Alexei@Nitobi

Some of you may be wondering – what are these wierd components on our roadmap? Callout and Presenter are new additions to our suite and will be bundled right up with everything else at no additional charge.

Callout is a very nicely skinned tooltip component that can be attached to things like form fields, grid cells, or any old DOM element. They can be used for validation, for alerting the user, or for taking the user through a webpage. We’ll be adding native support for it in Grid, and build it into other products.

Presenter (the name may change) is an API for creating guided tours of web applications. It can be used to train users about how to use a application, or for marketing purposes it can be used to draw attention to key features on a page. The great thing about Presenter is that you can simulate a mouse movement around the screen, have callouts, use the ‘flashlight’ effect, and even insert custom JavaScript to create truly rich interactions on a page. You can even use Presenter to fill out form fields.

These components are part of our commitment to building user interface tools and components that really contribute to a positive user experience.

In the screenshot below we have a bunch of Callout’s using the XP theme.

Callout and Presenter will be part of the Complete UI suite available in February. If you’re interested in participating in the Beta group, apply here. We’ll also be doing a screencast closer to launch.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 8:54 pm and is filed under ajax, User Interface, components. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.