Registration

Everyone must register with VeriSign security as a guest during this time. No one will be allowed in the building after 7:00, so please do not be late.

Although we are not providing dinner for this meeting, there will be soft drinks and light refreshments available. Also, everyone is more than welcome to bring their own dinner to eat during the half hour meeting registration time. The closest takeout food options are at the intersection of N. Whisman and E. Middlefield. There you will find Chinese food, Japanese food, Subway sandwiches, and a Carl's Junior. If you have more time, there are many fine restaurants to choose from on nearby Castro street in downtown Mountain View.

RSVP requested to mike.vanriper@baychi.org with the subject "July BOF Meeting." Thanks!

User Interface: The future of the Web is not the past of Windows
Bret Simister & Sarah Allen, Laszlo Systems

We had an excellent turnout of more than 40 people for this joint meeting of the Web Interface Design BOF and the Struts User BOF. The presenters have agreed to make the slides from the talk available. However, much of the talk involved interacting with actual Laszlo web applications. Some of these applications will not be directly available on the Internet. So, they need to revise the slides to adjust for that before I can make them available here.

Although the plans for the next Struts User BOF meeting are not yet final, it appears likely that Craig McClanahan will be joining us again in September to make a presentation on Sun Java Studio Creator (formerly known as Project Rave). It is the Java Server Faces (JSF) authoring environment announced at the recent JavaOne conference. Stay tuned for updates as the plans are finalized.

That's All Folks, Mike "Van" Riper

Original Announcement

This event is co-sponsored by the Web Interface BOF and the Struts User BOF. The target audience for this presentation includes both web interface designers and web application developers.

A general consensus is emerging: The page-oriented HTML Web is reaching its limits as an application platform, and the time has arrived for a foundation that supports more application-like experiences, preferably based on XML. But what does this application-like experience consist of? Is it simply the ability to deliver Windows-like applications into a Web browser -- like Swing, but based on XML? Or is it something more?

In this presentation, Bret Simister and Sarah Allen of Laszlo Systems describe what Laszlo believes is the next step in the evolution of Web UI. This expressive, flexible user experience that extends what we've learned on the Web -- a UI that is a combination of application functionality, content, and branding, implemented via markup language. Bret and Sarah will demo what Laszlo describes as the "cinematic user experience," and how its XML language, LZX, is designed to support the creation of these advanced, rich applications.

Sarah and Bret will show how designers and developers can collaborate to build great applications that are scalable, modular, and maintainable, and how these teams can combine their core strengths to create the best possible user experiences using the Laszlo Presentation Server.

Bret Simister, Chief Interface Architect, Laszlo Systems

Bret Simister's vision of a live, cinematic user experience forms the basis of Laszlo's presentation platform. He leads the design of Laszlo's advanced user interface framework and has extensive experience in designing and implementing groundbreaking user interfaces for personal computers and interactive television. Most recently, Simister was the Interface Architect for Excite@Home's interactive TV service.

Previously, Simister was a UI designer and project manager for Tele-TV, an interactive TV company, from 1993 to 1996. From 1987 to 1992, he was a software engineer for Apple Computer on a variety of projects, including video conferencing systems and corporate front-end systems. Simister holds a B.S. in computer science and mathematics and a B.S. in physics from the University of California, Davis.

Sarah Allen, Software Architect, Laszlo Systems

Sarah Allen began developing Internet software in 1995 as an engineer on Macromedia's Shockwave team, which developed one of the first technologies to bring moving images and sound to the web. She led the development of the Shockwave Multiuser Server, and later the Flash Communication Server, introducing streaming video and multi-party communication in Flash Player 6. She has also developed software tools for multimedia, digital video, and graphic arts at Adobe, Aldus, and The Company of Science and Art (CoSA). She was named one of the top 25 women of the web by SF WoW (San Francisco Women of the Web) in 1998. She has degrees in Computer Science and Visual Arts from Brown University.