February 8th, 2010
Hurray! The American version of Nexus One supports multitouch, notwithstanding the fact that it’s a patented Apple technology. Google representatives do not comment it.
Google Inc. released its first update pack for the Nexus One smartphone, which was shown to the general public just a month ago. Besides some fixes this fresh mobile software contained a very useful innovation – support of multitouch technology.
It means that now interface and screen-oriented capabilities of Googlephone do not yield to its main rival, Apple iPhone. So users of the first Google smartphone can test multitouch in action. It works in Google Maps Navigation, picture viewer, as well as in web browser.
As can be seen, a mutual agreement between Apple and Google (so called “promise not to add multitouch support in Nexus One”) now is worth nothing. Search Corporation decided to change its word in the light of recent events.
Studying different modern devices from the main manufacturers, starting with Apple and Palm, and ending with HTC and Motorola, Google’s experts has realized that multi-touch support has become a standard, so many users are accustomed to this option. Undoubtedly it opens new possibilities for innovative mobile applications development, now they can create new software for Android taking into account this new potential.
So now we have a smartphone that based on Android 2.1, and we also can use a new way of control and navigation. By the way, the European version of Nexus One has this function by default. However, the sales in Europe start not earlier than in spring this year.
Tags: Android, Google, HTC, iPhone, Motorola, Multi-Touch, Palm, smartphones
Posted in Mobile Development | No Comments »
January 30th, 2010
The South Korean LG Electronics Company has published its mobile strategy for the year 2010. It is going to sell more than ten million of cell phones and smartphones. Also LG plans to release about twenty new models of smartphones this year and more than a half of them will be running OS Google Android. The rest models will be based on Windows Mobile and different Linux versions.
Meanwhile, LG will gradually reduce the number of mobile devices with Windows Mobile “on board”. It’s a notable fact for mobile application developers, because analytics couldn’t foresee such changes. Only in 2008 LG Electronics and Microsoft formed an alliance to join their efforts in mobile devices development. Even in 2009 an absolute majority of LG smartphones were developed on the Windows Mobile operating system, and LG Eve was the only phone on the Android platform. This year the situation has changed dramatically and it definitely will have action upon those companies who provide such services as mobile application development for Android and Windows Mobile.
Tags: Android, Google, LG, Microsoft, Windows Mobile
Posted in Mobile Development | 1 Comment »
January 26th, 2010
Designing new layout for your website live some free space
Free space improves visual perception — it’s a well known fact for website designers. They take into consideration importance of space between paragraphs, images, buttons and other elements on the page. They can also group items reducing space between them, it helps to show connections, structure and hierarchy of elements.
Free space also makes content more readable. Numerous studies show that spaces between paragraphs increase perception by 20%.
Effective user testing should not be extensive
Jakob Nielsen has calculate the ideal number of website usability testers. His statistics shows that only 5 testers identify almost 85% of all the problems on your site, while 15 testers identify almost all the problems.
The most serious problems usually can be found by the first or the first two testers, the rest testers will only confirm these problems and will find some more minor bags. So those who working at website and web application development can obtain good results without extensive and expensive user testing.
Tags: buy CMS, website application development, website design, website development
Posted in Software Development, Web development | 1 Comment »
January 20th, 2010
Reviewing platforms for mobile apps development we cannot help but write some more descriptions. Let’s estimate such OSes as Symbian, Linux Mobile and Palm.
Symbian OS
Nokia is losing its forces, it was the best developer of mobile phones in the world a couple of years ago, but now it buckles under pressure of other leading companies. But is still has “margin of safety”. Moreover, Nokia popularizes Symbian, now this OS has open code (open source), and this fact will definitely have an influence on company’s further development.
Symbian UIQ
Symbian UIQ was developed by the UIQ Technology Company. UIQ (User Interface Quartz) is a software platform based on Symbian OS. In early 2009 UIQ Technology was liquidated, and this intellectual property was transferred to Symbian Foundation (non-profit organization). So mobile software developers don’t plan further improvements of UIQ (as an independent platform).
Linux Mobile
Programmers working for mobile development companies make facetious remarks that every self-respecting company making smartphones intends to make its own version of Linux based mobile OS. Some of them achieve success in it, others don’t. It’s almost impossible to enumerate all of them, here are only some examples: Access Linux Platform, LiMo, Moblin, MotoMagxj, Nokia Maemo, Openmoko, Openmokon, Palm webOS, Qt Extendedmn, Ubuntu Mobilem, etc. All these OSes have their own look-and-feels (many of them are incompatible), that is why it’s very difficult to develop mobile apps for such platforms, it’s just a non-value-added process.
