I should say I work for really great company. And it is not just because I work there but it is because of their internal user group !! Yes, we have an internal user group and we regularly do meeting where employees do presentation on current / new technologies. Some technologies which we can use in current and future development projects and some are just to let others know what is going on out side of their work place … I believe that every company should have user groups like this. It not only gives employees information of new technologies but also creates kind of healthy team environment. And we call it “Techno Lunch” (Yes its Lunch and we order Pizza )
I am kind of fresh start in this company, so I have been to just few meetings. In our last meeting I decided to do a little presentation on stuff that I like to do, a web designing. Well, I don’t have designer gene in me so honestly I am terrible with design stuff but I still try to improve my self because I believe that people will only use your application if it looks nice … yes it is fact … if you have superfine application but with terrible UI then it just won’t get attention. On the other hand if your UI is really nice and application sucks … people will still like it (or atleast try it … and then dump it once they find that your application really sucks )
Anyways, about my presentation … it is actually kind of extension of some video that I saw on Microsoft Expression Studio website. That video demonstrated how we can use Expression Design to generate XML (Silverlight) files from image using Slicing (if you know web designing then you probably know what it it, for other mere mortals Slicing is just a method to divide whole image into smaller parts and then we can export those parts as an individual images to join them in HTML, web designers use this method all the time to make website from mockup pages). And then I added more by showing users how can we import those files in Expression Web and use them in any website. Something I really don’t like about RIAs is that they are kind of hard to adjust according to screen size … so if you have created a silverlight object with 800×600 pixel size then it will display the same size at ANY SCREEN SOLUTION, compared to any HTML website. Well, it was not something we are using right now because we are in business of application development but we don’t design websites so my presentation was not so useful to them.
I have uploaded the demo which I used to present at our Techno Lunch.
Its Just a Thought …