March 2009

The logic beyond my design for Totem

In fact, there are three reasons beyond my design for timing bar:

1. User doesn't focus by his eyes on a media player in the same way he focus on a word processor.
   Word processors have a 'side-focus-angle' which is the start reading/writing point, which is in the top-left side
   of the application window (or top-right in middle-eastern languages).
   While in media players, there is no language-context. instead, there is a 'black board' hides a lot of events and
   surprises waiting to appear once in 'the middle of the screen', so it has a 'central-focus-point', and the whole
   application should have this spirit; the spirit of centralization, that's why the timing information shouldn't be
   considered as 'status' in a regular status bar in a regular language-context-based application, but it should
   appear in a 'central black board' screen, just like the original video central black board!
2. There is a wide unused area under the 'seek bar', and timing information appears in a small silly corner in the
   application window.
   The solution: taking the advantage of this unused area, and putting the timing information in a 'respected board'
   in this area, in as size that deserves.
3. By this suggested design we can make timing board richer, and more interactive.
   Rich: arranging timing information in distributed areas instead of putting it in a one simple line makes it more readable.
   Interactive: for example, double clicking on the time numbers to offer the time left with (-) sign, just like XMMP/Winamp.

Posted at 12:14 AM | Comments?
Categories: Desktop

A New Calculator Design

Calculator software used to simulate real calculator machine, which is, in turn, restricted with manufacturing costs. For example a wider digital screen or more buttons cost more and more money, while a virtual calculator on a computer screen can be far richer than a real calculator machine. And that's what I'm trying to do by my suggested design.

One of the most important thing in my design is adding a 'clipboard tab' in the calculator, so that you can see the memory content in an enough wide and comfortable screen. In this screen you can see a largest amount of content with one view.

This feature wouldn't be possible in a real calculator machine.

Operations board and clipboard will appear in multi-line text area, not in a one line as usual. here's an example, show you how calculating operations should appear:

          56
+           4
_____________________
          60
-          50
_____________________
          10
1/x
_____________________
           0.1
*            900
_____________________
          90
*          10
%
_____________________
           9
^           0.5
_____________________
           3

Take a look:

Copy/Paste/Delete/Backspace buttons:

These buttons offer a new mechanism to deal with the memory.

• Copy: to insert the last line in the operations log, or the selected line in the operations log, in the clipboard.
• Paste: to insert the last line in the clipboard, or the selected line in the clipboard, to the operations log.
  This button will be disabled when selecting (opening) the clipboard tab.
• Delete: to delete the last line in the operations log, or the selected line in the clipboard.
• Backspace: to delete the last digit in the last line in the operations log.
  This button will be disabled when selecting (opening) the clipboard tab.

Button maps:

I used the standard real keyboard map as much as possible.

• It's easy to remember, because it's common,
• And it's reasonable, especially the (+) and the (=) keys, it should be big because it's used very much.

The last note:

The font used for operations log and the clipboard, should be monospace.

Posted at 11:56 PM | Comments?
Categories: Desktop