http://internship.dreamture.net is the new blog of this summer's design intern at the UX department here in telerik, where Dimitar Raykov will regularly upload his ongoing work on the weekly internship assignments. Following a successful attempt to accommodate an intern a couple of years ago, this summer we wanted to expand the effort with a program that gives not just a preview of an actual work environment, but also has a more academic side to it with a chance to experiment within the design practice. Before I laid out the program I did some research on existing programs elsewhere but failed to ...

Once again, I am excited to announce the start of a new initiative to improve the user experience with skinning the Telerik controls. We are starting work on a new Visual Style Builder application for the ASP.NET AJAX Controls and a major upgrade of the existing application for the WinForms Controls. The Visual Style Builder will allow easy, point-and-click customization of component skins, eliminating the need to get acquainted with the front-end structure of the controls. The Visual Style Builder will also speed up development of skins across several components - you will be able to define a style once and ...

With design and User Experience fast gathering momentum as the leading factors behind the success or failure of IT projects, we're continuing efforts here at telerik to make sure the RadControls suites stay at the forefront of presentation layer trends. We have been riding the waves with the introduction of our black skin (ever since Vista and Office 2007, black seems to be the new white in interface design), and we fully support both the Vista and the Office 2007 interface looks - for the web and Winforms.

So what's next? We thought we should ask you. We're running ...

Just came back from this year's webDD event at the Microsoft campus in Reading, UK and wanted to give a big thank you to Dave and Phil and all the organizers for the great experience - it was an insightful weekend with Scott Guthries' news on AJAX and WPFe, and a great chance to check back on industry developments with fellow designers and developers. With web standards and the Rails technology heavily emphasized in the sessions, it was truly refreshing to see in action Microsoft's recent dedication to industry standards and their openness to alternative frameworks. Dave Verwer's lecture on ...

For the last half a year, we’ve been quietly revolutionizing software development here at telerik, trying to integrate a thought about the user on all stages of product development. While we really wanted to improve the User Experience, we were very careful not to go too far with needlessly expensive usability best-practices – we believe the smartest solutions are usually the simplest solutions, so we looked around for a way to measure usability that would not involve furnishing a state-of-the-art recording studio and flying users over continents. For a start, we thought we just needed to observe users interact with ...

I’ve been having this nightmare recently that we’re off track with what customers are looking for in terms of interface design, and I guess the best way to find out how we’re doing is to ask you guys. So I’ve set up a short online survey for all willing to help us feel where the industry is heading and provide feedback for what they need. Your feedback so far is truly encouraging and will be instrumental in crafting our future plans for skin development, interface design and visual presentation of all telerik components. I would strongly encourage all of you ...

I am yet to grasp the marketing behind Microsoft naming conventions - usually a beta program would jump start with a great name, the official launch would kill it in a dull title, and things would finally settle down with an abbreviation that is actually pronounceable. Naming conventions aside, the upcoming Windows Presentation Framework (WPF), formerly known as Avalon, holds promise to become the next buzzword of the industry - even if someone adds to it another sentence before the official roll-out with Windows Vista in early 2007.

From a designer's point of view, the next-generation interface for Windows is ...

Thinking how to make your life and our ROI targets easier, we decided it’s a good idea to provide for download the Photoshop sources of our components’ skins. So we sat down and toiled relentlessly to tame the mess of untitled layers into something of actual business value – the result is a section at http://www.telerik.com/skins with free downloads of the Photoshop sources for the most requested telerik skins. Pure design goodness for you to customize and build upon. Remember this section when the time comes to design your next application – this time you can jump start with ...

Has the time come to challenge the top place of glassy look in today’s web notion for haute couture? What could possibly act cooler than a glassy button on your web site?



Admit it, even if you never had it, at one point or another you secretly craved for one. One of those fat, professional looking glassy buttons that scream out loud style & grace and are said to sky-rocket click through rates. Everyone’s got it - for the last couple of years, web interface has been all about this glassy feel – ironically enough, with the fall of the ...