Dean Roddey
Senior Member
There are currently two primary lackings on the iOS/Android front. One is that the normal way of creating web widgets (embedded web browser windows) doesn't work, but there is a specialized command to make the iOS client create one. The other is that for now you don't get smooth scrolling. It's just not possible with the way that the current RIVA architecture works. It support finger driven flicks, but it just moves to the next or previous page, it doesn't slide to it, whereas the regular Windows touch screen client is all dragging and smooth scrolling.
But otherwise, it's the same. There's nothing different really to create templates for iOS or Android. You just create templates (our name for graphical interfaces) and you can run them on Windows or the RIVA clients. So however fancy they can be, which is very fancy, they can be on any of the supported platforms, just sans for now the smooth scrolling.
We are going to do a 4.5 release early next year, which is going to make our interface architecture fully drag/scroll oriented, along with some very important improvements related to the speed of accessing media data on the touch screens (it's now downloaded and cached on each client in the background so that all the access is just local access instead of going to the server to get it.) And the other thing is a big jump forward in our auto-generated templates, to take advantage of all of the scrolling/dragging stuff. And, the other thing is dynamic resizing of interfaces, so that you can cover a lot of screen resolutions from one set of templates.
Once that's done, currently the plan for 5.0 is a RIVA V2 architecture which will take care of the above issues. It still won't be native applications, because that would require separate interfaces to be designed for each platform, which we don't want to make users do. But it will make the RIVA clients much more aware of what they are displaying, so that they can provide local scrolling of screen contents however they want to fit into the local way of doing things. So it'll still be thin client scenario, with all of the logic running on the server, but it'll be somewhat less thin, so that there are more smarts in the client. We think this will provide the optimum balance, with fully modernized user interfaces, lots of flexibility with scrollable contents and dynamic resizing to fit the screen resolution, and the ability to create templates once and run them on all the three major platforms (and possibly others, it just requires a RIVA client.)
So, anyway, to sum up, there's not at all 'limited' about our screen design system. I'd say it's one of the most customizable, powerful out there. It's just that currently the RIVA clients don't understand what they are drawing. They just draw what the server tells them. So they can't move content around locally, which limits them wrt to smooth scrolling.
But otherwise, it's the same. There's nothing different really to create templates for iOS or Android. You just create templates (our name for graphical interfaces) and you can run them on Windows or the RIVA clients. So however fancy they can be, which is very fancy, they can be on any of the supported platforms, just sans for now the smooth scrolling.
We are going to do a 4.5 release early next year, which is going to make our interface architecture fully drag/scroll oriented, along with some very important improvements related to the speed of accessing media data on the touch screens (it's now downloaded and cached on each client in the background so that all the access is just local access instead of going to the server to get it.) And the other thing is a big jump forward in our auto-generated templates, to take advantage of all of the scrolling/dragging stuff. And, the other thing is dynamic resizing of interfaces, so that you can cover a lot of screen resolutions from one set of templates.
Once that's done, currently the plan for 5.0 is a RIVA V2 architecture which will take care of the above issues. It still won't be native applications, because that would require separate interfaces to be designed for each platform, which we don't want to make users do. But it will make the RIVA clients much more aware of what they are displaying, so that they can provide local scrolling of screen contents however they want to fit into the local way of doing things. So it'll still be thin client scenario, with all of the logic running on the server, but it'll be somewhat less thin, so that there are more smarts in the client. We think this will provide the optimum balance, with fully modernized user interfaces, lots of flexibility with scrollable contents and dynamic resizing to fit the screen resolution, and the ability to create templates once and run them on all the three major platforms (and possibly others, it just requires a RIVA client.)
So, anyway, to sum up, there's not at all 'limited' about our screen design system. I'd say it's one of the most customizable, powerful out there. It's just that currently the RIVA clients don't understand what they are drawing. They just draw what the server tells them. So they can't move content around locally, which limits them wrt to smooth scrolling.
