What to Blog About in the Next Few Months

Now that the news is out, the sneak preview of Trillian Astra is released, my brain is unnerved and my veins are untangled.  There is so much to talk about in the preview.  While I will leave the crucial material for the official blog, here I will talk about the design process, how things are done, and boring theoratical things.

While I will have some personal blogs once in a while, I'll outline a list of things I want to cover for Trillian Astra, which is based the things I invented for and contributed to this 2-year-long project:

1. The Very Front-End UI: Trillian Cordonata with its contact list, chat windows; its birth, its construction and its evolution.  Lots of sub-topics such as the bottom 'Intelligent Toolbar', the new chat tools, new emoticons, etc.  The skin underwent more than 100 builds and adapted to design changes throughout a whole year.
2. "Social Widgets" + Social Profile: The most brilliant idea ever!  My invention of one of the highlights of the show!  Turning boring social profiles into dynamic data and information space is one exciting idea to be explored.  Today everyone's profile either look like a crappy HTML site or a medical record (I do understand the value of the former type), but Trillian Astra is going to blow all these away.  So...How it came up, designed, turned into specs and its potential impact to the web.
3. Widgets: Each widget have their story behind them.  Our goal is to make the client "as alive as a living creature", like the Web personified.
4. SkinXML: The most nerdy type of art ever invented.  Geek talk.
5. Promotion material and things like web site, sneak preview, etc.
6. Last but not the least, it is the exciting and censored (hahaha) TRILLIAN ASTRA VERSUS THE WORLD DEATHMATCH. I will compare Trillian Astra with other messengers 'fairly', in terms of UI, of course.

So... stay tuned!

P.S. In case you're wondering, the skin was all drawn in vector.