverlight is at stake, as usage of mobile devices is increasing heavily, supporting business apps on these devices will not be possible until device OS creators, Adobe or Microsoft work towards supporting RIA technologies.
2. Silverlight/Flex are heavy and costly to run on battery based devices, they will consume more cpu and battery to create consumption problems.
3. Rewriting apps in light HTML5 is a big challenge, training, planning and supporting all existing modules will be a big pain. However looks like World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has been sleeping for 10 years to create features of RIA required today. Need of consumers were high, that created innovations like DHTML, Flash and Silverlight, and the problem was, W3C never observed in market what consumers (Internet users) really need.
4. Even if you decide to invest heavily on iMac and decide to make apps that can run on iPad, your Apps are at mercy of Apple Employee doing approval, here is the funny process.

Death of Free and Open Internet

IT Devs will slowly loose the independence over distributing apps against open free internet distribution. Today any release, distribution of media (song, movie, play) etc are controlled by major Labels.

If The  Intelligence will be controlled by major Labels in IT with narrow route to success by Apple, Google, Microsoft etc giants, then the growth we saw in last decade in IT industry will slow down very rapidly and independent innovators will become slaves to major labels.

Will Bubble of RIA Burst now?

Once again, just like Dot Com, if RIA (Flex/Silverlight) Bubble bursts and all IT Devs will be blamed again.

Its less of a risk then getting yourself a liposuction or a nasty boob job ..

Before I answer WHY let me answer WHAT! For all of you who don’t know what I am talking about watch this video “The Photoshop Effect”

Why Retouching

On a serious note, Human psyche has been on a constant Endeavour to achieve perfection. Retouching is a means to persue that human pursuit. How else would you preserve and portray the invaluable momentary short lived tequila shots of your life. A retouched image would give you that well deserved kick time and again.

Besides not all of us can carry a Cindy Crawford mole as a beauty spot the way she does. Come on, would you want that dark spot seen in your wedding snaps. You would rather get them retouched. Similarly you would more often then not, want to get a brighter retouch-er if you are from the Naomi Campbell or a Hale Berry progeny. "I don’t mean to be a racist here" unless you want to spend a bomb to look as good.

Retouching the History

Beginning from our inception, Adam was perfect as a first masterpiece, as a human being, but as a man he was lacking. Later, Adam with Eve became a perfect couple until they fell prey to Satan’s handiwork and since then we’ve been living in an imperfect world. I need not elaborate on this any further and no wonder everything around us is (believe it or not) imperfect.

Retouched – Do We Even Know?

BTW If you see a problem here, sure do something, lets run a campaign to make it a mandate to put an * (asterisk) symbol on every retouched image. I bet you would see 99.9 % of photographs retouched in any magazine or billboard or for that matter any print media with an asterisk sign, the way we notice "*" or "Conditions Apply" on every shop running a SALE.

Lately there has been a lot of hype around retouching and its adverse effect or so they call it, just because some nuts went on an indefinite dieting spree to fulfill there fantasies of attaining that perfection portrayed by a retouched image of a model. I have a question here, if some one ignores that ‘asterisk’ on a FOR SALE sign board and happens to pick up stuff and queued up at the counter only to realize that there was some other exception, what do you think would happen. Wouldn’t you ask her to go back to shopping basics. She’s not duped! An asterisk is supposed to be taken for granted.

Retouching  & The Craving Need of It

As I proclaimed above I see no moral hang-up in retouching a photo but the reality is that it can change a picture from something you dislike to something enjoyable. We all understand the difference between tweaking the truth and portraying the expected. Perfect moments do not always prove to be perfect and that’s where we need the so called digital liposuction.

Let me sum up with a practical example:

A stunning model sitting right in front of you that has potential but several flaws. By several I mean the following two major flaws apart from a few here and there that can otherwise be taken care of:

Dull Hair
has a pimple right on the face of the camera lights

What do you do ?

1) Hand over the best shampoo available and wait for the results + wait for the pimple to even out.
2) Click the snap and retouch it. Its simple and worth while.

I leave it for you guys to decide. Any takers!!

For all of you guys who want to try the first option you need to keep visiting my blogs for the rest I know you guys understand how difficult it is to get a boob job done, and how difficult it is to get that perfect look unless we go to RetouchMAX.com

Conventional AM/PM time format is very confusing. At NeuroSpeech we decided to use new format to distinguish visually the day and night format. Rules are as follow,

1. Day time is considered between morning 6 to evening 5.59 as assuming range of average sun shined day.

2. Night time is considered as 6 of evening till 5.59 of next day morning.

Representations:

Print and computer

White background:

1. Day time should be written with black box around the time and white background inside the box with black text color.

2. Night time should be written as black background of text with white color text. No border.

Black Background

1. Day time should be written as white background with black as text color with no background. No border.

2. Night time should be written as white border around the white color text.

Handwritten Format:

1. Day time should be written as normal dark ink color.

2. Night time should be written as normal dark ink color with a border around it.