[Yoox_II]

Can someone explain it to me? Explain it as if you were explaining it to a person who knows nothing about it...

[kemj]

Ultra fancy animations and applications? I see it like that.

[Yoox_II]

Yes haha but does it exist yet? If it does, can you give an example? Or is it another upcoming feature on BB 10?

[gtpointer]

Upcoming feature in BB10. Supposedly in all native apps, and also available for devs to use. Provides a fancy UI toolset that the PB SDK has been lacking, so it should mean apps look prettier, have better animations, and have a more consistent appearance (like iOS apps do)

[Yoox_II]

Oh nice! That will definitely make bb10 more appealing to people. Consistency is one if the most appearances important things in OS and UI, I think. I think BlackBerry OS needs more consistency with the menus...when you have all apps showing, they scroll up and down, side to side with the speed of your finger, but things like the drop down menu of settings (using the top bevel) only goes one speed. I think Everyhing should match.

[anon4188935]

I think the mail in the playbook has cascade

[greatwiseone]

check the session catalogue for the BB10 Jam Conference and you'll see RIM ready to unleash Cascades on the dev's.

[mithrazor]

Yes haha but does it exist yet? If it does, can you give an example? Or is it another upcoming feature on BB 10?

Yep it did for other platforms. But now that TAT has been bought out by RIM. It's not RIM's.

Plus the version of Cascades for BB10 will be much more updated and BB specific.

[anon(2757538)]

Print to Go features Cascades on the PlayBook

[s7khan]

This is a very good thread. I've heard the word being used a lot, but all I understand it's some sort of graphical interface type thing. Idk how it's supposed to be great. If it's anything like some of TAT's concept video, I'm excited

[Yoox_II]

I just watched the video... It says it is a rich user interface for developing apps. But to me it looked like an entire User interface. Are they saying that it will only look like that for people while they're designing apps? :s
Here's the video:

[app_Developer]

I just watched the video... It says it is a rich user interface for developing apps. But to me it looked like an entire User interface. Are they saying that it will only look like that for people while they're designing apps?

No, it's supposed to be a set of bits, pieces, tools that we can use in our own apps. For example, if we want an animated transition between two views in one of our apps, we would have a Cascades component to help do that. Or if we want to present a list of choices to a user we could use some standard component to do that, which would include some default transitions like you see in that video. If we wanted to present a scrolling list with pinch to collapse/expand, we could use a standard component for that, etc.

[Yoox_II]

Oh that makes more sense. Still confused about one part though, it looked like he was on the home screen and the menus were all different still. He wasn't in an app...what does that mean? Sorry I really have no knowledge of this particular thing

[anon3396357]

So, when on earth would this be made available to developers?

[app_Developer]

Oh that makes more sense. Still confused about one part though, it looked like he was on the home screen and the menus were all different still. He wasn't in an app...what does that mean? Sorry I really have no knowledge of this particular thing

Right, well we would expect RIM to use cascades consistently throughout the OS and in all their own apps as well.

If you look at an Android phone or an iPhone, you can see this already. The built in apps and phone settings and so on use many of the same components, animations, etc. that are made available to third party developers.

[app_Developer]

So, when on earth would this be made available to developers?

RIM makes the claim that it is in "closed beta", but they never said how many developers are in that particular program and how many are actually outside of RIM and its contractors. So who knows.

They have not made any announcements about a more general beta release, or even a developer preview release.

[tedd_jr]

It seems like cascade may be a development engine/editor, they have youtube videos from 09 for the android

edit:
I did some more digging about tat and cascades and i found a engadget interview (on their website) from September 2010 that answered some questions about who they were and brought up even more questions, from the video: http://www.tat.se/blog/tat-on-the-engadget-show/

They are a software licensing company that had/has their hands on a lot of different devices/carriers/companies and are tied up in various non-disclosure agreements (which is probably why their operations are so shrouded in secrecy). They develop a lot of concepts and work with their customers on UI, which they can never take credit for due to the NDA's. My question is now that they are owned by RIM are they only working with RIM or do they still work with Google (Android), Windows, and various carriers. I hope they are working exclusively with RIM but somehow i highly doubt that.

[addicted44]

It seems like cascade may be a development engine/editor, they have youtube videos from 09 for the android

Ugh. I did not want to bring back the thread where I was claiming RIM should have gone for an Android system, and layered a unique BB UI on top, but if Cascades was already working on Android in 2009!, then using QNX instead of Android seems like an even bigger mistake. They would already have been up and running, and the UI, would hardly look any different.

[Joltcola1234]

A mountain range extending from British Columbia to California

[anon(4018671)]

^^ and I'm sure TAT Cascades will be equally impressive

If you watch those youtube videos of TAT from 2009 and 2010 and compare that to the demos they did for the PlayBook last year they are very similar.

I think the point of Cascades is to allow a developer to create native code C/C++ animations without actually coding in C/C++ which is time consuming. I don't know what language they support though, maybe a few?

[bobauckland]

Sure if Cascades was that big a deal RIM would be able to use it for their few native PlayBook apps so far.
If its the special sauce behind the UI for their native suite of PIM apps, i.e. mail, contacts, calendar etc, its not all that impressive is it? Certainly not something that would seem to blow consumers or developers away.

[app_Developer]

Sure if Cascades was that big a deal RIM would be able to use it for their few native PlayBook apps so far.
If its the special sauce behind the UI for their native suite of PIM apps, i.e. mail, contacts, calendar etc, its not all that impressive is it?

My understanding is it is not used in those apps yet.

Certainly not something that would seem to blow consumers or developers away.

Right now our only other choice for truly native apps is OpenGL ES with something like Cocos or Box for immersive games, or raw Qt for everything else (yuck!). Most apps that aren't immersive games now are using Air, Android or HTML.

So Cascades will make a huge difference for developers and users alike because it will allow us to make more truly native apps that perform fluidly, multitask properly, and conserve both memory and power more efficiently. These are the apps that will truly show what the PB and BB10 phones can do. This is where the potential of the platform starts to become reality (hopefully) if they can get this out before it's too late.

[Justthecrack]

If I'm not mistaken it is also behind the native calculator in Playbook and the Scrapbook app, which is free, also on Playbook.

[JAGWIRE]

Ya as everyone is saying it is a very visual edition to an OS' UI. Its kind of like adding little animations to your actions to make it more visually appeasing.

[jasperlin]

A mountain range extending from British Columbia to California

Lol, that's hilarious. Guess no one else from BC or the west coast here haha