Hey, as some of you may be aware, we are working hard on our next big release: version 6.0!
Let me tell you more about it. Sorry, can’t resist - too excited!
Over the years we’ve received a lot of requests to add some sort of mask or template mechanism, à la PowerPoint in its simplest representation. Well we did that and much more through what we call Experience Layers! You’ll be able to create layers shared across all (or a selected subset of) scenes. For example, you’ll be able to put a Home button on one Experience Layer and put a menu on a second Experience Layer shared by all but the home scene. Or a video than runs continuously across all the scenes! We have also decided to remove the current limit of 3 layers for a scene. And since we’re there, we also implemented Experience Triggers, useful for handling behavior such as inactivity timeouts instead of requiring you to duplicate such a trigger on each scene. We believe Experience Layers will significantly influence how experiences are created and optimized as scenes become an assembly of both experience and scene-specific layers. Not even we can predict where you guys are going to take this feature. I can’t be more excited!
Our first video is out! Watch Experience Layers in action here.
Well, yes I can ;-). The second big addition is the ability to create dynamic, content-rich collections derived from any API in just a few clicks. We already discussed what we’re building here but I can’t stress how cool this is. Behind the scenes, it’s our first feature assisted by machine learning. We’ll soon publish a paper presenting a vision that will become a big theme for us as we further develop what we call a Design Assistant to, well, assist our users during their creative process with IntuiFace. And back in Version 6.0, as we foresee an increase in the use of APIs – because of how common they’ve become and how easy IntuiFace will make it to work with them - we’ll provide a new X-Ray feature to help you quickly visualize all properties, triggers and actions of an asset and to enable you to launch design elements from there.
Watch the new X-Ray feature in action in the third video here. And, finally, the video of the API Explorer is published from there!
Looking at other aspects of IntuiFace, we have completely redesigned Management Console. Not only does it now have a much cleaner and modern user interface, it can much more effectively scale to handle a large number of experiences and a massive deployment across any number of remote Players at lightning speed. As we move forward, we’ll continue to add new deployment and monitoring features that can be managed from this scalable user interface.
Watch the redesigned Management Console in action here (The 2nd video). And lucky current customers can now enjoy a beta version (read more).
Rest assured, adding new features won’t affect performance. Quite the opposite! We’ve transitioned Composer and Player for Windows to a 64-bit architecture to improve their ability to handle large in-memory content, plus we’ve improved touch responsiveness and collection fluidity. Player for Kiosks and Player for Tablets will also see strong performance improvement for collection manipulation. And Experience Layers will add to that mix by improving your ability to remove “blank” transition effects between scenes.
Finally, related to the overall IntuiFace portfolio, we’ll reshuffle our current offering plans to address more diverse needs and, as requested by many, we’ll provide a shared license mechanism across all subscription Composer plans to permit unlimited PC-to-PC license transfers, addressing needs such as the ability to work on both a home and work PC with a single license. I can hear the “hoorays” from here ;-).
This is a major release for us. I’ll admit it’s taking a little more time than first anticipated but I’m hopeful our current ETA is also the -very - final: May 30th.
Alright, let’s get back to work now!
Vincent
