Concept UI : Windows Shorthand

[gxsaurav]

You can also read this on my Blog.

I was talking to a friend of mine today who recently completed his MBA from I2IT Pune. He was telling me that he & his college & hostel roommates used to share videos, songs, documents & even chat on the college LAN. I saw the LAN Chat application he was using which was quite crappy & something came into my mind. The P2P protocol is already there in Vista inbuilt, & usable in the form of Windows Meeting space which can work through the Internet, so why not have a similar communication system for LAN. This can really help students in colleges with fast LAN connections or Organizations in saving Internet bandwidth costs.

Since this chatting client will work on LAN only mean the bandwidth used will be internal & local, & always available without interfering or slowing down the real Internet Pipeline in the Institute. This is more like Yahoo Messenger made for LAN with many features omitted as they will not be required in LAN.

Presenting Windows Shorthand, a LAN Communication Application. Once started, it will automatically scan for other computers on the LAN provided they also have Windows Shorthand installed. Then it will display a list of all the available clients in an easy to see & manage friend list which can be sorted with groups etc much like what we have today with Yahoo Messenger. The menu bar is invisible but can be seen by pressing the Alt key. It does not need Internet at all. This is how the startup screen looks like.

Each & every computer on the LAN has a specific IP which in most cases is Static. Windows Shorthand will give the ability to each user to set a small profile for himself in Shorthand like a Nick Name & some details which will be saved in a XML file connected to the users Local IP address, now when someone else finds this user they will see his nick name & not the IP address or the computer name on the LAN. To chat they just have to double click & start talking.The user can set a status message for himself. There is a handy search field below the messenger list using which you can search for a particular user in a long friend list. This is how the Messenger List looks like.

Once you are chatting, this is how the Chat Window will look like.

Users can transfer files, do voice or video chat or video conferencing & even have something what I call "Media Share", which is more like Yahoo Messenger's Photo Share just that it will show Video, Audio & Images.

That chatting font can be set in options as shown by the Gear Icon in the toolbar. You can also use common emoticons from the emoticon drop down menu.

It doesn't need plethora of features as this is not supposed to replace any Internet chat client such as Google Talk or Windows Live Messenger. It is simply made for college students & organizations to communicate on LAN.

This concept is made using Microsoft Blend, Photoshop & Icon Workshop. Depending on the feedback here I will design the layout & UI for the media share part too.

Edited April 10, 2008 by gxsaurav

[Smethead]

Seems nice, but what about users on Windows XP or Mac?

[TheElite]

Not bad.

[Evolution]

To search for files, do you have to go through each user or does the search also work for files along with nicknames?

[.tony]

XP doesn't have the P2P protocol so I doubt it.

Nice work, could be useful for some people.

[Berserk87]

i had been looking for an application like this for a long time...and came up with nothing.

my dad used to unplug my brother and I 's internet at night, but he would leave the router still connected, so my and my brother could communicate by putting text files in my brothers shared folder :p

Seems nice, but what about users on Windows XP or Mac?

f*** them!

[goji]

f*** them!

Why don't you tell us how you really feel about non Vista users? ;)

[Evolution]

i had been looking for an application like this for a long time...and came up with nothing.

my dad used to unplug my brother and I 's internet at night, but he would leave the router still connected, so my and my brother could communicate by putting text files in my brothers shared folder :p

f*** them!

Talking face to face was too much for you ;) ?

[gxsaurav]

I don't know about Mac OS X's protocol so can't say about that.

On Windows XP, winchat works, so this along with .net 3.5 runtime should also work in Windows XP.

I am not a programmer but a UI designer, so if some programmer is willing to contribute this project I would gladly provide the required XAML & Microsoft Blend resources

[The2]

Hm.. search box? not needed... why just not start typing like in skype contact list?

i had been looking for an application like this for a long time...and came up with nothing.

my dad used to unplug my brother and I 's internet at night, but he would leave the router still connected, so my and my brother could communicate by putting text files in my brothers shared folder tongue.gif

there is an application called BORG chat, check it out.

[HappyAndyK]

Nice Concept ! Thanx :)

Edited April 10, 2008 by HappyAndyK

[daniel_rh]

Nice! keep up the good work

[redeemed]

Nice work, as always! Keep 'em coming!

[gxsaurav]

The search field is there just to search for users, not there shared files due to security reasons.

[Berserk87]

Why don't you tell us how you really feel about non Vista users? ;)

i was jk :p

Talking face to face was too much for you ;) ?

huh?

[sundayx Veteran]

Why is it called shorthand?

[Antaris Veteran]

You have all the technologies required in .NET3.0/WCF. And as WCF is available for XP (via .NET3.0), it should work on that OS too.

[gxsaurav]

Why is it called shorthand?

Just a name which came in my mind when I was thinking about this :D

A fellow MVP Praveen Srivastava offered me to work with him to make this concept into a real application for enterprise etc.We can use WCF for communicating (this ensures that even if there are proxies etc, we can configure communication easily), WF(a workflow for adding friends), maybe Cardspace for authentication and LINQ for querying. The interface will be made in WPF, as usual