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UX & UI recomendations

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    UX & UI recomendations

    Hello everyone,
    Can someone point me in the right direction of Alphas guideline to a right UX and UI? I know that Google has a very extensive guide of material design, but i wonder if Alpha has its own guideline. Thanks

    #2
    Re: UX & UI recomendations

    Could you elaborate? Are you looking for design guidelines? Web? Mobile?

    Alpha has very basic CSS Styles... but has never gone beyond that... and can't because they don't have the people with those skills.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: UX & UI recomendations

      UX is not the only way to use Alpha. I do not use UX. I have a life.

      My advice is to separate frontend and backend and create understandable and maintainable code and forget UX. This way you can use for example Google Material Design if you wish. However I do understand that Alpha has added about six years features to UX and not signs that they will do anything else the next six years. But anyway my advice is unless you do not have a good reason to use UX, don't use it.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: UX & UI recomendations

        I use the ux and have no problem ensuring my additional frontend and backend code is seperated and highly maintainable. But of course there is certain things that using a5w pages or even HTML files are just the better way to achieve something. If your a current subscriber then I think the ux is the way to go using the client side ux api you can implement any HTML and CSS using the view box listbox and control bar. It really depends what system you are building and who for. Learn and adapt the material design if you so wish. go to some of your favourite sites or similar systems to get some inspiration. The design is obviously needs to be different if its an application that is data entry intense VS some application that people read and taps a few buttons that triggers a report or further process.
        Alex Collier

        "The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories. People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do"

        AA Builds from 5221_5152 to Pre-releases >> Deploying to IIS in AWS

        Comment


          #5
          Re: UX & UI recomendations

          Right here right now is a wake up call for AA.. and the call is FOCUS on the main game.
          Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
          Albert Einstein, (attributed)
          US (German-born) physicist (1879 - 1955)

          Comment


            #6
            Re: UX & UI recomendations

            I guess as everyone points out Alpha has not put much effort into a unified "Style". They provide stylesheets that help, but the design is not to everyone's satisfaction. That being said they have some great tools in the UX.

            The control bar is well worth reviewing.
            I personally love the viewbox.
            The list is now data bound so you can do amazing things.

            You can do some pretty cool things in the UX without having to write a lot of code.
            https://cornford-gmail.tinytake.com/...QyNl83Mjg0NDMw
            https://cornford-gmail.tinytake.com/...MwMV83MjkyNTQ0

            Here I try to demonstrate how Alpha allows complex layouts.
            https://cornford-gmail.tinytake.com/...AwNV83Mjk2ODUw

            Here a young boy is trying to build an interactive form builder.
            http://smg.datadrivensystems.co.uk/l...eft3Column.a5w

            Here are a few ideas we have had on styling Alpha
            https://drive.google.com/file/d/15v4...ew?usp=sharing
            https://dochub.com/michaelcornford/R...qb250rbujhpwk6

            Comment


              #7
              Re: UX & UI recomendations

              Yet another thread about appearance, styling, finished look. This right now is top priority to me. For a RAD, Low Code, out of the box tool it takes too long and requires too many tricks to make something look 1/2 way decent. PLEASE ALPHA, prioritize this!!

              Comment


                #8
                Re: UX & UI recomendations

                Originally posted by alexc View Post
                I use the ux and have no problem ensuring my additional frontend and backend code is seperated and highly maintainable. But of course there is certain things that using a5w pages or even HTML files are just the better way to achieve something. If your a current subscriber then I think the ux is the way to go using the client side ux api you can implement any HTML and CSS using the view box listbox and control bar. It really depends what system you are building and who for. Learn and adapt the material design if you so wish. go to some of your favourite sites or similar systems to get some inspiration. The design is obviously needs to be different if its an application that is data entry intense VS some application that people read and taps a few buttons that triggers a report or further process.
                I think best way to see how maintainable code is in UX is to put a single textbox to UX and then publish this UX. Then examine source code in browser.
                It should look something like this, but does it?
                Code:
                <!doctype html>
                 <head>
                <title>Document</title>
                 </head>
                 <body>
                  <input type="text" name="textbox">
                 </body>
                </html>
                Well, no it does not look like code abobe. You actually have 1400 lines of code 250 kb Alpha JS an 80 kb JQuery + css to show one textbox.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: UX &amp; UI recomendations

