Unite - Opera Unite

Application of the day: 3 down, 2 to go !!

By Navjot Pawera. Wednesday, 25. November 2009, 09:36:04

Opera Unite, application of the day, winners

If you have been following the Opera Unite application of the day contest, you might know that for this week we changed it to an "Application of the day" contest

We have announced three winners so far:

Monday:

Whiteboard by Akbalder

Tuesday:

Task Manager by Shwetank

Wednesday:

UJS Manager by Rafal

Congratulations guys!! Hope your Wii's keep you entertained this winter

The rest can read the contest details at Application of the day, there's still two more days to go

3 comments

Opera Unite, out in Final !

By Navjot Pawera. Monday, 23. November 2009, 09:05:38

Opera Unite

We just pushed out the final builds for Opera 10.10, and it comes with Opera Unite. Opera 10.10 is the first public stable version of the Opera desktop browser which comes with Opera Unite. This is a major milestone as all the public builds of the Opera desktop browser will now come with Opera Unite.

Opera Unite has come a long way since the alpha version released in June. We've fixed bugs, added features, refined development libraries and polished the applications and the documentation. Thanks to all the testing you guys helped us out with, Opera Unite now sits in the good books of our QA team as well

To celebrate this, we have revved up the Weekly application challenge and we will announce a new application every day this week. Keep an eye out for new applications at http://unite.opera.com/applications

Try out the new Opera 10.10 browser and yes, do let us know what you think

Download Opera

13 comments

Hello Yusef, example Opera Unite application

By Gautam Chandna. Monday, 16. November 2009, 14:28:22

Hello World, Example, applications

First class citizens

Opera Unite establishes your personal computer as a webserver. You are given a URL similar to http://devicename.username.operaunite.com/ You can have as many computers as you like, and each is linked to your username. This way people can find the real you. The unique you, physically on your own computer. Possibly at home, work, or at the coffee shop.

How it works

Once you have installed Opera and set up Opera Unite, you are online. People can visit your computer from any Web browser on any device. You can install any of the applications provided on http://unite.opera.com/ and share files, photos, serve music, host chats, receive files and more.

The applications we provide do a basic set of tasks, but the technology opens up distributed development opportunities for everyone. Instead of having one large and powerful server handling a million users, millions of users have their computers running and Opera Unite applications can harness that power.

How do I make one for myself?

We have created a Hello World example. This example uses the Yusef Library (short for Unite Server Framework). The package contains several important bits and pieces that we believe applications need as a base for themselves to stand on.

This includes:

Library Loader: A script that loads all .js files in the libraries folder, respecting dependencies and loading order.
Markuper: ~~XML~~ DOM based templating engine
Yusef: The framework handling all requests made to the application
Activity Stream generator: Atom Activity Extensions
Date Library: Human readable timestamps
Localization: Translating the application based on the visitors accept-language header
Resource fetcher: A wrapper for XMLHttpRequest for repeating requests.
etc...

In this Hello Yusef example, Yusef has been extended with the following plugins:

ACL Plugin: Access control, for the Visitor and Owner
UI Plugin: Attaching a common User Interface to all requests made to this application
Profile Sync plugin: To fetch the user status from the Home application, and display it in the current application
directConnection: To use a direct connection for file transfer, if possible. This is not used in the Hello Yusef example, but good to have.
etc...

This is the base we use for our applications, and we continually update each individual piece. The Hello Yusef example will be kept up-to-date, especially when it comes to security fixes.

Feel free to use this as a base for your own applications, and if you find any bugs or fixes - please feel free to report them! All your input are important to us!

13 comments

User Experience guidelines when developing Unite applications

By Anders Sjögren. Tuesday, 3. November 2009, 08:26:21

guidelines, ux, challenge

Hey all Unite people!

I'm Anders Sjögren and I am an Interaction Designer working with Unite and also one of the judges of the weekly competitions (be very afraid!).

I thought it would be a good idea to post some UX guidelines, and things that I look for when judging the applications, to help you win the competition!

Okay, here goes:

Make sure the application has a use-case
When you are thinking about developing an application, think of the scenarios in which the application is going to be used in. Imagine yourself using the application in these scenarios. Also, some questions to think about could be: What is the purpose of the application? What service will this application provide? What problem is it trying to solve? What are the use-cases of the application? In what context is it going to be used (home/work/school/mobile/tv)?

Display the username and photo of the host of the application in the UI
Since the application is going to look the same on all hosts (if no customization is available in the application which would bring huge bonus points from me

), it is important that the visitor can see who is hosting the application from the UI. Otherwise, the only way for the visitor to know who is hosting the applications is through looking at the username in the Web address.

To display the photo of the host, use this API: http://my.opera.com/{username}/picture.pl?xscale={number} and replace username and number with proper values (e.g. sjogren, 100, and dont' forget to remove the curly braces

).

Provide a link to the host's Unite Home
If the visitor is interested in the other applications the host is running, he/she has to go to the host's Unite Home where the list of the running applications is shown.

Make the UI work on different resolutions and browsers
People have different monitors with different resolutions, make sure to support at least 1024x768. Debug your application by testing it in different browsers since we all prefer different browsers (Opera, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer). If you'd like to pimp your UI, there are good JavaScript frameworks out there to help you.

Tips

Get feedback from your friends about your application
Test the application with friends
Ask people about ideas or improvements that could be useful

That's it for now and good luck in the competition everybody!
Battle for the best Opera Unite applications

Resources:
Ten Usability Heuristics by Jakob Nielsen
Usability - Wikipedia

7 comments

Battle for the best Opera Unite applications

By Roberto Mateu. Monday, 2. November 2009, 17:44:00

applications, challenge

As you may have seen in My Opera and http://unite.opera.com/, we have a challenge under way for the best Opera Unite applications.

This week’s winner is Collection Manager by Florian Guillard (congrats!)

Every Monday we will announce a new application of the week. The developer is rewarded a gift card equal the value of a Nintendo Wii. All you have to do is create an Opera Unite application and submit it by 10 AM CET any Friday to enter the challenge. Read more and get all the details about the “Battle for the best Opera Unite applications” challenge.

We are really excited about you guys can create and we hope you take the challenge and start (or continue) to play around with Opera Unite and win a great prize in the meantime.

As always, please leave us your feedback in the comments below or in the Opera Unite forums.