Praetorian Beta officially delayed.

Well, the news is out; no Praetorian before WWDC. I can’t give out a beta that would really be a close call to be called an ‘alpha’. I’ll keep all testers informed over the next few weeks and what I think is a realistic new date to set for the first beta release.

Praetorian Update: May 2007

4 days overdue this month, but here we are.

To all people who are also developing for OS X, this may give some insight. I had gotten some emails of developers asking about the whole UI design and how it all works under the hood. Being a designer that also knows technique, I happily show some things that helped me a lot. Grab some coffee (or hot cocoa) and follow along in the exciting world of Mac UI design.

On the Mac, Apple is the leading party for developers to look at because they define the ‘rules’ - more than often, Apple comes with nice interface ’standards’ that the aging years-old interface guidelines do not include. An example are the now ubiquitous ‘HUD’ panels. Black and transparent and known best as ‘the iPhoto adjust palettes’, Apple introduced then, and developers followed suit. If it comes to other things that spice up interfaces across the board, it’s not a bad thing to just go rummaging around the insides of the interface. F-Script Anywhere is just built for this.

As an example (and request), I will take the dark search box in Praetorian. Most OS X search boxes have the same look; the black loupe, grey or black text on a white round beveled text field. There is an obvious class whose documentation is worth looking at, namely NSTextField. You can define a lot of parameters on the NSTextField, but it’s much more fun to take a look at how Apple does it. Time to whip out Aperture, the dark interface-toting chunk of UI goodness for RAW workflows and other photography work.

Apple does some nice things here. They have made some custom classes for this, subclassing NSTextField and doing a really nice job making it all consistent. The same goes for the sometimes stingy NSTableViews - take a look at how people do it. There’s Google Code, the Mailing Lists, Cocoadev and open-source projects. Shiira, as I mentioned before, has an excellent open-source framework for HUD panels and everything that goes with it (also with a custom implementation of a black NSTableView). Apart from documentation, what is done in practice is often an excellent way to know how the experts do it, and where you can innovate or, even better, know what’s not worth your time.

Now, all this talking about interfaces could make you curious why another application I make, like iSight Expert, is very ‘conventional’; a unified interface with many features reminiscent of other Apple apps serving similar functions. That’s because it’s a very straightforward application oriented towards a casual purpose. People don’t use just -that- app, it would be a desktop citizen every now and then. Praetorian is a very primary app, it is a workplace that is prominent and serves an abstract purpose. When it comes to something so abstract and touching on the technological side of computers, it can scare your non-expert potential customers. A custom interface with unique features will help overcome a lot of the problems such applications are inherently confronted with.

This custom interface is not only appealing, it incites curiosity and if it’s not too involved and complex-looking (like Praetorian), most users will be interested. It’s important to lower the bar when it comes to giving users control over their network and taking steps in securing their assets. Now, if it’s made easy, I am all the happier.

And that’s what UI design is all about. You need to find and embrace conventions, because users will be able to use their intuition. You can use or create the many standard third-party buttons and interface graphics because they are in the public domain and free to download, often with sample code. There are many things you can communicate with the interface and it’s graphics, and (especially on the Mac platform) for users, it’s the biggest part of the program. Arguably, functionality is the most important thing to a user; but it’s the interface that lets him gauge the functionality beneath.

In line with Leopard, I am doing a lot of work preparing application interfaces and graphics for the true resolution independence by system scale factor and redoing icons (or making totally new graphics) for the higher resolutions. Since I am a student, I’m happy to help out a lot of projects with this exciting time were are entering. Expect more details on this on the Cocoia Main site very soon.

Praetorian Q&A

Q:

Praetorian; what does it REALLY do?

A:

Let’s say you have a wireless network. It may be one little Airport Router, ten routers linked together, or any given number. You want to secure it, so people can’t just effortlessly go on your network.