                  Personally, I think the UX is probably the BEST way to go. As far as the lines of code, I think you REALLY need to consider that the UX is built to do so much more than 1 text box. I do agree thats a lot of us essay code generated in putting together one text box, however nobody would build an application with a lone text box - I think thats an unfair example to the power of the component. Kind of like saying you don’t need a whole entire restaurant to fry an egg.
                  To be fair to your comment though, perhaps they should strip out all the unessesary code when compiling, but even so how does that translate into maintaining code? You don’t even have to write it.

                  Getting back to the thread topic though, it pains me to design the look in AS due to the fact that it isn’t a visual WYSIWYG builder. You gotta, preview load it into chrome and play with margins and padding and box attributes until you get placement setup to what you want to see, then you start in with the responsive design and you will be spending some time.
                  I turn off pre-render and static page caching, and use working preview but sometimes it seems like I can upload the component live faster.
                  When I was getting started, that was the least of my concerns. I just wanted to get database interaction going and figured I would style it later. For a beginner, I would recommend a tabbedUI with grids, its a fast and easy approach to getting things going. After that as you learn, I see a lot of developers using the UX more and more. Ken may not like it but that’s his preference, from what I have seen talking to other developers building web apps and pGB apps, the UX is absolutely the best option.
                  SO thats my 2 cents.
                  Hope everyone has a great day.
                  ~Cheers
                  NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: UX &amp; UI recomendations

                    Originally posted by CharlesParker View Post
                    To be fair to your comment though, perhaps they should strip out all the unessesary code when compiling, but even so how does that translate into maintaining code? You don’t even have to write it.
                    :)

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: UX &amp; UI recomendations

                      So, at the risk of jumping in on this hot topic, I just wanted to mention something regarding Charles's post # 9 about WYSIWYG designing a web form in a UX. I completely agree with the approach alpha takes in the UX form builder where, generally, one organizes fields into containers and chooses when line breaks between fields must occur or are just plain optional based on what fits in the space available. The precise details of an element's appearance, such as font size, vertical and horizontal padding and margins, etc., is really something I prefer leaving up to CSS. In a relatively small web app I have 149 different a5w Grid and UX components. I wouldn't want to make precise decisions over control placement on all of those forms. Although, at the moment I have one UX that looks unusually bad using the default MobBlue CSS that I use everywhere else in my app. I would really like to have the ability to edit that form in a WYSYWIG mode to fix the bad CSS, but I know that is a matter better suited for a standalone editor, outside of AlphaAnywhere. With that said, though, there is a feature that was released in alpha over four years ago that I suspect has remained relatively unknown -- there is a WYSIWYG builder in the UX! It was pointed out to me in a recent webinar. It is not the kind of builder that lets you tweak the underlying CSS styles to globally affect change; it is a builder that lets you override the default placement of controls on the specific UX you are designing. Have a look at how Selwyn's uses that WYSIWYG editor to overlay data entry fields onto his tax form:

                      https://www.viddler.com/v/bdeffe6c

                      The written documentation for can be found here: Absolute Layout Container

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: UX &amp; UI recomendations

                        I have used that with great success but it seems that is more for a form where you know the exact size and not much on responsive design. I think its more a where you place it is where its at designer, bu good nonetheless.
                        NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: UX &amp; UI recomendations

                          I use it when going through with a client to layout how things would look in a Web desktop mode, tablet and mob (three absolute layouts). I would then convert them into layout or depending on the budget of project store the three options of the underlying HTML in a static js and inject it onto the screen depending on device size
                          Alex Collier

                          "The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories. People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do"

                          AA Builds from 5221_5152 to Pre-releases >> Deploying to IIS in AWS

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