TAT Cascades Demo: Rich UI Development for BlackBerry Apps

on 18 Oct 2011 02:49 PM

[ youtube video link for mobile viewing ]

We've been wondering exactly what RIM has had TAT doing for the past little while and during the DevCon Americas keynote they took the oppurtunity to give us a quick demo.Cascades -- is a UI framework designed by TAT and has now been implemented into the BlackBerry Native SDK. So what can you do with it and what are its features?

Great performance, including amazing transitions and animations
Flexible UI layouts including free form lists.
3D support
Support for mixing pre-packaged UI components with custom components
Core UI feature support

Some of the BlackBerry PlayBook apps such as Scrapbook are using Cascades already and come Fall 2011-- developers will have access to the pre-packaged components which allow access to Flexible List layouts, 2D/3D transformations, mixing of 2D UI and 3D objects. Long story short, developers apps are going to look beautiful when they get their hands on the tools TAT has been using for years.

Learn more about Cascades

Filed Under: News & Rumors; Tags: cascades, DevCon11, TAT

32 Comments

Posted by chiefbroski Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Now that is some fancy pants whiz bang whipper-snapper stuff!

Posted by D_Town Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

LOL

Faithful to the CRACKBERRY

Posted by Jimcmf Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

WOW.,,, now this is what I'm talking about. !

AWESOME !!

Posted by gord888 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Can they make the whole playbook ui look and feel like that?

Posted by jfs101 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Great stuff...

Posted by D_Town Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Oooooooo! Aaaaaaahhhhhh! Oooooohhhhh!

Faithful to the CRACKBERRY

Posted by drakesaliasonline Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

OMG All This Will Be Available On New BlackBerry Devices, and Android Apps? Count Me In!

Posted by info600 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

i would be VERY surprised if that's what we would see in QNX 2.5 (or even 2.0)

Posted by john_kaufman Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Reminds me slightly of the Windows 8 stuff... Looking forward to it!

Does anyone remember the TAT contacts rolodex app (somewhere on YouTube), I'd like to see some more of that style of UI... talk about Gee Whizzee!

Posted by DBX00 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

They need to stop showing tech demos and put this stuff in the operating system and release it as an cohesive package. We all know TAT has some talented people but we still haven't seen how that translates into better UI on an actual product. So tired...

Posted by kbeard26 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

We know T.A.T. makes amazing demos but they never come to the playbook. Only one demo made it to APP world which was scrapbook.

Posted by Kiddo2050 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

This is a demo of poor RIM management. TAT is showing developer talent but it takes management to get the stuff into products.

I thought I would stick with RIM, but now I'm thinking ya I may come back to RIM in a year or two if they don't go bankrupt, but honestly why should I sacrifice by waiting for them?

Posted by samab Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

And the "product" is the cascade UI tools in the NDK 2.0.

TAT demos are never meant to be productized. NONE of their futuristic youtube videos were ever productized by their clients (including Google who contracted them to design the original Android UI).

Posted by world traveler and former ceo Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Looks amazing ! .. Can't wait to see the new stuff on Playbook 2.0 ! ....

Posted by samab Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

It's not going to be on Playbook 2.0.

The cascade native UI is on BBX, not Tablet OS 2.0.

Posted by greatwiseone Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

I'm pretty sure Tablet OS 2.0 will be rebranded to BBX at some point. There is a reason why they are calling it ONE PLATFORM...

Posted by DBX00 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

They really should think about using that layout for the final contact manager. I think it would be interesting to get a visual representation of how often you speak to someone and integrate that into Salesforce, Linkedin, and everything else. I just hope that now that a manufacturer owns TAT that some of these designs end up in final products. Combine this with the cloud services of NewBay and the platform could work.

However, they really do need to pull it ALL together and launch it in a concise format with tangible dates, pricing, sku's and carrier partnerships.

Posted by visceralberry Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Thats basically what I've been calling for for a while now. Gist plus Tungle should become the basis for the BBX's contacts manager app and calendar app. Linking these with the TAT contact manager layout/UI (powered by TAT Cascades), would be an amazing app and extraordinarily useful in productivity terms.

