I want to create an simple UI-editor that can be used within the browser. It basically should have a UI-control palette and a canvas to layout and modify the controls. The resulting user-created UI model should be stored in some kind of backend and comply to an (abstract) UI description language (e.g. XForms). The UI-model should be downloadable as file (e.g. XForms document). A visual in-browser XForms-designer is probably a good example of what I want to achieve. The UI-editor should be usable cross browser.
Please keep in mind that i mentioned XForms only as an example. I don't want to rely on the browsers capabilities wrt. my target model. The target model (e.g. XForms) should only be used as storage format. The cross browser rendering of the desgin-time UIs in the editor should be ensured by the toolkit/framework.
Possible canditates are probably:
GWT
Adobe Flex 3
Eclipse RAP
The UI-editor will not be used in production. My focus lies on a rapid development of the editor.
The extjs JavaScript library is good for implementing GUIs in JavaScript. It can also be used with Adobe AIR or Google Gears for creating offline applications, and works well with different browsers.
Here is an example of a GUI editor for extjs: http://tof2k.com/ext/formbuilder/
Related
My clients have their home grown style sheets for buttons, labels, alerts etc for consistent look across their applications.
Now if I want to create high fidelity mockups for client review, is there a way to generate mockups using the styles sheet they have?
Any tools like Adobe / Sketch can do the same?
Appreciate your feedback.
Figma is a great tool which helps us to build a master template of certain UI component and use it across the prototype wherever it's needed. Similarly, you can use Adobe XD and Sketch which also have similar kind of features also.
I have worked on a chrome plugin for one of the cloud based product. For The Chrome we have used third partly JS libraries like BackboneJS etc. Now I have to design a Firefox Extension, I am trying to figure out how much code we can reuse. Apparently spending few hours with Mozilla Developer site it seems like for Firefox Extension we have to use XUL for the UI. Not sure if we can use the html and javascript functions from Chrome App for the Firefox Extension, or what would be the approach to estimate the effort. My Understanding is that we have to do it from the scratch since like Chrome in FF we dont have concepts like background page etc.
There is nothing inherent that prevents you from implementing a UI in HTML/JS. You might have to wrap it in an XUL <iframe>, or <browser> (potentially other elements) within a <window> (Firefox will open pure HTML).
The key issue regarding extensions is that they execute in an elevated security context vs. webpages. As such, they have the ability to affect a much larger range of things in the browser and on the users system. When <iframe>, or <browser> elements are used, they have a property type which defaults to having the contents operating in the elevated security context. The default value is type="chrome" which makes the content opened be in the extension's higher security context.
Additional docs from MDN regarding security concerns with opening content in <iframe>, or <browser> elements which is not sourced from your extension distribution: Security best practices in extensions and Displaying web content in an extension without security issues
As to your JavaScript: You should be able to re-use a significant amount of it. At a minimum, the logic. Obviously, there will be more significant differences in how you accomplish interfacing to the aspects of the browsers which are not covered under standards documents (e.g. DOM manipulation should be very close, just as it is for webpage JS).
I want to learn designing android UI and implementation to android apps. I found one video tutorial on the web but It seems only how to design. I don't know how to use it on apps.
Video Tutorial
How can I use custom UI design on my android app ? I'm using fireworks for design. For example, simple design:
How can I use this on my app ? (I know it looks terrible but I just want to learn how to do it.)
Simply creating a UI in fireworks won't be enough. You'll need to split it into multiple components, and the construct it within your app using XML or Java.
The Android developer site has a good set of documentation and guides on doing this.
Searching on Google will also give you lots of tutorials for the different UI elements and how to style them.
Your layout will require a tabbed Activity (or an ActionBar with tabs), a TextView and a Switch, from what I can see.
This question is more philosophical than technical.
I've trained myself as a web developer back when web developers were called webmasters and my tool of choice was FrontPage, moving onto Evrsoft 1st Page 2000.
That was the last time I used an HTML image map.
Now it's HTML5, AJAX, vector canvasses, CSS 3D, jQuery, local storage, touchscreen Safari, you name it. The image map has faded into an obscurity where not even Google comes up with too many relevant results; a mandatory W3C Schools entry and some forum posts from 2004.
Obviously creating a website navigation or similar triviality using an image map was a bad idea back then and it certainly is inexcusable today.
But right now I have a task to create a polygon clickable area on top of a div with a background image.
