Rich-interface patterns get Quince treatment

Infragistics is today expected to open an online community for creating and storing patterns to build rich interfaces using Microsoft and other technologies.

Called Quince, this is a free patterns catalogue and "community resource" to help those building user interfaces, from the look and feel through to the workflow.

You will be able to search templates, get updates via RSS, rate patterns, and submit patterns using a pre-designed template that outlines important information you should include.

Infragistics, which has more than 20-years' experience in the Microsoft and Java interface components market, will kick off Quince with 100 patterns from its own archives and those its staff have sourced from elsewhere. Patterns can be implemented using Microsoft's Silverlight media player and Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Java and PHP.

Jason Beres, Infragistics' director of product management, said the time is right for Quince, given the amount of focus on interfaces for online applications and services.

He noted that Quince could serve as a resource for developers using Microsoft's web and interface technologies as they are currently poorly served in this area.

"Microsoft hasn't done that and I don't think developers using Visual Studio are looking to Microsoft for user experience best practices - that's not what they do, they provide great tooling," Beres said. "We can help."

He said this contrasted with a large number of resources and frameworks online for building interfaces for AJAX from Yahoo! and GWT from Google.