The options are clear; however, for most Mac users, some options aren’t touched on. We all know WEP and WPA security for wireless networks. This can be inconvenient; a password that’s often random and has no other association doesn’t get remembered well. You can filter on hardware (MAC) addresses, but if you have more than one router, this will be a pain to maintain.
RADIUS, a server for authentication, can consolidate your list of allowed addresses, keep network login information in a certificate or a more logical username and password combination.

Praetorian isn’t RADIUS – Praetorian functions as your interface to RADIUS, and makes it effortless to set up and harness. Let’s say you have an open network with 7 Macs (or PC’s) that get each get online at least once each week. You can let Praetorian scan the addresses of the computers and add them to the list of allowed users before applying the new security scheme. If the network is under attack, or is overwhelmed by an infected PC, simply lock down the network. You can schedule certain policies for certain times. Praetorian makes it easy, and affordable.

Q:

You confused me. What does it DO?

A:

It makes it easy to secure your network without having the router or Airport doing all the securing, giving control to you. And it’s easy enough for anyone to use. It’s also built on open-source software with open and strict standards for security, in line with the base of OS X.

Q:

Does Praetorian have anything to do with FON?

A:

No. I have gotten quite a number of emails regarding this, for reasons beyond my imagination.

Q:

You mentioned special Airport support. I don’t have an Airport router, but (Brand XYZ). Now what?

A:

Although Airport setup goes with an assistant, other routers have their own setup assistant, with guides for some routers. I hope to expand the list with concise how-to’s, and a list of hardware that support RADIUS.

Q:

How do I know if my router is eligible at all?

A:

Check under the ‘Wireless Security’ settings (or security) of your router’s web interface (check the manual) and see if there are options for “WPA2 Enterprise”, “802.1X”, or “RADIUS”.

Q:

What distribution of RADIUS does Praetorian support?

A:

FreeRADIUS by defalt, any distribution supporting the RadDB format (users file and clients file), and if demand is enough, LDAP and SQL backend support are possibilities.

Q:

Is Praetorian a single-window application?

A:

No, it’s not;

But it’s main workflow is situated in a single window, where a toolbar element is used for navigation.

Q:

RADIUS is supposed to be followed by DIAMETER, using TCP transport (or SCTP) and generally improving upon the feature-base of RADIUS. Are there any plans to support DIAMETER?

A:

Conclusively; yes. Absolutely. Since Apple plans to also support RADIUS out of the box with OS X Server 10.5, Praetorian will be on it’s heels with DIAMETER support by the time Leopard comes out.

Q:

How does Praetorian scan my network?

A:

Praetorian uses very fast ARP scanning. Yes, it will scan without all the rest of the ’securing’ bit. But the scanner tool built into Praetorian is integrated with the application’s main functionality.

Q:

Are Fortitude and Praetorian related projects?

A:

They will have integration.

Praetorian Update: April 2007

Hello beta testers, time for an update.

Praetorian has been rolling steadily towards it’s Public Beta release candidate. As I have seen the trouble with compiling your own, I will make the latest sources of FreeRADIUS available as binary packages upon release, to save you the hassle. From there on, Praetorian will show you how your network’s going (the information architecture has been thrown upside down here, since the last preview) and your server is.

Regardless of your understanding of computers, Praetorian will allow you to set up a Mac in your network to be a RADIUS server. This means you can let people log into your wireless or wired network with a username and password, or simply filter people based on hardware (MAC) addresses.
Praetorian has assistants for these tasks built in. If you have an Airport, it’s just a few clicks away to a super-secure network.

The release candidate now has a probable release date and some features left undiscussed recently.

- New IndieHIG-compliant custom interface widgets.
- If licenses allow, a blazing fast scanning method to keep tabs on people online.
- Full document support; Praetorian’s own document type, raddb format, and SQL.
- Unlimited Undo functionality.
- Spotlight integration.
- Unparalleled security methods; passwords are stored in the keychain and kept in memory in an encrypted state.
- A separate Leopard version ready for release when OS X 10.5 is released.

Cocoia expects to start public beta as soon as June 10th, culminating with the launch of the Cocoia Beta Panel, but expects at least one pre-release candidate beta release before commencing testing on the final branch.

