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This page last changed on Mar 23, 2007 by amitku.
3-23-07 Interface Cell Minutes
Attending:
John N., Matt B., Andrew, Mike, Catherine, Carlos, Amit, Piotr, Kirsten
Review of the Responsibilities / Roles of This Cell:
- There seems to be consensus that the statement from last week is fine ('Responsible for user-interface design, implementation, evaluation. This includes data visualization.')
Discoveries / Thoughts About Potential Programming Languages:
- Need to decide how much server-side vs. client-side technology.
- What features should work in offline mode?
- Text collections must be online so some connectivity is required.
- Manipulation of results / visualizations can be done offline.
- Both Wordhoard and NORA require connectivity.
- We should be able to save locally or export to a local drive.
- Need a way to aggregate data (load data sequentially on an as-needed basis) to accommodate larger collections:
- Amit: For instance a collection map viewer that shows an overview and allows you to select portions.
- Mike P. has been working on a layout manager for OL that can handle up to a couple of thousand items (OL bogs down displaying somewhere between 2000 - 5000 names).
- Anthony is similarly working on numbers of items.
- Should consider use cases in making this decision.
- Catherine suggests experiments until the end of April.
- Stan will send a note asking for technology evaluation.
- Amit will create a table to help evaluate different options.
Criteria for Language:
- It needs to be attractive quickly.
- Capable of animation.
- Capable of displaying 1000s of text items.
- Incremental loading for large lists or large files.
- Logistics (e.g. are there enough coders to go around?).
- Flexible / extensible interface.
- No download required.
Options Discussed:
OL:
- Version 4.0 released last week is reported to support compiling to DHTML.
- This should improve performance in the rendering of text objects.
- OL is attractive because it is based on XML - it will work well independent of backend / server.
- No cross-browser testing is required.
- Catherine: OL has some nice text animations, fisheyes and so on.
Adobe Apollo:
- Recently released.
- Designed to work seamlessly online and off:
- Amit describes an example made for eBay users that allows for the creation of auction items offline. These items are then stored until a network connection is available, and then sent online.
GWT:
- Good because it is Java based and extensible.
- Can embed other frameworks (e.g. 'Prototype').
Others:
Homework:
- Have a look at UU cell sometime soon.
- Amit is creating a wiki page to keep track of programming language options / features.
- Someone should test OL 4.0 DHTML.
- Languages need to be stress tested (and these tests should be replicatible / made available).
Next Time:
- Discuss visualizations.
- Discuss results of language testing experiments.
- Hear report from UU cell.
Meet again in two weeks (Friday, April 6th)
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