The new Silverlight media player Monday, May 28, 2007 by Vladimir Enchev | Comments 10 Email to a friend I just checked our brand new still unpublished Silverlight media player control and I have to say that I'm really amazed!!! Just check this: Isn't it cool? :-) Common guys post some more info/demos on this :-) Vladimir Enchev, Senior Technical Architect Email to a friend 10 Comments Sonu Kapoor 29 May 2007 That looks pretty nice :) Vladimir Enchev 29 May 2007 This will be presented officially next week in Orlando Tech·Ed 2007 and if you have a chance you can visit us (booth N 515) - just follow the bean bags :-) .. Telerik will be a Bean Bag Sponsor this year also. Brennan Stehling 29 May 2007 This looks absolutely horrendous. I am serious. It looks like a poorly designed graphic and I am not too pleased with the idea of every application looking and behaving differently than the next one. That is a usability nightmare. This was a big problem with Flash. Finally they came out with a standard set of controls such as scrollbars and form elements. I really hope Silverlight does not turn into a large number of highly skinnable applications which have very low usability standards. Vladimir Enchev 29 May 2007 Brennan, I definitely agree with you about the usability aspects. Here in Telerik we have traditions with user experience and if you are checking our blogs regularly you will probably aware about all these :-)... if not I suggest you to check this link for more info: http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/zhivko_dimitrov/default.aspx .. and I totally disagree that usable software should be something grey, rubbish and ugly. The Telerik philosophy was/is/and will be always focused on providing highly customizable components with full sets of predefined looks which can be removed completely. You can take as an example our WinForms components: http://www.telerik.com/products/winforms/overview.aspx Brennan Stehling 29 May 2007 Vlad, My comment was not just about Telerik. I mean it more generally for all Silverlight applications. I also agree that interfaces do not have to be gray and boring. The Flash controls which were introduced came in all colors and styles much like the Telerik skins but they conformed to the known interface elements to a degree. This player example looks much like a skin for WinAmp which was a poster child for usability problems due to skins. Much of the interface is distracting while not adding any functionality such as the leaves on the left. There is not single set of rules to a good UI, but one good general rule is consistency. I can easily go from WinXP to Vista without due to the consistency of the task bar, minx/max buttons and the close button. In this media player sample at least I can easily determine the pause and stop buttons. The volume control could easily also be the indicator for the progress through the video. I would lean strongly toward an interface which makes sense right away versus one that looks really, really different but is difficult to figure out. I hope UI designers spend significant time with Silverlight as I am sure the Telerik UI designers spend a lot of time with the control skins. I am just seeing how the "anyone can create an interface" idea could catch on with Silverlight as it did with HTML and Flash. Tom 29 May 2007 Functionality aside, that looks absolutely disgusting. Total usability nightmare. Don't ever EVER let this see the light of day. Vassil Terziev 29 May 2007 Tom, Brennan, I can only agree with you guys that it's ugly and it's far away from usability best practices. What you are seeing in the screenshot is a provocative developer-inspired Web 3.0 design that's not going to see the light:) The skins we're preparing for the final release are built by our User Experience team and apart from being usable they are also much more appealing to the eye. Zhivko Dimitrov 30 May 2007 This is Zhivko Dimitrov, UX Director at Telerik. I have to say everyone here at the UX department absolutely loves this design! It is developers' vision for creativity, media richness and... coolness :) We value everything that comes with inspiration and we really appreciate all the effort and enthusiasm that has gone into this prototype. Because this is work from developers for developers, I am sure that many of you will actually love this design and I think this is a wonderful thing. That said, I agree with all of you that this is a usability/visual disaster and it is our fault that the original blog post did not explicitly state this is a preview of a work done entirely from developers just for the joy of creativity. It has nothing to do with the final release to be rolled out at TechEd - actual development of the control has been done in tight cooperation with a User Experience designer from the very start, and the result is a piece of software that we believe is both fun to use and visually impressive, without being distracting. Of course, the interface design has nothing to do with this screenshot. I agree with everyone here – the history of interface design bears a heavy heritage of design over function solutions and would like to assure you here at telerik we don’t see a conflict between these two. So please regard the screenshot as a valuable expression of developers’ enthusiasm with the exciting new possibilities of the Silverlight platform and rest assured we also have enthusiastic UX and visual designers working on a final version that delivers real value for end-users. I am glad to see this issue sparkling so much interest and would encourage everyone to share further feedback on all the challenges new platform possibilities pose to usability and interface design. Matt Woodward 31 May 2007 I completely understand the concept being presented here, in terms of creativity and enthusiasm. But eeek! Showing a design like this is a faux pas on a few too many levels. Sure embrace creativity, but let it be done by a good graphics and UI developer. Designs like this are more likely to discredit teleriks otherwise good reputation! Bonnie 20 Sep 2007 Where's the play button? woof I agree that having this posted only serves to tarnish the company's reputation. I'd print the blog and hang it in the cafteria (right outside of the developers cube area). :-) Comments Comment Apply CSS Class RadEditor hidden textarea RadEditor - please enable JavaScript to use the rich text editor. Name Click to add Email Click to add (optional, emails won't be shown on public pages) Your URL Click to add (optional) Read more articles by Vladimir Enchev - or - read latest articles in Developer Tools
Vladimir Enchev 29 May 2007 This will be presented officially next week in Orlando Tech·Ed 2007 and if you have a chance you can visit us (booth N 515) - just follow the bean bags :-) .. Telerik will be a Bean Bag Sponsor this year also.