Sign up for beta by email

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Thinking, and thinking some more illustrated.

What gets a project like Praetorian started? Lots of scribbles… on anything!

And it’s not only fun, but essential; quite some thought goes into designing the structure of an application. And I really enjoy the process, and the product.

Praetoriwhat?

It’s been a pretty busy start of the month, and it also carried an excess of emails asking me what Praetorian really is. Now, to specify once and for all.

Wrapped in a sexy black UI (and I’ve done a lot of research on a working, non-intrusive black look), Praetorian intends to be your home or business network guardian. It’s easy to set up RADIUS or 802.1X authentication, manage users and routers attached to the network, scan the network, and do other operations. It’s compact, sleek, and easy to navigate. In it’s current stage, Praetorian has less than 20 megabytes of memory used, and the goal is to keep it lower than 50. But there is more!

Praetorian’s host of features comes to a blessing to any Mac user that is conscious of it’s networking security. It provides extensions to open-source tools, can graph the authenticating server’s logs, and will be maintained for a long time. Developed initially for the Academy of Arts, Groningen, the public beta will be seeing the daylight soon (sooner than iSight Expert). Beta registration is… still open! Email!

First April post; the Lifecycle of Icons.

No, I didn’t feel like an April’s fool joke. It’s one of the reasons why I didn’t re-skin the blog on this day. Anyway, I couldn’t possibly trump the Google jokes. Brilliant stuff. This post will just be a blurb of some off-topic stuff and a bit of thoughts on icon design. I hope to be a bit more faithful in my monthlies, as the last wednesday and two fridays had to go without real graphics or typography.

On a side note; why the hell doesn’t Aperture start up if you have Bonjour disabled? It starts peppering you with all sorts of vague, opaque error messages if mDNSResponder isn’t running.

When I design icons for an application, I always heed critique from ‘ignorant’ users, fellow graphic designers, and developers. It’s important that icons are identifying, aesthetically pleasing, discerning, and comply to guidelines (and having read and hopefully grokked the Apple HIG, I think this is good, but anyone has the right and ‘duty’ to show me any erroneous design decisions made).

Conceptual design is always the first phase. I don’t just sketch in this phase, I think, and, Wil Shipley style, I think, and I think some more. Then, I rethink the whole thing. After that, I start sketching and thinking in parallel. After that, I start thinking and designing mockups on my Mac in parallel.
Mostly, I get incidental productions in Photoshop (or GIMP) and Illustrator (or Inkscape) and some design guidelines through my sketches. I start refining designs I like, and pick a final version. I often design other icons for the application in question along with the main icon, because there is often some sort of coherence or association going on. Finding inspiration in icons you like is good as well, because it’s always useful if your icon turns to be similar - you can get to work discerning your icon.

For example, after this phase in the design of the Praetorian app, this icon came out. It’s not compliant to the Tango icon guidelines, as it lacks a distinct silhouette, but this, I found less than important for the time being.

In this stage, the application wasn’t even called ‘Praetorian’, it had an absolutely stupid name I won’t tell anyway. What isn’t entirely clear in this image, is that it has transparency, all of the grey in the sphere apart from the center. That really didn’t work - on a black background, it was completely black.

I decided to fix that, give it a bit more contrast (for depth) and make a document icon out of it.

Now, by this time, you can see there are already color theme issues in the document icon and the application icon. Color themes allow us to associate application icons even more easily and intuitively. I also got some feedback from people; some things that lack (which I saw too), was that there wasn’t a ‘realistic’ outline (dark / light, with shadow) of the application icon, the icon lacked texture, and color. What isn’t obvious here, is that the application icon also used the full 128 pixels, which made it too big in the dock. Aperture’s icon (also round) is actually smaller than that, leaving some ‘air’ for the icon, which is good.

As you can see, the amount of depth and the texture of the icon changes dramatically. The icons are now visually related, and convey much more atmosphere with more color. The result? A nice dock icon, and a fine document icon to work with.