10 September 2008

Beautifying S60
TAT's Kastor UI for S60 platform demystified!!

Here is another piece of news that we have already discussed it here. We also found the Kastor related elements in the firmware but we didn’t knew for sure that TAT's UI rendering engine is already build in the FP2 phones!!

As you may have already know, the Feature Pack 2 for 3rd edition of the S60 platform brings the fancy menu animations and transitions and technology that powering this is from 'The Astonishing Tribe' which is also known as TAT.

Unfortunately it seems that it is all what we can get from TAT because of the compatibility issue with earlier versions of the S60 devices and therefore it is only possible to add some minnor cosmetic effects to the S60 UI!

Anyway, Richard Bloor from symbian One found out more about the technology from TAT's co-founder Hampus Jakobsson and CEO Charlotta Falvin. Great article with lot of useful information related to S60 and TAT and it definitely worth reading.

Prior to the release of S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 the S60 UI offered very few dynamic graphic elements. The few that existed were limited largely to animated screen savers and wallpaper. Enter Kastor from TAT, a UI rendering engine. "Kastor has allowed Nokia to make the S60 more expressive," says Hampus. "Our technology has enabled new dynamic effects and we have done it without adding memory and processor requirements to S60 devices."

It is not uncommon for UI changes of this type to create problems for developers, because new features may not fit well with the existing APIs. However, Nokia set a clear goal that the integration should not break source or binary compatibility with earlier versions of the S60 UI. This meant that TAT could only add APIs for new features, such as transitions. The disadvantage of this approach is that, in Hampus' view, it means S60 could not take full advantage of TAT's UI technology.

"Where we are able to incorporate Kastor and our other technologies into the core of a platform, developers gain advantages in the way they are able to develop their UI," claims Hampus. "So, in S60 we are effectively skinning the existing UI components.

In other implementations - where we don't have similar restrictions - developers get the opportunity to do things such as determine how UI components interact with one another. With the full range of our technology we believe it's possible to design a UI similar to the iPhone in just a few months. However, I do believe S60 has done a very smart job of making the legacy UI look more beautiful."

Another important aspect of Kastor, and one offered in the S60 implementation, is that it makes the definition of the UI's look achievable without heavy engineering effort. "Creating animations and transitions within Kastor has the complexity of Web development," says Hampus. "So it is easily undertaken by graphic designers."

While the integration into the S60 UI may not encompass all of TAT's technology, this does not mean its use need be limited on S60 devices. Hampus points to the Samsung SGH-i450 as an example. The SGH-i450's music player was developed using TAT technology and incorporates an innovative link between a touch wheel (revealed by sliding the phone cover) and a graphical wheel within the player UI. "Our technology allowed Samsung to create a music player that looks and feels totally unique within the S60 world," says Hampus.