Who I am, what I do and what's it to ya?
I have the luck and good fortune of being a designer on Avalon. Previously I was a designer on the IE SDK team where I picked up a bunch of DHTML skills. Match those skills with some proficiency in designer apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Flash, etc., and I get a job where I get to design UI for the most robust and incredibly powerful platform I have ever seen.
Seriously, I am pretty lucky. I have developers coming into my office asking me to dream up cool ways to show off their features in the platform that I know most designers would wet their pants for (for instance compositing multiple broadcast quality video elements with alpha masking...mmm...yummy).
I see alot of excitement in the developer community for Avalon, but the people who should be getting really excited about this are the designers. We are the ones who get to see our visions become a reality. Imagine not feeling like your designs were going to be trashed with compromises when it comes time to implement them. No more hacky workarounds to pull off the visual effects that you intend. Rather, with Avalon, designers get the joy of working with elegant solutions that compliment the way that your visuals were dreamed up in your favorite design tool. Of course Im biased, but I'm not afraid to let the technology prove the pudding.
So thats where this blog comes into play...
My goal with my blog is to get the word out on some of these cool features and showcase cool ways to use them. I'll be posting as many common designer tips and tricks as I can. Feel free to challenge me with some cool ideas that you would like to see pulled off in Longhorn.
Oh yeah, just a warning... I'm a designer. My developer skills are pretty lame. I pride myself in being able to understand the most basic programming skills, but when it comes down to it, I really only shine when I'm working in markup or designer tools (just another testament to the simplicity of the platform).