Does Apple’s iSlate contain Magic Interaction Design Dust?
As nice as it might sound, you can't simply scale an app designed for a small screen and have it provide a good user experience on a large screen.
I can only assume that the source cited in this article on the rumored Apple slate was either misquoted or clueless when s/he stated:
The Does Apple’s iSlate contain Magic Interaction Design Dust? article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
"They've told select developers that as long as they build their apps to support full screen resolution - rather than a fixed 320x480 - their apps should run just fine"
So, basically, you're telling me that you can scale an application designed for a 320x480 screen to "full screen resolution" – lets be conservative and say it's 1024x768 (so more than three times the horizontal resolution and a little under twice the vertical resolution) – and it will be a good user experience? Sure, the app will "run" but don't expect "just fine" to indicate a good user experience unless the iSlate comes with Magic Interaction Design Dust that updates your interface to best use the new screen dimensions and real estate.
Write Once, Run Anywhere shouldn't even be the goal. I'll be happy if we can use the same frameworks and if apps run without modification on the new iSlate but I'm not kidding myself that any app built for the iPhone will have to have major interaction design work done to take advantage of the larger resolution of the iSlate.
All that aside, I can't wait for the announcement in January!
Link for article via a tweet from Darren Richardson.
The Does Apple’s iSlate contain Magic Interaction Design Dust? article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
January can’t come fast enough. ;-)
Oh…and I agree. As long as the guts of an app can stay the same and only the UI needs changing, I’d be super happy.
Totally agree, there will still be loads of room for improvement if the resolution is increased
However if tiling techniques have been employed (similar to 9 patch graphics on Android) then the user experience should be broadly similar for the majority of an application, if the resolution is not massively increased to say 640×960 (being exactly 2x) and will at least provide an easy route to supporting a new resolution.
Unfortunately the day fragmentation truly disappears, is the day we no longer have desirable consumer electronics!
My guess is that no one is really building with sufficient dynamic UI layout in mind … but fixed screen for their apps only. :(
Positive = more (re)work to sustain the iPhone app economy …
Negative = if developers don’t know what fragmentation is, they will in January … unless Apple has some serious card tricks up their sleeves. Hopefully, it’s minimal and confined to screen and UI only.
I fully agree. It’s ridiculous that manufacturers try to make developers and users believe this kind of thing. Any resolution change kills a lot of carefully crafted UI’s.
The exact same thing happens with the Palm Pixie phone compared to the Pre. The 80px less screen estate pretty much butchered my app. Simply ‘making it scale’ as was suggested is a nonsense tip in this context.
Going from small (320×480 to 1024×768) will make any app look crooked I’m pretty sure.
Hey Marco,
I mentioned the 80px thing at the Palm Pre developer event in London and was told that they are aiming for resolution independence. Those two words make me shudder as an interaction designer. I told them it was ridiculous that they were creating fragmentation with only two devices and for 80px. Hearing your experience only validates what I knew I would run into myself when porting an app from the Pre to the Pixi.
The 80px difference is a great example of a failure to focus on UX (Palm has done a great job otherwise with WebOS – unfortunately they’re currently let down by the hardware a bit). Someone at some meeting should have said: “I don’t care what it takes, we are keeping the resolution the same. Of course, we’re not going to create fragmentation for 80 pixels!”
Love the looks of your site, graphics are excellent. Story great too. Can’t wait for Wednesday myself.
Does the iPad announcement today mean that you have to eat Crow?
selam naber ?