By Rien | October 6th, 2011 | 2 Comments
Steve Jobs not being among us fills us with sadness and we realize how much respect we have for him; always enjoyed his ability to amaze us with his exceptional creativity. It feels like a far away friend but his influence for us personally and as a company is for sure immense. Thanks Steve!
By Rien | August 26th, 2011 | 8 Comments
This is a second status update on the progress of Viewbook V3, the project name for ‘Viewbook Version 3′.
In our previous update last June I told you about the challenges in interaction and interface design that we took on earlier this year and how the first prototypes of parts of the new system gave us an idea of how things really worked as software.
We discovered that most of our ideas are working out as we had hoped but we also optimized and changed a lot in the user interface. It takes time, clear thinking and many iterations to make thinks simple, elegant and easy to understand. It’s exactly like Steve Jobs says:
“When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions.”
We need at least another month or two to work out all the details to make everything ready for a month or two of testing and refining. Then the first (beta) release will be made public.
Be sure to check v3.viewbook.com for sketches, updates and sneak previews. We welcome your feedback. If you have any questions, see the Viewbook V3 FAQ and feel free to contact us here.
> All posts about Viewbook V3
> v3.viewbook.com
By Paul | July 26th, 2011 | 9 Comments
Alongside updates and announcements on the Viewbook Blog, we launched a constantly updating ‘digital sketchbook’ on v3.viewbook.com. Managed by everyone within the design and development team, it captures moments within the development process in sketches, sneak previews, animations, quotes, thoughts, tweets, photos etc. around the development of the new portfolio website builder. Sometimes very legible, sometimes very in-depth; a quite spontaneous heap of different pieces of information, mirroring how V3 evolves.
We hope it will give you a nice insight in all aspects of this big project and what you can expect from V3. We keep a sharp eye on all your comments within the Blog, Twitter and Facebook, and select & publish these bits that inspire us most!
> v3.viewbook.com
> All posts about Viewbook V3
By Rien | June 19th, 2011 | 12 Comments
Here’s an update on the progress of Viewbook V3, the project name for ‘Viewbook Version 3′.
Viewbook V3 is a new portfolio website builder, developed completely from scratch. A first version of the new ‘page design’ system is ready. You could call it a fully functioning prototype and it’s great to see all our ideas actually working in real software. Here’s a peak into what we were busy with the last couple of months and what you can expect in the near future.
Interaction design
The central question here is: What solution makes it really simple for people to design and create their own portfolio website, without defining too much or too less of the website’s design up front? It’s the sweet spot we’re looking for; you should be able to start easily and design a website that ‘feels yours’ without having to start with a blank page. It is simply too hard for most of us to design something good completely from scratch (we will support designers and web-designers in V3 though!). On the other side, we don’t want to let you choose from tens or hundreds of pre-designed templates that feel like someone else’s idea. We’ve designed a unique solution and I think we have it now!
Visual design
Ronny, our new guy, has spent his time designing the interfaces and all the necessary interface elements like panels, icons, buttons, etc. We’re now at a point where we have a good idea about all the needed functionality and how it will work. Time to start defining the definitive ‘visual language’ for the new interface, in such a way that it becomes uniquely Viewbook’s.
Framework
The fundamental interaction ideas form the foundation for the ‘technical framework’. This is a technical system – the heart of the software – that provides the main structure and functionality. It supports the main configurations, modules, interaction and data retrieval and storage. A major part of this system is implemented.
Modules
Modules are pieces of functionality that you can drag & drop into your page, like galleries, text and video. We’ve started with the gallery module, which will be implemented in HTML5/Javascript and the basic functionality is already there. Other modules that take shape are the ‘image grid’ – a thumbnail grid that you can fully customize and a new ‘horizontal scrolling gallery’. We’re going full swing on all the new modules in the coming weeks.
So when will it be ready?
It is very hard to estimate time needed for completion. We do not work with a planning that’s clear from the beginning to the end. This is to keep the flexibility to iterate, and change things until we think they are realy good. What we do is plan features into cycles of two weeks. Within each cycle we try to make something that’s ‘potentially ready’. This way it motivates to finish things, before moving to other features and it keeps the team focused and on track. Until now we have only planned one or two cycles ahead.