Palm OS
Once this OS occupied bulk of the market share. At the same time Microsoft decided to start the development of its own mobile OS Windows CE, because IT-giant was inspired by success of Palm OS. But now it is no longer relevant, Ed Colligan said that Palm will no longer produce products based on Palm OS, the company’s efforts will be focused on Palm webOS, but that’s another story.
Tags: Linux Mobile, Nokia, Palm, Symbian, Ubuntu
Posted in Mobile Development | 1 Comment »
January 11th, 2010
Summing up results of the year 2009, it will be quite reasonable to choose the best operating system for successful mobile apps development. So, what operating systems did we have at the turn of the year? Of course, there were Windows Mobile, iPhone OS, Symbian OS, Symbian UIQ, Linux Mobile, Palm OS and BlackBerry OS. Let’s try to investigate which of them has all chances to be called the best one.
Windows Mobile
Ah, this “old woman” still holds the largest market share. It has relatively out-of-date interface, nevertheless Microsoft delays the release of Windows Mobile 7 with touch-screen interface (as they promise) and complete compatibility with older apps versions. Though this OS has undoubted plus (a large number of good and stable mobile applications with rich functionality that was accumulated over the years), it’s not a permanent advantage. It can be lost soon as new operating systems are constantly adding new applications, offering new features and up-to-date interface. In general, if the next version of Microsoft Windows Mobile does not have any pleasant surprises for its users, the company will lose its market share under pressure of other mobile operating systems.
iPhone OS
Yes, it’s beautiful, yes, it’s quite functional and it has already accumulated a lot of good features and high-quality applications. Due to the fact that iPhone has taken a considerable market share its application are relatively cheap (it’s an important bonus for those who choose a platform for a mobile device). But it has the main drawback: only Apple can produce hardware and iPhone source code is closed for mobile development companies. Nevertheless it’s not an obstacle for numerous Apple fans, Mac + MacOS + iPod + iPhone can be considered as a modern religion, it’s a way of live, no doubt.
Tags: Apple, BlackBerry, iPhone, Linux Mobile, Microsoft, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile
Posted in Mobile Development | No Comments »
December 28th, 2009
Creating a new site use unique design, but when it comes to usability, it is better to use approved models (like most of web developers do). When people visit a new site, they always look for well-known things; they use their experience to perceive new content. People want to use the same modules on different web pages (such as color options, company logo location, principles of navigation, etc).
Google always makes its links blue, and there is a reason: this color is familiar to most of users (that is why it’s much easier for them to find all the links).
Any other color is not a problem, but users will need some more time to find your links.
An ideal input field for search queries must be 27 characters long
Jacob Nielsen conducted a research to determine the ideal length for search boxes. So he ascertained that most of modern input fields are very short. Despite the fact that you can write quite a long search query, you can’t see all your text. It’s a problem with usability, because it’s difficult to edit such a search query.
The study showed that an average input field has width of 18 characters. According to the research results 27% of search queries are too long to fit in these input fields. But 27 characters wide fields can contain 90% of search queries. Remember that you can determine width not only in pixels and points, but also in “em” (a relative unit of length for current font).
Input field in Google search is wide enough for long searches
Apple input field is too short, the query “Microsoft Office 2008″ does not fit in it
In general, it is better to do too long field than too short one, so your users would be able to find all the information without any problems. This is a very simple and useful advice for website designers, but, unfortunately, they often ignore it.
Tags: Apple, Google, usability, website design, website development
Posted in Web development | 1 Comment »
December 26th, 2009
Two titans of high-tech world, Google and Apple, may come together to fight for competitive advantages. To be precise, this fight will take place on the US mobile phone market. Google plans to start sale of its first smartphone at the beginning of the year 2010 – that is a stumbling-block. It’s a real challenge that may lead to serious confrontation on one of the highest growth and most important segment of high-tech market.
A new Google phones with touch screen is based on Android OS. These gadgets have been already given to the company staff for testing. Google plans to use the popularity of its own brand and make direct retail sales via the Internet.
It’s a well known fact that Google management didn’t plan to enter the equipment market, in the previous years the company limited its activity to mobile software development (Android OS) and internet projects.
