Skins Without Developers
By Daryl Tempesta, Lutris Technologies Senior
Designer
Many UI Design professionals are about to wake the sleeping giant
that is Enhydra XMLC. I bet a box full of orange hair dye that
within a very short time any respectable application developer,
particularly the graphic designers, will use nothing but XMLC.
Now this may sound a bit optimistic in light of the dominant presence
of JSP, but look around. Already we are seeing the fruits of this
liberating Enhydra innovation. For the lucky who are familiar
with the simple power and flexibility of XMLC, designers like
myself have experienced a new world of opportunities.
Did you ever have to make up your mind? Choose one design and
leave the other behind?
Well, I know firsthand what it means when a client can’t. By
definition a successful beginning to any project means that the
client had to choose between a couple of strong design concepts.
When is one chosen, "let the design changes begin!"
In the more challenging projects, the client makes changes up
to the very last moment. Recently, I was working on a project
where the actual design for the user interface would not be approved
for production until 10 days before the application was scheduled
to go live. I'm sure my experience is not unique.
Since the client chose Enhydra and XMLC, there was an excellent
chance that we could meet our schedule despite the last minute
changes. Basically I was performing plastic surgery on the key
asset of this new dot com. Both of our companies would be affected
by the outcome. As the approved design arrived we started immediately
on this endurance race. We began by using the “HTML only” templates
that were already being used for development and testing. They
were retrofitted with a full range of graphic elements and changed
miles of attributes. This included tweaks to colors, the resizing
and repositioning of tables, along with many other other invasive
things that would render the page unusable or broken if we had
been using a JSP model technology.
Armed with only HTML knowledge and standard graphic design tools,
the graphics were implemented at the same time the engineers were
doing their work . When you were at the mall or airport, did you
ever see a little tot on a leash, the other end being held by
an over protective mother? It’s a shame that before now, world
class, award wining designers needed to also be expert programmers
or needed to have an engineer implement a UI in JSP or some other
page heavy technology. With XMLC, I had autonomy. The client
was happy because they only needed to pay for one person to do
the changes and my project manager was happy because she knew
our client would award us with repeat business. I felt free.
It was so simple to implement, I found myself daydreaming while
I was working. That's when I realized how absolutely powerful
XMLC was. It was conceivable, probable and now a reality that
any designer, anywhere, can create the complete “front end” of
a web application. Design studios flush with graphic talent and
with no engineer to be found, can now select any Enhydra XMLC-powered
engineering firm, anywhere, and create next generation portals,
sites, and apps. I predict that there will be a quick marriage
between the best design houses/agencies and Enhydra shops around
the world. You see, while Enhydra and XMLC represent the new best
tool for engineers, designers can now develop projects at whatever
pace is needed. More importantly, at any time, the design can
be changed with minimal impact to the schedule. Before XMLC it
would have been easier to stop a cow rollerskating down a hill
with a spoon than meet these kinds of extreme time requirements.
For those designers who are not aware how to implement XMLC,
my next few articles will go into the nuts and bolts of XMLC and
show some helpful strategies and techniques for designers to implement.
Without XMLC, this is one project deadline that would have been
missed. It would have been disaster for the project, the client
and their investors. Amazing considering the client made changes
to the design, even the day before it went live. We met our full
implementation of the web application within the 10 days. Maybe
the client doesn’t need to make their mind up after all. Either
way, designers now have a tool to meet the growing demand for
Internet design work; the giant is waking up.
Over the next year's worth of Lutris Enhydra Journals, we'll
address some for-designers-only topics, including:
- Skeleton, Build, Rebuild – Stages of development
- Placing & Using XMLC – Simple technical
use of span tags and ID attributes
- Placing & Using XMLC – Intermediate Technical
use of span tags and ID attributes
- Get the most from your design – Branding techniques
and emphasizes use of XMLC
- Case Study: Successful company in action: themall.earthlink.net
- In the news: worldwide coverage of XMLC adoption
by Design agencies
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