user interface definitions using PACE
Designers can create simple, stylish campaigns that can be displayed on the handset screensaver, home screen, or drawn on top of any running application.
The visual components of campaigns are drawn using either Flash Lite® or SVG. Campaigns ‘targets’ include the handset screensaver or home screen, alternatively, campaigns can be drawn as floating ‘tooltips’ over the top of a running application or as popup (modal) dialogs.
UI View Types
PACE supports five related types of UI elements:
- Screensaver
- Home Screen view
- Focused view
- Overlay view
- Popup view
screensaver
The client implements a screensaver control that can draw a UI using our SVG engine or can host the native Flash Lite® Player.
Items are rendered in display carousel order.
home-screen
Home Screen views are drawn in display carousel order.
They are synchronised with the current screensaver view to provide a contextual linkage for the user to act upon.
Overlay View
An Overlay View is the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of PACE campaigns because it can be displayed over any application and bound to multiple application UIDs.
Popup View
Popup Views are typically used to convey important information that the user must act on.
They are the PACE equivalent of modal dialog and displayed under either the control of rules or as a result of a user key press or tap on an Overlay View.
drawing a ui with PACE
For the screensaver, the client uses either the handset [an error occurred while processing this directive] application or its own SVG engine. The PACE SVG engine is always used to render home-screen, popup and overlay campaigns.
PACE SVG support includes a subset of elements from the [an error occurred while processing this directive] specification including [an error occurred while processing this directive] animations.
The choice of Flash Lite® or SVG for screensaver campaigns is dictated by whether the campaign is dynamic, in which case, SVG should be used; or where existing assets are to be used, in which case Flash® might be more appropriate.
view documents
A campaign view document is responsible for event handling as well as controlling:
- Canvas dimensions (to scale to different screen sizes and orientations).
- The animation frame-rate.
- Campaign display duration.
- The rendering position on the screen.
- Compositing details.
The PACE event model binds actions to key, touch and timer events. Focused or popup views can use these events to create interactive applications through manipulation of the SVG DOM
Views are also responsible for performing actions in response to user events. For example, a view may launch the web browser in response to user input.
ui compositing
Because a view can specify that an image be made up of multiple documents, composite UIs can dynamically be created from reusable XML components, e.g.:
- A view document describes what SVGt documents are composited as well as how events should be handled.
- A generic document describes the overall theme colours to be applied.
- A template document provides placeholder for UI elements such as lists, icons, titles, etc.
- A library manages key-press event handling and document scrolling.
- An overlay document is provided by the campaign and provides a visually appealing animated call to action.
Compositing occurs at runtime in a just-in-time basis.
themed common ui components
The client comes pre-installed with a set of UI templates for home screen, focused and other views.
For most campaigns, custom screensaver and application overlay views are created. For consistency, view templates are used for both the home screen and focused screen.
Templates simplify the ingestion of third-party ad content because in most cases, templates eliminate the need for a custom UI. Where non-standard behaviour or look-and-feel is required, custom home and focused screen view components can be created on an as-need basis.
technical benefits
The PACE rules engine works to prioritise which campaigns are displayed to the user. A simple system of display priorities coupled with event subscriptions makes it easy to build either static or active campaigns. The multi-layered approach employed by the rules engine ensures that the system is very efficient. For example, the overhead of having a campaign. that activates only when the handset is roaming is tiny.