Brennan Stehling 29 May 2007 This looks absolutely horrendous. I am serious. It looks like a poorly designed graphic and I am not too pleased with the idea of every application looking and behaving differently than the next one. That is a usability nightmare. This was a big problem with Flash. Finally they came out with a standard set of controls such as scrollbars and form elements. I really hope Silverlight does not turn into a large number of highly skinnable applications which have very low usability standards.
Vladimir Enchev 29 May 2007 Brennan, I definitely agree with you about the usability aspects. Here in Telerik we have traditions with user experience and if you are checking our blogs regularly you will probably aware about all these :-)... if not I suggest you to check this link for more info: http://blogs.telerik.com/blogs/zhivko_dimitrov/default.aspx .. and I totally disagree that usable software should be something grey, rubbish and ugly. The Telerik philosophy was/is/and will be always focused on providing highly customizable components with full sets of predefined looks which can be removed completely. You can take as an example our WinForms components: http://www.telerik.com/products/winforms/overview.aspx
Brennan Stehling 29 May 2007 Vlad, My comment was not just about Telerik. I mean it more generally for all Silverlight applications. I also agree that interfaces do not have to be gray and boring. The Flash controls which were introduced came in all colors and styles much like the Telerik skins but they conformed to the known interface elements to a degree. This player example looks much like a skin for WinAmp which was a poster child for usability problems due to skins. Much of the interface is distracting while not adding any functionality such as the leaves on the left. There is not single set of rules to a good UI, but one good general rule is consistency. I can easily go from WinXP to Vista without due to the consistency of the task bar, minx/max buttons and the close button. In this media player sample at least I can easily determine the pause and stop buttons. The volume control could easily also be the indicator for the progress through the video. I would lean strongly toward an interface which makes sense right away versus one that looks really, really different but is difficult to figure out. I hope UI designers spend significant time with Silverlight as I am sure the Telerik UI designers spend a lot of time with the control skins. I am just seeing how the "anyone can create an interface" idea could catch on with Silverlight as it did with HTML and Flash.
Tom 29 May 2007 Functionality aside, that looks absolutely disgusting. Total usability nightmare. Don't ever EVER let this see the light of day.
Vassil Terziev 29 May 2007 Tom, Brennan, I can only agree with you guys that it's ugly and it's far away from usability best practices. What you are seeing in the screenshot is a provocative developer-inspired Web 3.0 design that's not going to see the light:) The skins we're preparing for the final release are built by our User Experience team and apart from being usable they are also much more appealing to the eye.
Zhivko Dimitrov 30 May 2007 This is Zhivko Dimitrov, UX Director at Telerik. I have to say everyone here at the UX department absolutely loves this design! It is developers' vision for creativity, media richness and... coolness :) We value everything that comes with inspiration and we really appreciate all the effort and enthusiasm that has gone into this prototype. Because this is work from developers for developers, I am sure that many of you will actually love this design and I think this is a wonderful thing. That said, I agree with all of you that this is a usability/visual disaster and it is our fault that the original blog post did not explicitly state this is a preview of a work done entirely from developers just for the joy of creativity. It has nothing to do with the final release to be rolled out at TechEd - actual development of the control has been done in tight cooperation with a User Experience designer from the very start, and the result is a piece of software that we believe is both fun to use and visually impressive, without being distracting. Of course, the interface design has nothing to do with this screenshot. I agree with everyone here – the history of interface design bears a heavy heritage of design over function solutions and would like to assure you here at telerik we don’t see a conflict between these two. So please regard the screenshot as a valuable expression of developers’ enthusiasm with the exciting new possibilities of the Silverlight platform and rest assured we also have enthusiastic UX and visual designers working on a final version that delivers real value for end-users. I am glad to see this issue sparkling so much interest and would encourage everyone to share further feedback on all the challenges new platform possibilities pose to usability and interface design.
Matt Woodward 31 May 2007 I completely understand the concept being presented here, in terms of creativity and enthusiasm. But eeek! Showing a design like this is a faux pas on a few too many levels. Sure embrace creativity, but let it be done by a good graphics and UI developer. Designs like this are more likely to discredit teleriks otherwise good reputation!
Bonnie 20 Sep 2007 Where's the play button? woof I agree that having this posted only serves to tarnish the company's reputation. I'd print the blog and hang it in the cafteria (right outside of the developers cube area). :-)
