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Showing posts from 2013

Axure RP: Image over button - Where do I put the interaction?

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Tool: Axure RP 7 Beta. It's a software to create high-fidelity interactive prototypes. The problem: to create a button with custom image over it. On mouse hover over the button or over the image we want to display button's different style. In Axure 7 you can select image and button and convert them to Dynamic Panel, then you can apply any mouse/keyboard events interactions to it, for example OnMouseEnter and OnMouseOut. However, in this case, you will loose interaction styles on the button when your mouse is over the image instead of the button: button will not be highlighted. Solution: First, create the Button Shape, and place the Image over it. Style it in the way it appeals to you. Now, select the both, the button and the image, and convert them into dynamic panel: Give the new dynamic panel a name. It's a good practice: Double-click on the dynamic panel. It will bring Panel States dialog:   Rename the default "State 1" to "Normal"

SVG - XML based vector graphics to replace GIFs and PNGs

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While doing UI design I faced problems with animated spinners, which I created in GIF format. One problem is I have to place spinning images on top of differently colored tiles, on various colors, which I cannot control. And second is the tiles are scalable, and the animated GIFs should scale as well. But they don't. These issues though can be addressed by SVG format, which is supported by all major browsers except Internet Explorer (of course). IE doesn't understand animation in SVG. (Note: if the SVG graphics doesn't work on this page as described, or for any other reason, you can visit a standalone demo page . On that demo page instead of <embed> tag I use <img>, which in the case of simple SVG animation works exactly the same. However to render it properly in Blogger posts I have to use either <embed> or <object> tags.) So, here is the problem. Animation: Notice rough edges, and scaling quality loss on the last tile: I

Design practice: How fast the transition animation for expandable panels should be

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At some point I had an argument with a developer on how fast the transitional animation should be. In our application, Calypso Navigator, we are using a transition animation to give users a feedback of the expanding/collapsing process, and to explain this task visually by drawing more attention to the change. This software has three main areas, which are collapsible panels: Main Menu, Favorite Tiles, and Windows Manager, as shown below. [Expanded All screenshot] [Collapsed All but Main Menu screenshot] [Collapsed All but Favorite Tiles screenshot] On my opinion the animation was too slow, at some cases it took about a second, however in my thinking it had to be instantaneous. The argument of the developer was: if it will be that fast, and the user can’t visually track what is changing and how, then the animation doesn’t make sense at all. I opened Google page attempting to find what professional world’s opinion on this matter is, and found this guideline: h