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Adobe For iPhone Back Online

Ahmed Abbas Leave a comment

This is a long waited debate ended-up with great news for every Flash & ActionScript developer ..
On September 9th, Apple has announced a statement that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines, followed by Adobe in the same day announcing to developers that they can deliver applications for iOS devices, and they will now resume development work on Adobe’s Packager for iPhone.

Well, What would be the odds of that?
Considering how many ActionScript developers compared to Objective C developers, I think it’s clear enough that there is a revolution coming to the AppStore.

Some would say, so what?!
I say it’s simply a huge field for expanding Flash based applications, which means extremely good for business, especially with the multi-touch feature ..
and ..
It increases the potential competition between HTML5 and Flash Platform as well!

Because Apple has adopted HTML5 since it is open standards, unlike Flash which is closed system, in addition to few other reasons stated by Steve Jobs himself on April 2010, which of course what this is all about ..

What is UX Design?

Ahmed Abbas 1 Comment

I have noticed recently that most people (at least in my country) do not understand the abbreviation UX (User Experience), others just refer that to UI (User Interface)!

Well, I must say that they are obviously mistaken!
The only relation between both is that UX might be a result of UI but not necessarily, we can achieve UX even when there’s no UI at all!

UX is about user feelings and perceptions.
UI is about interaction controls for the user.

Who is the UI Designer?
He is the person who has the talent to create elegant interface elements to appeal the user.
Practically, his role is about shape and color, and it is a unique criteria, requires long experience and large amount of time to satisfy various tastes.
His tools should be freehand sketching and digital design software like Photoshop and Illustrator.

Unlike the UX Designer, who has the knowledge of human psychology in terms of reactions and responses to designs, his role is about defending the user rights and controlling user perceptions for designs (specifications, user scenarios, wireframes, ..,etc).
His tools are the same as UI Designer in addition to OmniGraffle, Axure, .., etc.

Unfortunately, some employers not just treating UX Designer as UI Designer, they also require a full set of skills in scripting and mark-up languages in order to develop the actual UI interfaces, much like they combine UX Designer, UI Designer, and UI Developer in one role! sometimes they even require much more technical skills like advanced server scripting languages like PHP, Perl, .NET, ..,etc!

I am in fact one person who do believe that each UX Designer should have background about technologies and development, it helps to fully understand how to implement certain designs according to the latest available technologies ..
But not to do the whole task starting from conceptualization going through design and ending with final interactive product! it’s simply a huge waste of time and much higher expectations from a single talented person ..

It would be more efficient if the UX Designer works closely with Marketing Directors, Information Architects, and Creative Directors ..
It’s about time to emphasize the business needs by satisfying the actual users, the global competition went too high due to the wide production for different designs, the users are increasingly get lost and that affects business needs for sure ..

Related articles about wider perceptions that covers this subject:

Interaction vs. Interactive Design
Reactive / Responsive / Interactive

Interaction vs. Interactive Design

Ahmed Abbas 1 Comment

As per my previous post here, I was trying to make my own approach to the facts behind the most confusing perspectives (Reactive, Responsive, and Interactive) ..

I’ve been led to a point where Interaction and Interactive terms are quite different yet related, and as I said it is a literate issue from my point of view ..

Interaction – noun.
Interaction Design is referring design to interactivity (designing the interactivity).

Interactive – adjective.
Interactive Design is referring interactivity to design (interacting the design).

I think I need to explain more ..
If we agree with my definition to the term “Interactive” to be a two-way flow of information (communication channel) between objects and users, in other words, how information flows from objects to users and how users respond to it.
On the other hand, if we define the term “Design” to some sort of specification to an object.
Then we can say:

Interaction Design is referring to the specification of interactive objects (objects responsive to users).

Interactive Design is referring to the information flows in response to the object’s specification.

For an instance, a cell phone is in fact is an interactive object, which means it responds to user’s actions ..
Specifying how users can interact like how many buttons, shape, size, color, .. ,etc.
I call that Interaction Design.
Controlling how information flows to users based on those specifications like visual interface, sounds, vibration, animation, .. ,etc.
I call that Interactive Design.

The way I see it, when we talk about designs in which the user can interact like Architectural Design, Industrial Design, and Graphic User Interfaces, then we are in fact designing the interactive objects (Interaction Design).
And when we talk about use cases and scenarios to control the user response to certain designs like Visualizations, Animations, Sounds, and Movements, then we are in fact interacting the designed objects (Interactive Design), in other words, Moods, Expectations, and Know-how.

There is a thin line between both perspectives, but the obvious part is “Interactivity”, it is necessary for both terms (Interaction and Interactive), if the user can not interact with objects then there is no place for neither Interaction Design nor Interactive Design.

Reactive / Responsive / Interactive

Ahmed Abbas 1 Comment

Reactive is acting in response to a stimulus without proper observation (emotional over mental)
Responsive is taking appropriate action in the moment after discern and differentiate relative priorities (mental over emotional)
Interactive is allowing a two-way flow of information between parties (emotional, mental, and physical)

Interactive Design actually refers to the communication channel produced by certain design, unlike Responsive Design which creates a single reaction controlled by design.
Reactive Design is something completely different, there’s no specific actions needs to be taken in response to design, hence it’s all about emotions, so to speak!

In other words, Interactive Design could be described as a set of Responsive Designs!
To control all possible reactions there must be a well managed flow of information (Information Architecture), and to deliver those reactions there must be a well designed User Scenarios (User Experience).

In case we refer the common abbreviation IxD to Interactive Design as well, then:

IxD = IA + UX

Interaction Design and Interactive Design are not quite similar, in fact it’s a literate issue ..
Interaction Design is designing the objects with which the user can interact (Architectural, Industrial, User Interface).
Interactive Design is designing the communication channel in which the user can interact with objects (Presentation, Visualization, Advertisement).

Alternatively, Interaction Design is essential to Interactive Design, without the interaction objects there’s no place for the interactive channel!

Open-Source Arabic Parsing v1.5

Ahmed Abbas 20 Comments

Update: a newer version available here

Now you can integrate my parser into your library as open-source under GNU GPL license ..

ActionSctipt 2.0 version available here
ActionSctipt 3.0 version available here

Features Supported:

  1. Embedding Fonts (just put a dynamic textfield on-stage and select at least Basic Latin (95 glyphs) and Arabic (1088 glyphs) from the Character Embedding menu).
  2. Arabic Ligatures.
  3. Word Wrapping.
  4. Bi-Directional text.
  5. HTML Text.
  6. Loading External text on run-time.
  7. Windows/Mac/Linux support.
  8. Arabic enabled input fields using actionscript method (createArabicInput) with the help of javascript (arabicinput.js) beta

Features Not Supported:

  1. Arabic Diacritics (not necessarily for reading Arabic language in general, arabs are using diacritics mostly for writing Quran, and in that case diacritics are not the only missing feature, there’re many other ligatures cases in Arabic used for Quran writing).

You can use the old example found here, just replace the StringUtils.as class file ..