Google makes a serious bet on the mobile phone market and evaluates it as a promising direction for the future development. So, now the company does not intend to limit itself to Android software development and online services. 
But analysts are not sure that Google will be able to transfer the success of its previous activities to mobile phones production and sales. Much will depend on its pricing policy. Kathy Watson, a Google representative, declined to comment on the future plans. She referred to the recent publication in the official corporate blog, where we can read that a new device is just a “mobile laboratory” for testing of some new technologies.
However, some Google employees have agreed to provide more detailed information (anonymous statements). According to them, devices were made by the Taiwanese HTC company, and they are thinner and have a larger touch screen than Apple iPhone. Well, soon we will be able to verify this information, because Google phone sales can begin in January, 2010.
Tags: Android, Apple, Apple iPhone, Google, mobile software development
Posted in Mobile Development | 2 Comments »
December 15th, 2009
1. Users concentrates on faces
People instinctively notice other people. The same occurs on web pages, users focus their attention on somebody’s face and eyes. So web developers and designers have a good tool to manage users’ attention. Moreover they also can take into account that people usually start to look in the same direction, following photomodel’s look.
Temperature map that shown quantity of users looking at an image with a child who looks at them.
And now he is looking at the content. Pay your attention to the increase in the number of people who read the title and the text.
2. Most of users do not see advertising
Jakob Nielsen says that most of people do not see ads. Looking for some information or focusing on site content, they simply do not pay any attention to banners. It means that users also avoid anything that looks like an advertisement, even if it is not an ads actually. Some menu items may look like banners, so website designers should be careful creating such elements.
Square banners on the left side of the FlashDen site are not banners: they link to content on the same site. But they may be ignored by some users.
However, advertising that looks like content, can be visited by people who are looking for this very information. It can bring more revenue from advertising, but also can reduce level of visitors’ trust because they will click on a banner thinking it’ just a reference to required material on the site. So consider what will be better for you: short-term gain or long-term trust.
Tags: usability, Web development, website design
Posted in Software Development, Web development | No Comments »
December 4th, 2009
Books, experts and experienced mobile development companies recommend to start any software product with creation of a prototype. Why is it so important to develop user interface beforehand? It’s obvious! Program interface is the first thing that users see starting their work.
And especially this approach applies to iPhone apps development. The success of a new application to large extent will depend on whether users like the interface or not. A good prototype identifies the main problems on the very first stage of mobile development. Programmers have not written their code yet, so any changes can be made without any difficulties. Without prototyping problems may occur on the later stages, when most of program code has already been written and it is much more difficult to change something. This risk is too high, so iphone application developers cannot do without a UI prototypes.
There are many ways of prototyping. Some developers still use paper prototyping, drawing new interfaces with pen on paper (so do we at EleganceIT). Others use such programs as Microsoft Visio, Photoshop or special software for UI design (e.g. we use them on the next stages).
Paper prototyping is the fastest method. Some companies even want to make it faster, offering products for those who like to make prototypes of new iPhone applications on paper:
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November 25th, 2009
Designers working for EleganceIT believe that usability is an important aspect of website development. It is important to make pages more simple and user-friendly. Numerous studies on various aspects of website design and user interface help us to create products in compliance with usability standards. Let’s begin from the very first thing you see entering most of sites. We mean input forms.
It’s better to put left-aligned labels above input fields
The UX Matters web magazine has conducted a comprehensive study to find out look-and-feel of an ideal login / registration form. According to the results, the best way is to put labels above form fields. You definitely have noticed that many forms in the Internet have labels placed on the left side, creating a layout with two columns. It looks not bad, but it is not the easiest layout to use. Why? Because users enter information using top-down approach. It will be easier for them to read labels placed just before fields, rather than look for them on the left side.
For example, Tumblr has a simple and elegant registration form, which is consistent with the recommendations of UX Matter.
Labels on the left side create the following dilemma for website application developers: how to align these labels? A left-align label creates good looking layout, but at the same time it separates the label from your form, so it will be difficult to see what label relates to every field. And a right-align label makes the opposite thing: a user-friendly form with wry layout. 
While labels above input fields will be convenient in most cases. The study also has showed that labels should not use < b > (bold) tags, but this recommendation is not so obligatory.
Tags: buy CMS, usability, UX Matters, Web development, website design, website development website application development
Posted in Web development | 6 Comments »