I'd have no issue doing this in image map since it seems like it was designed for a use case exactly like this, and while I've done no tests, I couldn't imagine any browser dropping support for an element that worked beautifully for years. But I can't help but think that there must be a better way to do this today.
My web creation philosophy is to develop for IE5.5, and then design for Chrome edge. This means that the site first needs to work on a basic level on even the most antiquated browser, and then start adding JS & CSS to make it more beautiful, more usable, faster, simpler, friendlier and better.
As such, while I know I could do a canvas in Raphaël and add all kinds of snazzy hover effects and things, I think making functionality as simple as this shouldn't require a 89 kb (or X kb) JS library. Or even JS at all.
I don't know if CSS3 has capabilities to define polygonal areas, but while recognizing the great possibilities introduced by CSS3, I prefer keeping anything defined there as non-essential flair that would degrade gracefully.
So in today's webdev world, what would be the most cross-browser way to define a polygonal click area (preferably in a way that's grabbable by a jQuery .hover(), or at least a CSS :hover), that isn't dependent on JavaScript or CSS attributes available in a minority of browsers? Is image map really the only way to do it? What of mobile devices?
Why is using image maps for navigation inexcusable? It's a tool like any other; it has a time and place. Using imagemaps with javascript enhancements is backward compatible, degrades gracefully, and has 100% browser support. They don't need a plugin like flash.They've been supported practically since the dawn of the web browser. Just because something's old doesn't mean it isn't useful; quite the opposite, it means it's well supported.
I wrote a jquery plugin called ImageMapster to add effects to imagemaps so you could create interactive images without using flash. It would be easy to implement a tool that had the same functonality without Javascript support by replacing with a list in those cases. Personally, I think trying to write for the web without javascript is like trying to drive a car without tires. 99% of the web doesn't work without it any more. This isn't 1995. But if you really are concerned, the nice thing about imagemaps is the basic navigation functionality still works. There's no way to accomplish that just with CSS -- not even CSS3 if you have irregular shaped areas.
Can someone please guide me regarding which touch framework (javascript) I should use to make a tablet app? I am new to this area and I am looking for something which allows me to play with my own UI design comfortably.
I went through sencha as I heard its apt for a tablet app environment but I am (sorry, it might sound odd) not able to make out whether I can use my own UI design to make app in sencha. Or any other framework (stable) allows to use custom UI design?
There aren't any major differences between handsets and tablets, except for the screen size. For example, what you would show in a handset in one long scrolling screen, would be shown in a split-screen on a tablet (I am concentrating on the user-experience here).
Split-screen support in still rare in the jscript frameworks, since webkit browsers didn't fully support scrolling only parts of a page (i.e. an iframe or overflow:scroll divs), this support is only now starting to get materialized with iOS5 (Android already had this since 2.2, but it never worked right).
There have been other jscript solutions (like iScroll), but being client code they are not always bringing the full "experience" to the client.
The JQuery-Mobile docs have a version under testing, you can try that in a tablet/handset to see the differences.
Regarding your "own UI design", if you mean colors/icons/buttons that's possible on any framework. Where the problems start is when you want to create custom layouts, and each framework provides partial support depending on what exactly you want to achieve.
In general, I'd say Sencha totally separates you from HTML design - you build everything using JSON controls and it has an extensive events/rendering code (of course you can write your own controls), whereas frameworks like JQuery mobile work directly on the HTML (you specify data-* attributes for the details) and renders it almost the same (ok, it does adds wrapping layers, but in general it's still pure HTML).
As always, "it depends" on what you want to achieve and what you are ready to give up... ;-)
Sencha Touch (our framework) is particularly well suited to tablet apps because it has an implementation of multiple scrollable areas that works on older iOS and RIM devices, not just iOS5. But, the intention with Sencha Touch is that you create your app using the built-in UI components (carousels, momentum lists, tabs, etc.) or, if you have unique UI elements, then you will need to extend an existing component or build a custom component. If you're expecting to be able to slap some of your own HTML into innerHTML or even a Touch xTemplate, then you will be setting yourself up for failure. But the good news is that there are tutorials on doing your own components, and there are plenty of apps that you can look at the source of, in order to guide your development. Lots of people have built apps with custom UI's
You need some level of JavaScript experience to use Sencha Touch, so if you're coming from a non-JavaScript web design background, you'll have to get down the JavaScript learning curve first.