In the last post, I spent some time talking about one of the major changes to the UI in 5.0: the Device Console. In this week's post, I'll cover the rest of the UI changes we've made in this release.
The next major change is to the way multiple devices are now managed in the Studio UI. When you acquire multiple devices, each device will now be a separate "tab". Additionally, if you wait for a device, this will also open a tab, although in this case the device will not be clickable until it is released by the user that currently has it. This tab approach of course has a downside, which is it limits the ability to interact with > 1 device and view >1 device at once. This leads to the next new feature: Pop Out device.
This is Basil's favorite feature, (one of our developers and the one most credited with the new and improved look and feel of the application). Basically any device can be disconnected from Studio, and become its own window. This is especially useful for individuals using multiple screens. A screenshot illustrating these two features is below. In this example I have 3 devices acquired; one of them is also "popped out".
Another UI change is the hiding of the VCR controls that were previously always visible under the device. We felt that first, these controls are only needed at certain times, and second, the length and form factor of some clamshell devices makes it difficult to use the controls and view the device screen at the same time. The new VCR controls can be shown by selecting Show Video History from the right-click menu on an acquired device. The video history controls appear at the bottom of the screen, superimposed over the device, so you can always move the control and view the screen at the same time. See illustration below.
In addition, the video history controls are now a bar, and the screen video will change as you select a location on the bar, either by clicking on the bar itself, or selecting Back or Forward. Resume brings you back to the current screen.
A couple of other UI changes were also made: one is the visible phone number at the top of an acquired device's tab. This is a piece of information that some customers had requested to make always visible. Another is the view panel; the left-most panel now shows all of the sub-tabs in a view, instead of those tabs being available at the top of the workspace area - giving us more room for the device. The view panel can also be minimized, while maintaining selectability of the different sub-tabs as shown below. Here I left-clickd on the second icon (the Test Case Manager - a new feature that I will cover in detail in a subsequent post) and the three available tabs appear and can be selected.
Another item new in the view panel is important links, represnted by the globe. Clicking on this item allows you to go to the DeviceAnywhere Portal (where you can manage your account, search for devices, view documentation, sign up for webinars, etc.), file a support issue, or view any reports (new feature of the Test Case Manager also).
That's all for this post; next time I'll cover all the new ways you can find a device!
Customers with lower bandwidth connections, or who may be physically located far away from the actual device they are using, can often experience key press latency (they press a key on a device in Studio, and the screen update takes a few seconds). This is most noticeable on high resolution and large screen devices, because for each change on the screen, DeviceAnywhere ships the pixel per pixel image to your computer. The more pixels, the more data is sent, and as a result the longer it can take.
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Almost all of the respondents use DeviceAnywhere Test Center for QA'ing applications. This is no surprise, however, it is a much higher percentage than we have seen in previous years. In general, customers are finding more uses for DeviceAnywhere Test Center than in the past.
Posted by: louboutins | July 15, 2011 at 02:45 AM