My name is Karim and I’m a software developer focused on user interface design. I build software for Windows, iOS and the web, and occasionally blog about my experiences.Tumblr (3.0; @dragonshed)http://blog.dragonshed.org/<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/36579366" width="400" height="225" frameborder="0"></iframe><br/><br/><p>One of the most inspiring technical presentations I’ve seen in a while, Bret Victor’s “Inventing on Principle” explores what it means to guide your work on a principle, as opposed to following a passion or doing what you love. He demonstrates some very innovative tools for design & development. “Creators have to be able to see what they’re doing … see the effect of a change immediately.” Simply amazing.</p>http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/17675812637http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/17675812637Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:26:40 -0800notesdesigndevelopfutures<a href="http://subtlepatterns.com/">Subtle Patterns</a>: <p>Subtle Patterns is created and curated by Atle Mo, whose goal is to provide a high quality resource for anyone in need of tileable textured patterns, free to use.</p>http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/16451448852http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/16451448852Tue, 24 Jan 2012 20:58:05 -0800designgraphicstilesnotes<iframe width="400" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rVyBwz1-AiE?wmode=transparent&autohide=1&egm=0&hd=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&showsearch=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br/><br/><p>All these gestures together are a bit much. I think it’s probable for casual and savvy users to accidentally invoke some of these gestures. But, there should be a way to get 80% of the control exhibited here with a few compromises, and improve the over all experience of reader apps.</p> <p>iBooks 3.0, perhaps?</p>http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/16411965657http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/16411965657Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:56:22 -0800designereaderiosipadnotes<a href="http://developer.android.com/design/index.html">Android Design Guidelines</a>: <p><a href="http://developer.android.com/design/index.html"><img src="http://i.dragonshed.org/blog/android/devices-displays.png" alt="Android Design"/></a> Google has released design guidelines for Android 4.0. Right now it includes information on typography and color palettes as well as the components of the Android UI.</p>http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15738908356http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15738908356Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:53:00 -0800notesdesignandroidmobile<p><a href="http://i.dragonshed.org/blog/metroxamlpad/source.zip"><img src="http://i.dragonshed.org/blog/metroxamlpad/tabletxamlpad.jpg" alt="Xamlpad for Windows 8"/></a></p> <h2>What</h2> <p>MetroXamlpad is a design &amp; development utility for Windows 8. It is a simple, split view text editor that parses its document contents as Xaml and displays the result, either as a valid visual tree of UIElements or an error. It’s typically used as a quick way to render Xaml in an isolated environment, usually to debug/test styles and layouts.</p> <p><img src="http://i.dragonshed.org/blog/metroxamlpad/screenshot-8x6.png" alt="Screenshot"/></p> <h2>Why</h2> <p>Sketching, prototyping, and debugging visual concerns can sometimes be difficult, especially on new platforms. In many cases the key is to minimize the time between authoring changes and seeing them in action. In other words, fail quickly.</p> <p>Many variations of this tool exist, my favorite being <a href="http://kaxaml.com/">KaXaml</a>, but right now none of these support WinRT. What’s worse, the Blend 5 Developer Preview doesn’t support Xaml either! The Visual Studio designer supports rendering Xaml at design time, but it lacks many of the productivity features Blend for WPF &amp; Silverlight has to aid and enrich building an app with full design time support.</p> <p>To help iterate quickly and fill the tooling void, I decided to make a simple version of this utility.</p> <h2>How</h2> <p>It’s actually a trivial app to write. All Xaml frameworks to date, including WinRT, support parsing Xaml into visuals at runtime, in the form of XamlReader.Load(). This is the bulk of what a Xamlpad app needs to accomplish; what remains is simply user interface conveniences or productivity features.</p> <p class="gist">Xaml <a href="http://gist.github.com/1593622"><a href="http://gist.github.com/1593622">http://gist.github.com/1593622</a></a></p> <p class="gist">C# <a href="http://gist.github.com/1593623"><a href="http://gist.github.com/1593623">http://gist.github.com/1593623</a></a></p> <p>Cheers!</p>http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15664634790http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15664634790Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:43:00 -0800articlesmetrowindows 8winrtxamldevelop<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/33692624" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0"></iframe><br/><br/><p>Scott Jenson makes his case for Why Mobile Apps Must Die in this exploration of the pain points of native mobile apps and the inherent advantages the web has over them.</p> <blockquote> <p>This talk will explain how applications must give way to a more universal approach to application distribution, one based on the mobile web and cloud services.</p> </blockquote> <p>This is one of those talks I really wish I didn’t agree with.</p>http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15392974390http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15392974390Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:50:00 -0800futuresnotes<p>There are some fantastic fonts available at <a href="http://losttype.com/browse/">Lost Type</a>.</p> <blockquote> <p>Lost Type: The finest pay-what-you-wish type foundry.</p> </blockquote> <p>Thus far, my favorite is Ministry <img src="http://i.dragonshed.org/blog/losttype/ministry.jpg" alt="Ministry Font" title="Ministry Font"/></p>http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15392729451http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15392729451Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:17:00 -0800designfontsnotes“Beginnings are such delicate times.”<br/><br/> - <em>Bene Gesserit Axiom, Frank Herbert’s Dune</em>http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15390850241http://blog.dragonshed.org/post/15390850241Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:43:00 -0800randomnotes