"A Celestial and Futuristic Landscape"

...and that was how I described it back then in 2001. The windows are sculpted in a specific shape so that they would line up and create series of choreographed waves going up and down, like rows of mountains... hence the name, "Cordillera".

I had to design the most versatile, sensible and attractive interface. There was a month's time to finish the skin, in order to enter the skinning contest. The design underwent a long scrutiny until the final draft. It was not an easy design:

1. All windows need to be resizable, i.e. it has to look in virtually any size - or at least normal sizes - it is unusual in the realm of design.
2. You can have any amount of windows, and that means it has to look good whether there are sixty flowers or one flower in the vase. Both the design of a flower and the vase are equally important and difficult. The Contact List (or "Main Window" as we called it back then) is the only unique and always visible element, while you can have a variety of Message Windows and Status Windows, and so on.
3. The design challenges above still exist today, but to make more difficult, back then I had limited technology to work with. I could not stretch or do fancy calculations (now you can!). I could only tile. I could not overlay things on top of one and another. Text boxes, contact list areas and display areas must have opaque backgrounds. You couldn't align things at center. Oh, and you couldn't change any fonts either.

After spending a month of summer vacation working on it, the result was a curvy skin in cerulean blue called "Trillian Professional 1.0". It was very well-received, and eventually chosen to be the default skin for the then-future version of Trillian "0.64". It was a great feeling back then to have my work recognized, and also the first time working with strangers over the Internet. I had won a few awards back in high school on designing computer programs for education purposes, but then nothing really happened in college ever since until a few years, so that came as a little surprise. It was pretty exciting back then.

Months of refinement and collaboration led to a total redraw of the skin, soon widely known as "Trillian Cordillera". Along with the release of a brand new 0.70 version of Trillian that featured file transfer, the software was propelled into stardom within days, gaining momentum and attention from media and enemies alike. Trillian became very popular and eventually its image landed on the cover of PC Magazine and the pages of Wired Magazine and more.

Of course, success was not without price. A few months later, while Trillian was blocked by AOL, Cordillera was also ripped and copied by other skinners in the forum and from other softwares. It took me very long to accept such harsh reality, and realized that it was actually no threat to me since rippers and imitators are always people who are much less talented. But of course, I didn't know that, and instead, I wasted too much time on defending the skin being ripped off, and eventually became uninterested.

That also was probably the dark ages of the world of Trillian skinning. To push for a professional image, we decided to use Whistler as the default skin for Trillian Pro 1.0, since the other choice "Trillian Cordonata" (a totally different Cordonata than the one you see now) was not good enough. And so we neglected the fluid forms of Cordillera, and were stuck with the corporate rectangle for good four years.

During that period of time, I had designed "Trillian Cordillera 03" and "Trillian Cordillera 2004", but neither of them got released, because it required a lot of time and it had limited audience. I also designed for a lot of things that required better skinning technology that I always expected to be included in the next version but they never made it. And so, we were stuck in the middle ages with Whistler.

Trillian Astra project changed everything. With the introduction of Profile+Widgets, Trillian Astra is geared more towards a crowd who likes to express themselves, and as a result, a more expressive skin is required in order to attract such a crowd. The versatile and elegant design of "Trillian Cordonata" made its debut, with a nice balance between the pragmatic Whistler and joyful Cordillera. But the nicer thing is, developing Cordonata results a great by-product: better skinning technologies that we had been looking for since 2001.

So here we are. With much better vector rendering skills and expertise, and with the use of Trillian Astra's new technologies for alpha-transparent windows, bitmap stretching, PNG layering, skinnable contact list area, color themes and a lot more, let's welcome the new "Trillian Cordillera Astreme", a total redraw, rethinking and redesign, a triumphant rebirth of the classic. Though she had now surrendered its crown as the default skin to Cordonata, she remains a shining jewel that we will love. And I hope you'll like it too.

What's more, it is not just a screenshot. It is available for download already. Of course, you need to be a tester in order to use it. Enjoy!

Have a very Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

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.

Best Quotes on Astra around the World...

Before I make another blog post, I would like to thank everyone who supported the Trillian project, readers and bloggers around the world who raved about this stunning up-and-coming product.  Here are a few comments that I love the most:

Johnny at Popgadget had probably the best write-up on Trillian Astra.  He really digested the whole tour and summarized what we did very well!  He said,

Taking these independent services and weaving them together to create an always updated interdependent web presence is a lofty goal, and Trillian aims to make that happen with Astra.

Corey Clayton had some very interesting correlations between Trillian Astra the instant messenger and Trillian McMillan the original character from Hitchhiker's Guide, played by "geek goddess Zooey Deschanel".  I guess we do need to include that gun Trillian is holding in the picture to do something fun...

The site Aqua Regia coined my favorite term "Astra Planeta", which means the gods of the five wandering stars or planets.  The author also summarized Trillian Astra and forecasted our future as if we finally see light at the end of the tunnel:

Probably the most exciting thing about this release is that Trillian is no longer just a chat client. With the Astra release, the Cerulean team has quietly built its own chat network and web-based instant messaging platform, a serious shot across the bow to Meebo and a number of other related companies.

TechCrunch still has a lot of faith in us.  I'm glad, because after all we hadn't even said a word in public for a whole year and nothing released for 2 years.  They said,

If Cerulean can pull it all off, and there’s every reason to believe they can, then this is going to be one smoking product.

Smoking?! Hell yes!  This is just half of the iceberg!  (Well, maybe 60%)  Meanwhile, Stowe Boyd said Trillian Astra is going to be his "Nerdvana" if everything is going to be accomplished.  I hope so too.  Should be as good as Smells Like Teen Spirit made into a software.

Oh, before I end this post, it's so funny quite many people noticed my The Decemberists plug on the Sneak Preview tour movie!!  Here's a few quotes from Digg:

Apparently Trillian Astra likes The Decemberists. Good enough for me.

Heh, I noticed that too. Gotta love The Decemberists.

Also fuck yeah to the Decemberists plug on there. They rock.

But /cheer for The Decemberists plug.

Lastly, I would like to thank Jark again for organizing the Trillian skinning contest at deviantArt back in the day, and he still remembers it!

And, and, and, last but not the least, since the UI is probably one of the most loved new 'features' on people's list, this is my shameless love for this praise by "splash" on Digg:

God. Damn. That skin looks delicious in a Steve Jobs quote kind of way.

With more than half of the comments about how good it looks, we're looking good, literally, this time.

In the very very end, I would like to thank again to all the Trillian users, the alpha team and all those from Trillian forums who gave us (and me) endless support and cheers!!!