Does it include feature X?
The new system makes it much easier for us to include new features and it is also more flexible in itself. A lot of features that are requested will be implemented automatically because of how the new system works; it allows much more flexibility in designing your pages. If you have any ideas that you would like to share, be sure to take a look at our feature requests page. You’re always welcome to add yours.
What you can expect next
Your patience will be rewarded, I promise. I’m very proud our team comes up with so many great things each day. I can’t wait to show you a first ‘visual’ peak into Viewbook V3 and what you can expect in the first release in one of our next posts.
By Rien | June 16th, 2011 | 3 Comments
Well hello, this is about the 13th time that I opened my text editor to write a post on myself. I thought of all kinds of funny stories and came up with a lot of strange titles and ideas. But just like in good design, less is more. So this is me, introducing myself.
Ronny Wieckardt (27 sept 1982)
Interaction & Visual Interface Designer
Owner at CKDT
Interaction designer at Viewbook
I Enjoy: Life, Nice (creative) People, Minimal Design, Intuitive Interfaces,
Lomo photography, Electronic music, Drums
Working at Viewbook
I’ve been working at Viewbook since January this year. Together with Paul I designed the new Viewbook website. Currently I am working on Viewbook 3.0 which is going to be amazing! It is so much fun designing a complex piece of software, the Viewbook way. Everything you come up with is possible. It gets to be tested and redesigned over and over again, until it has got exactly the quality we want it to have. Also the concept of making something you like and to sell it, was new to me. I used to make things that clients wanted. But this new concept has inspired me to create my own designs and sell them.
Family
It may sound cliche, but the fact that Viewbook is owned by 4 brothers, makes the work atmosphere really pleasant. In discussions everyone is on the same level. There is a lot of respect. I feel like I’m becoming more and more part of the family. But maybe that’s because of all the babies these guys produce. I feel like uncle Ronny once again :-)
Thanks for reading, I look forward to keep creating designs for Viewbook and its users.
By Rien | April 26th, 2011 | 41 Comments
We are very excited to tell you about ‘Viewbook V3′ which is currently being developed. The last two months we have been creating a whole new vision on what Viewbook should be in the near future. Here is a rundown of what we came up with.
Ronny and Paul presenting design ideas.– Music by: Tyler wat doe je?
With Viewbook V3 we bring you a completely new ‘next generation’ website builder. A flexible design tool that gives you more control on the creation and customization of your portfolio website. With the idea of you being able to create your portfolio perfectly, we’re working on the following ideas and features:
Modules & Galleries
We introduce a new concept called ‘modules’. A module allows you to easily drag & drop bits of functionality onto the stage. Portfolio websites need outstanding galleries and representations of your work. What we are creating are fully configurable collections, albums and contact sheets. Including horizontal and vertical scrolling galleries. Our focus is to offer you the choice how you want your images to display, including flexible cropping, sizing, alignment, spacing, and many more options. We’re putting a lot of effort in this to make Viewbook outstanding when it comes down to image display.
Many other features as modules
Simply drag & drop twitter feeds, social buttons, text-fields, images & video anywhere on your page. No need to add custom code or markup to text-fields anymore.
Adjustable page formats & layouts
You can start with predefined page formats. That works for most people. But if you think your site requires more options or a different composition, you can change many properties of the page; it’s layout, modules, order and alignment of elements. You can add new modules to your page, and create pages that combine galleries, video and text for example. This allows creating many design options and variations, while keeping the user interface simple to understand.
Redefined page editor
Center-stage in the the website builder is the page editor. This is what you will be looking at the most of the time, while creating your site. It consist out of editor panels (for page properties, modules and selection settings) and the stage ( your webpage canvas ).
Custom CSS
If you want all influence on how things look, we’ll add and option for custom CSS so webdesigners can change the appearance of any element on the page.
