Think Different (Part 3)

This is a 3-part series on porting Trillian across platforms, particularly Mac OS X. It would make more sense if you start reading from Part 1. Thanks for your interest!

Coherence across platforms

Meanwhile, the second question is the coherence of the product between different platforms. If the user switches between Web and Mac OS X often, it would be nice if their experiences are around the same. Our web version is a very delicate replica of the Windows version, so that transition between Web and Windows is very smooth. Users don't need to re-learn how to use again, as it is conceived as one single product. It would be not convenient if in one OS the toolbar is at the top, and in another the toolbar is at the bottom.

In order to provide a familiar experience for all Trillian Astra users across the platform, we use the same skin through out. While we made a lot of changes to accommodate the ease of use in Mac OS X, the form of the contact list window remained the same - with its signature curved bottom housing a variety of controls - and it works well for the identity of the instant messenger as well.

The OS X version of Cordonata has an overall flatter "lacquered and polished steel" appearance that is based on Leopard. I am not completely sure about the darkness of the window yet, but it seems most windows in Leopard are very gray. We have also flattened the bottom buttons to follow the new toolbar buttons in Leopard.

Font choice varies across the platforms. It makes sense because certain system fonts do not exist on other systems. Default font of respective operating systems are used as a result, while in Flash we will try to adapt to both.

Other Trillian-centric behaviors are kept in spots where familiarity between Trillian products weighs more beneficial than familiarity between Trillian and OS X, and where there were no precedents in Mac OS X. For example, we use the same toolbar in both Windows and Mac to showcase all the IM services the user is using.

So this concludes my 3-part series on porting the design of Trillian to Mac OS X. Please feel free to send me comments on what you would expect on the designs of Trillian. Thanks!

Think Different (Part 2)

Coherence with Mac OS X

 

There were two stages in the design of the windows. While critics may say it is unnecessary to design anything new with the use of HIG (Human Interface Guidelines) from Apple, it is in no doubt instant messaging requires a large variety of new controls.

For instance, Apple had to introduce chat bubbles in iChat to distinguish individual messages in a conversation. In the contact list, there are no standards between how contacts are laid out. Some have two lines, some have one line. iChat has buddy icons in the size of 28x28, which is not a nice size as it has to shrink down a buddy icon usually 48x48 or 50x50 in size. It is also difficult to pick which control to use. Windows Live Messenger for Mac is the only messenger that uses the true list control from OSX, while iChat simply do away with groups for tidiness.

Tabs are also another questioned area in OS X. While iChat in OS X Tiger have tabs at the bottom, iChat in Leopard moved the tabs to the left for the new Source List look, and Safari still have tabs at the top. Yahoo! Messenger followed suit to have tabs at the bottom to be as 'authentic' as possible.

Therefore, custom controls are needed no matter what, but the question is how we can design it so it looks like a part of the OS.

Of course, the necessity of custom controls is not the license to go crazy in the design. In order to pay respect to the users of Mac OS X, we paid attention to a lot of details so it can be easier to get used to.

We made numerous small changes in the base version of Trillian Cordonata, the default skin of Trillian. Of two most obvious changes, the window buttons are moved to the position where OS X users are used to. The Zoom effect also maximizes the contact list to its content only. We are also going to make the scroll bar comply with the system setting so the arrow buttons will fall into the right place. The glow and selected states of list items will also correspond to the color settings in System Preferences.

And in fact, concepts from Mac OS X were referenced heavily in the design of Trillian. For example, the Trillian preferences window is based on System Preferences in Mac OS. Even though it has a Windows look in the Windows version currently, the Mac version will spot a Mac look with authentic controls. The design of the skin also has a feel of a 'remote control' in mind, similar to the widgets on Dashboard, or the controls of the Apple DVD Player.

In future, we would hopefully allow the possibility of having other interfaces. While I would love to see a 'normal' OS X window or a minimal black slate window also, the current plan is to develop Cordonata first, which is essentially the superset of these other alternative skins. Those other skins may be beneficial to those who only uses IM on a Mac.

Next up, I'll talk about how Trillian Astra for Mac lives well with its brothers on the Web and on Windows.

Proceed to Part 3...

A Screenshot of Trillian Astra (for the Mac and the Web)

This is ecstatic!!

Can you tell which one is in vector and which one is in bitmap? Cordonata is designed in Adobe Illustrator from ground up, so the conversion has been easy. Scale9Grid feature of Flash 8+ played a pivotal role in composing these windows. It took a week or two of experiment, however, to get bitmaps to scale properly in Flash. Since Flash does not support blurring and drop shadows without turning shapes into movieclips, I used a lot of the ancient "Soften Fill Edges" feature to get my way. The feature turns out to be incredibly effective and shaved lots of KBs off the window, ensuring a fast load for our dear new web users.

Although it is internally codenamed "Express", it is not a separate product unlike, e.g. AIM vs AIM Express, but instead a subset of the grand vision umbrella-ed under Trillian Astra. :)

For more information and signing up for testing, the brand new Trillian Astra web site says it all!

Technorati tags: Trillian, Trillian Astra, Web, Flash

"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!!!

Trillian Astra... is here!

As Trillian Astra is finally exposed and now sending shockwaves (literally because it's in Flash) across the Internet, my company and I feel more liberated with higher spirits than ever before.

(Pictured above: Trillian Astra with Cordonata skin doing its zen.)

