You may have already seen this (since at time of writing it’s seen 614 diggs), but it’s nice enough to pass along anyway.  Smashing Magazine has taken the time to compile a list of 45 Excellent Blog Designs that represent some really smart thinking and very fresh web desgin.  Hopefully these can provide fodder for your own design process even though, and I think I’ve mentioned this before, I really do find it interesting to see the amount of freedom that web designers seem to feel compared to application UI designers.  Would you create application UI that looks like this or this? 

I’ll be speaking at MIX UK in a few weeks (awesome!) and so I’m spending a little time this reworking the ComicViewer app that we showed at MIX in Vegas.  In doing so I reencountered RenderOptions.SetBitmapScalingMode.  I’ve been meaning to blog about this guy since the first time I worked on the ComicViewer.  It’s super handy thing to know about when dealing with scaled images.

When WPF scales an image, it does so with a pretty high quality algorithm.  This, of course, is what you want in 97% of the scenarios where you’re scaling an image because the result looks great.  There are times, though (the other 3%) when you don’t want to pay for the high quality scaling.   This is particularly true when you’re animating the image in some way.  In that case, the image may be changing so rapidly that the high quality scaling doesn’t pay off.  More importantly, the cost of the algorithm might actually make the animation appear jerky or sluggish.

Fortunately, WPF let’s you opt into a faster (albeit worse looking) algorithm for just those occasions.  To control the quality of the scaling, you can call the method RenderOptions.SetBitmapScalingMode and pass in the element that will be animated and a quality setting.  Your options for controlling the quality are HighQuality and LowQuality.  The LowQuality option is considerably faster than the HighQuality and looks much worse–perfect for an animation.

This is exactly what I do when I scale or move pages (which are really just big images) in the ComicViewer.  Immediately before animating I set BitmapScalingMode to LowQuality and immediately after animating, I set it back to HighQuality.  I believe that changing this value invalidates render so you get an immediate update when you switch back to HighQuality.  The result is much better perf without degrading quality in any noticeable way. 

As a former purveyor of online sketchpads (sadly, it’s no longer working), I can offer my expert opinion that Odopod Sketch rocks.  Just try to draw something that doesn’t impress your friends.  I bet you can’t.

Not sure what happened, but the link for the Fixed Thumb Size Scrollbar Template (that’s a mouthful) that I had posted earlier doesn’t seem to work anymore, so here’s an update.  I’ll update the original post as well.

I might be late to the party on this one, but someone sent this link around at work today and it’s definitely worth sharing.  Alexey Gavrilov has rebuilt the same animation/mini-app in all of the major RIA platforms that are in use today (DHTML, Flash, WPF, Silverlight, etc.) and published them for your analysis and viewing pleasure.  He’s also publish the perf results that he got when running the app in the various platforms.  His results were very different than what I saw on my machine, but still very interesting.  The results page also has a good (albeit long) discussion of the results that’s a worthwhile read.

UPDATE: I don’t know how he’s calculating frames-per-second, but I’m getting outrageous numbers on the Silverlight 1.1 (CLR) version of the test.  Results are in the range 500-600 fps which, of course, far exceeds the capabilities of my 60hz laptop monitor.  Is this a fluke on my machine or is everyone getting those kinds of results?

As we get ready to ship V1 of our first Blendables component pack, we’re running a contest to see what kind of cool stuff folks can do.  You’ll want to check this out.  Here’s why:

1) Prizes.  Even if you already have an XBox, you probably don’t have one for the TV in your kitchen (imagine the convenience!). 

2) Satisfaction of many people taking note of your xaml kung-fu (note that “awesomeness” is among the selection criteria for the winner).

3) A chance to learn to use Blendables.  It’s free to try these out and they really do make a difference in your productivity.  So here’s a chance to find that out first hand. 

I’ll be posting my own entry soon.  I think I’m probably excluded from actually participating int he contest (so #1 is out for me), but I’ll get something posted so that you can see some TimelinePanel awesomeness.

Now that I’m moderating comments regularly, I just saw a request (from Karen who gave my son George his current favorite bedtime book) for an Orcas version of Kaxaml.  Well, I’ve been working on a new version for a while now.  I don’t have a lot of time to devote to it, so it’s slow coming…but coming.  I’d say you can expect something in the next month or so: new visuals, syntax highlighting and hopefully some basic intellisense.  My plan was to release it on 3.0 bits because everybody who has 3.5 has 3.0 and XAML hasn’t changed much between the two.  Are there other people who would prefer an Orcas version though?  If so, I can compile it twice.  Let me know if you’re interested.

I’ve been meaning to start a music blog for a long time but clearly I’m kidding myself.  I don’t even moderate comments, much less have time for an entire blog devoted to music.  So, fellow WPF’ers (and Mom), you’re going to have to put up with it here. 

So here’s my first recommendation and it’s a good one.  If you haven’t heard of Will Stratton, you’re not alone.  Apparently few people had until his first album (What the Night Said) hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago.  It’s quiet, thoughtful and slow to get old.  It’s perfect for a drive and full of hooks that, on a first listen, seem familiar but impossible to predict.

The first comparison that comes to mind is Sufjan Stevens (made more obvious by the fact that he gets credited for playing oboe on a couple of tracks).  “Lost the Fear,” and “Oh Quiet Night” are reminiscent of earlier Nick Drake and the drawn out “Sleepwalk” made me think of Mark Kozelek.  I realize that those are big names to throw around in my first music post, but I think they’re justified here. 

To be fair, this album might not be for everyone.  It’s folky, but current, but still folky.  So you’ll have to like (or at least tolerate) some acoustic guitar.  And there is that oboe in a couple of songs.  So, let me know what you think.

By the way, I don’t think my mom really reads my blog.  She’s on her way up the technology ladder but I don’t think she’s discovered blogs yet and has, as far as I know, no interest in WPF (although maybe I should ask…IdentityMine is hiring after all…).  The good news is that her foray into modern computing just got a jolt.  She’s a school teacher and the school gave her a sweet MacBook.  I helped her set it up and among the things I did was install MSN Messenger and add myself as a contact.  That was about 6 months ago and apparently I’m still her only contact because now she’s using her status to send me messages. I came accross this today:

I guess I need to call home.

Um, so, yeah, I’m pretty much awful at approving comments in a timely way.  I thought that I was set up to get an email when someone left a comment and since I hadn’t seen any emails, I hadn’t looked at the comments cue.  The email thing must have stopped working about 4 months ago.  Sorry commenters.  I just approved 25 comments from the past several months (and flagged 85 comments as spam!).  Now that I know the mail thing doesn’t work, I’ll make a point of checking in more regularly.  Thanks to those of you who have left something–sorry it took so long for it to show up.  And Zach, why don’t people smile more?

When you talk about interface design, you end up using these terms (UX and UI) a lot.  Of the two, UX seems to be the more fashionable and I hear it (and probably say) a lot more than UI.  Let’s face it, user experience carries an air that user interface doesn’t.  UI is so 1990, so toolbar.  UX is much more ribbon.

The truth, however, is that the two are not interchangable and if you really want look smart, wikipedia can help you sort out the difference.  There’s also a nice history of the term UX in this article where you’ll find out that the term really finally took off with help from Don Norman while he was working at Apple.  Nice one UX!

The key point is that UX has a much large scope than UI as it refers to much more than just the interface.  It’s the whole ball of wax: everything from brand perception to hardware design to customer support calls get crammed into that tiny term.  It’s everything the user experiences and it’s a lot to take on. 

So if you’re just talking about what’s on the screen, UI might be a safer term.  On the other hand, the power of the X in UX is in remembering that UI is just one component of something much bigger.