New user interface
With a lot more features and customization options, the interface still needs to maintain its clarity. Therefore we are redesigning the user interface, to let you work more intuitively and make better use of space. Bottom line is, we want it to be easy enough for people without webdesign knowledge and powerful enough for webdesigners. That’s a real challenge.
Other improvements
There’s too much to mention here but we’re also implementing a lot of other smaller features like; favicons, better video display, more menu styling options and scalable backgrounds.
That’s a quick overview of things to come. I understand it’s still very abstract. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get the terminology just jet. Honestly, we have daily discussions on what things are called, and just started writing the Viewbook Terminology Manual.
So when will it be ready?
We have an idea but as with all larger software projects, it is very, very hard to estimate time needed for completion. So I’m not going to give a date, let’s say we’re working hard to get it released later this year. We keep you posted during the process as much as possible, and let you know when things become more clear.
Your existing sites will keep working in V3!
You don’t need to worry about redesigning your complete site from scratch in V3. So there’s no need to wait for V3 to come out. We’re also not planning to change prices or other terms.
If you have any feature requests please add them to our feature requests page. This way other people can comment and vote.
By Alrik | March 25th, 2011 | No Comments
Snapshot of last Tuesday’s meetup in our office.
Thanks all for a wonderful evening. Great that many of you came from far to meet us and each other. Special thanks to Anders eten for the surprising concept catering and Ilse Leenders for presenting our new portrait. London is next, stay tuned!
By Rien | March 16th, 2011 | 1 Comment
When starting a web-based software company like Viewbook, many technical challenges will cross your path. During the past years I learned a lot from blogposts from other developers. Some really helped in making the bigger decisions, others helped to solved little problems. Fact is that developer blogs became an indispensable resource for developers.
I think it’s time that we share some of our experiences. Some will be about software architecture, Ruby, CSS, Javascript, others will be about web based software and being a tech company in general. So if you are a developer, or know any friends who might be interested visit our new techblog here.
By Alrik | March 2nd, 2011 | No Comments
Between designing and developing new Viewbook features, this year we’ll be traveling to Europe’s main capitals to meet as many Viewbook users as possible. To kick off this year’s meet ups, we’ll open up our office in Rotterdam and invite all Viewbook users to meet eachother and have a drink with us. A nice opportunity to get and share new insights… and who knows what else will happen.
Collective slideshow
Everybody who joins the meetup can send in one image. We’ll put it in a slideshow and beam it on the wall. It can be a photograph that you made, someone else’s photograph, or a graphic image, illustration or design, good or bad, anything goes! Just be sure to mail your jpeg to alrik@viewbook.com before March 21st. (best 1920 pixels wide 72dpi, but smaller is ok too)
Ilse Leenders
Photographer Ilse Leenders is working on our next founding-brother-portrait at the moment and will unveil it on the evening for the first time. She will also tell us a bit about how it came together.
Demo and support corner
Ask anything about the use of Viewbook and we will demonstrate it right away.
To let us know you will join, RSVP HERE.
Date: March 22nd 2011
Time: 20:00 – 23:00
Location: Viewbook HQ Stadhuisplein 11, 3012 AR Rotterdam
By Alrik | February 11th, 2011 | No Comments
At the end of last year we asked all Viewbook users to send in an idea for our next founding-brother-portrait. Over the last months we received many ideas from Rome to Berlin, and there were some quite extreme ones in there. Tayo wanted to put us four on the floor, butt-to-butt, in the shape of a roman II, while Peter suggested to merge our four faces into one. Dik, was swamped with assignments and preferred a face-to-face meeting before constructing his idea and Maarten wanted to capture us four, barreled in the Atlantic Ocean during a glassy morning swell. Roberto wanted to hold us underwater in a clear swimming pool and shoot us from the sky.
We were surprised by all these ideas and the many others that came in and would like to thank you all very much. The idea that really caught our attention and got us most excited was the idea that Ilse Leenders e-mailed us. So Ilse got the job and we’re working on a ‘networked’ idea with wires and trees at the moment. The coming month we expect the results, and we’ll show you an extensive making-of when it’s finished.