The sheer mass of information delivered by the Trillian Astra Sneak Preview is enough to get everyone excited for months to come.  We have been working under cover for so long, as some of the features introduced in Trillian Astra are truly unique and creative.  We don't want the "Vista disaster" to happen to us, where people over-expect things for 5 years, just because we can't keep our mouths shut...  (No offense to Microsoft here, I applaud your Office 2007 team.)  It's some sort of Zen of patience for us, and for our users too, to wait for more than a year, as we build up our software and servers.

To announce "how Trillian Astra will change your web" is a great undertaking.  And to explode the clogged tubes of Web 2.0 is whimsical, but requires a great deal of courage to make that joke in front of millions of people watching it.  But we are that confident, well, we have to be.

So... with so much happened, so much happened throughout the past year, I can finally sit down here and talk about things that aren't professional enough to go into the official blog, like stuff happening behind the scenes.

For those who read the Trillian forums zealously, you probably know about this already:

The fire is spreading all over the web now, but to light it up is just a mouse click - as Scott clicked the "Publish Blog" button on our Blogger account, at around noon on Tuesday, 21st November 2006 (after we had a meal at the Burger King and Andy got all the three Xbox 360 games that they offer, and I like the 'Sneak King' game the best).  We didn't have any champagne, and I guess we'll have to wait for Kevin to come back from Thanksgiving in order to really celebrate. (He worked till midnight on Monday though!) We had a plate with 3 plastic cups, and we poured a can of Coke into the cups - champagne style.  We should have done it with Red Bull.  Then that will be total caffeine style.  Oh, nevermind.  Someone send us a bottle of champagne. ;)

Riding the Wave of all these New UIs

Okay, so now is another serious blog about UI design.  As an architecture graduate and also a 'Head' UI designer, I keep in touch with what's going on around the UI world.  A few heroes of mine in this genre is Apple Design and Jensen Harris of the Office 12 team.

Apple designs are often worshipped for their simplicity, and their ability to convince the engineers that removing features is actually a good thing.  With intelligent solutions, Apple's remote control for Front Row only has 6 buttons, and it pretty does all the things the Windows Media Center remote does.

Believe it or not, cutting down features is not easy.  On one hand, it is a lot of design decision and intelligent guesses (since we don't have user data unlike rich companies such as Microsoft).  On the other hand, it's like telling the developers to cut an arm off their babies.  Thirdly, the geekiest crowd will cry, no matter what.

This happened in the 2.0 to 3.0 era of Trillian, when we were faced with an increasingly complex Preferences window and context menus.  There were always a desire to simplify Trillian, but there was never the guts to do so.  Rethinking, reorganizing and removing is the process, and knowing what should be removed and which goes where was a difficult process.  There were also technical limitations as well that would dictate the position of certain items, which I have to design around and justify them.

It was pretty much like cleaning up your room.  However, instead of tucking away all the junk in boxes that you will never find again, you are building a whole new shelving system that houses everything and lets you access their quickly without creating a visual mess.

Most of our new features in Trillian Astra do not occur in the Preferences window, however, and instead they would be mostly present in the most often used windows such as the contact list and chat windows.  It presents a whole new problem as this is a software that presents changes in real-time, and a hierachical tabbed model in Preferences window does not always work because certain real-time information needs to be visible at all times.

Since Trillian Pro 1.0, the UI has adopted the default Windows-like Menu+Toolbar model, a common way to lay out a software, in attempt to lure commercial users since the previous UI in .7x was considered too wacky.  Having a standardized UI similar to the rest of the OS makes it 'easy' for new users to learn Trillian because menus and toolbars behave in the way they expect them to be.  However, the problem is that most of the menu items were forced - Trillian does not really have that many menu items and tools to choose from.  Back then, since we had limited functionalities in SkinXML, the menu bar becomes a place for items that would be given too much focus if shown as a toolbar button but too little focus and out of context if shown as a context menu.  A lot of items are duplicates of toolbar buttons as well, e.g. the edit bar button.  Therefore, the menu bar, especially the ones in chat window, is more of a filler to create a sense of familiarity for users (or for us so we are confident to sell it?).

Trillian Astra faces the problem on both sides: On one hand, we got a lot of fillers for the menu bar; but on the other hand, we have a lot of new features to fill up the windows.  Can't we just put all the new features in menus?  No, because doing that just buries the new features and requires users to click a few times in order to get it.  So instead of trying to fit these new items into the current menu and toolbar model, why not just do away with the menus and toolbars?

That was the 'radical' decision made more than a year ago in August, when Microsoft has their new Windows Vista new UI waving around with no menu bars.  I was skeptical of their decision, but felt good because I could finally find a plausible excuse to break away from the Trillian Pro UI and "return to form".  I don't understand necessarily when Vista removed all their menu bars because they do have a lot of features need to be accessed, but I certainly agree that Trillian does not need it after all, since we don't have much.  Office 12 demos came out a few months later, and confirmed my theory.

Even with a new vision, new technology was needed in Trillian to execute the new UI.  Back in 2.0, we could hardly make anything exciting because we were only limited to buttons, and the buttons could not change any other aspects of the window.  3.0 got worse as we had video and audio chat, tons of new buttons flooded in with panels and stuffs, making it impossible to make any freeform skins.

Fortunately, SkinXML in Trillian Astra, like (the better part of) 3.0, will continue its curve to introduce more variables, thus the ability for a much more flexible UI.  It allows us to create a richer user experience by categorizing new features in tabs (similar to Office 12's "Ribbon" Menu Tabs but they are actual tabs as well).  I surfed the wave of these new UI trends and took advantage of it, creating the new re-organized default skin to be known as Trillian Cordonata.

With that said, it doesn't mean we were trying to follow trends, but the trends allowed us to rethink what we are and should be.  There were other reasons for a brand new skin, which I will talk about later.