Posted by herrbremerhaven Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Seriously impressed by this. It's much more than the eye candy of transitions, when you look at the interactivity of this. I would really enjoy seeing a market visualization financial application use this, though that's just me.

On a different note, this is the sort of stuff that needs to be on commercials advertising BlackBerry. The average viewer seeing this sort of activity would be wowed by it. Rather than the current advertising that looks like iPad Mini with a bad 80s soundtrack, using this with some newer and more upbeat music could really generate lots of interest. Wish I was on the ad campaign.

Posted by Darlaten Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Why would you put all of this stuff in commercials when none of it will ever make its way to the consumer. I'm all for TAT and am truly impressed by what they can accomplish.

But this is no different then what TAT showed us a year ago. And with the exception of their Scrapbook app, nothing else they've shown us in the past has materialized. Why would anything they've shown today be different?

So yes, I'm impressed. And the power and capabilities of the Playbook never cease to amaze me. It's a pity that consumers will never get a chance to experience this power first hand.

Posted by herrbremerhaven Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Actually, I would expect some aspects of this to make it to applications available to consumers. I seriously doubt the guys at TAT are putting all this effort into things that will never be seen again. However, if the PlayBook is killed off as a product, then you might be right.

Whether or not you can download any of this to a PlayBook now, or in the next month, it is still a great demonstration. So show that to the public. Build some confidence in the system. Then put that little disclaimer small print at the end. Research in Motion seriously need to impress people.

Posted by bengalt Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Enough of demo.............Pass it onto us please...will you??

Posted by Slash82 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

The sad thing is:

They have been showing TAT stuff like that from the beginning!
That´s possible and thats possilble and that and that...

But over one year - where is that stuff?!

It´s almost time for a playbook 2 and RIM is rolling out OS 2 with a native Email app and a Android market app...

Oh, and now you can move icons like on an Iphone...

I don`t wanna troll, but that stuff makes me sad!!!!!

Posted by ghostnyc Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Does anyone at RIM ever read thru Crackberry?

The commentary here offers some insightful feedback that could be very useful to RIM.

Posted by 3Athlete Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Looks pretty similar to the media player program shown off but nothing even close materialized.

Posted by Bobcat665 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

This kind of stuff is like the concept cars you see at auto shows; it shows what's possible but doesn't mean that what you see on the show floor will make it into "production". Sure, it's disappointing to see super cool stuff at auto shows that never makes it into production, but that's life. I will agree, though, that RIM had better start getting their s**t together... and FAST!

Posted by snowfort Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Unfortunately most you don't get it. In fact, RIM has done this right, for the most part and possibly all of it.

From what I can see, they are leveraging the talent of TAT to create the API frameworks so that other developers can use them and build amazing apps! TAT can't do it all themselves. They build the tools so that others can use them. This makes sense! TAT may make a few key apps, but that's not their primary focus. The apps are just to showcase the possibilities. It's like Lego showcasing what you can build with their building blocks. They'll show you what is possible, but the real magic happens when you combine those blocks (tools) with the imagination of the kids (developers).

I understand that you want the end product. But you need to understand that in order to deliver the kinds of Apps people are clamouring for, RIM and the TAT group is doing what is needed. Deliver the tools to the people who will deliver the Apps.

Posted by Kiddo2050 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

As I said above, no one is complaining about TAT, all the complaints are at RIM, and honestly if RIM still thinks it can wait for developers to come in and make good stuff they need their heads examined.

RIM need to build this beauty into the UI itself. I think people would rather have a beatutiful UI and nice Apps than a nice UI and beautiful Apps.

RIM you are so far behind in terms of public perception you need to go for wow on both the tablets and the phones, don't wait for developers.

Posted by snowfort Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

I didn't think people were complaining about TAT. There are some that seem to misunderstand what TAT's role is.

As for the UI.... For sure, it needs some wow factor. People want the whole package. I suspect.... or at least hope, that when 2.0 is released, it will have a re-designed UI.

Posted by nova_8 Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

WOW!!…awesome!!

Posted by Toasterg Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011 221 days ago

Really hope at least the Photo Album thing will be in 2.0 :)!

Posted by kedi Wednesday, Oct 19, 2011 221 days ago

TAT???