anyone ever see the visual monitoring tools factories and plants have? they show components of the manufacturing system in something reminiscent of a flowchart or visio diagram, but instead of a static image, each component has some interactive element (e.g. showing system stats or messages)
I want to build something like this for an all-software system. are there any tools or components I can use to build the gui? is there a name for this type of tool? I can't figure out the right query to find sample images on google.
The closest I've seen to something like this is the Microsoft Visual Studio Analyzer; it can monitor hardware and software components and graphically show the communication between them.
I believe you are seeking instrument gauges and graphics.
there are some free controls and some expensive controls and a ton in between.
Here are a few examples;
http://www.cstsoft.com/english/index.html
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Programming/Components_and_Libraries/Nextwave_Software_WPF_Suite_with_Chart_and_Gauge_Screenshot.html
http://www.dundas.com/index.aspx?Campaign=GoogleGauge&gclid=CNXn7rmL2pgCFR2dnAodyl2HdA
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/free-gauge-_net.html
and this certainly is not an all inclusive list -- Google yields many more and your choice of development environment --
hope it helps.
Related
I want to create a smart and easy way to produce and generate code automatically.
It's not easy to explain, but what I want to do is something like what codefluent software (http://www.softfluent.com/) does. So design graphically a model and what is generated is a collection of classes in according with some rules defined for my context. Otherwise, also a tool like Telerik which is integrate in Visual Studio and through a custom menu it's possible to manage particular behaviours of the application.
I know that my request is not clear and so general, but also my acutal ideas are in an embrional state. I see that Visual Studio support a DSL SDK (vsvmsdk) which permits to specify and design an own language. But I can't understand if it is exactly what I need.
Anyone can suggest me a different tool or maybe a documentation about what I can do in Visual Studio to reach my goal?
CodeFluent Entities is a custom-made tool, it's not relying on any 3rd party software. The graphical surface is using WPF with special algorithms and specific lightweight treeviews. (disclaimer: I work for this company, and I helped develop that software).
That being said, if you want to quickly develop something, you could indeed start with the http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/vsvmsdk you mention (VSVMSDK is the successor of the DSL SDK, aka 'DSL Tools'). It has the big advantage of being free. Note however the future of this component at Microsoft is unclear, as they seem to prefer 'Code-first' over 'Model-first' now.
I am searching for an easy webapp or windows application where i can design a system architecture. Creating boxes for different zones, e.g. demilitarized zone, adding servers, databases and protocols and also connecting them with each others. It should be more hardware orientied, with nice graphics of databases and computer – not like a screen mockup tool or a UML modeler. Is there something like this out there?
For this, I have to recommend both Dia and Microsoft Visio. I'm not sure what image sets the latest version of Visio comes with. I can state for sure that Dia offers image sets that contain the symbols that you most likely need to complete your task.
You can use inkscape which is a general purpose SVG editor that has, by default, a plugin that allows you get images from http://www.openclipart.org/. There are quite decent pictures of Computers and Hardware that you can use.
There's also the xfig program but it's got a very old school UI.
Does anyone know of any tools out there that will let me run and debug a VXML application visually? There are a ton of VXML development tools, but they all require you to build your application within them.
I have an existing application that uses JSPs to generate VXML, and I'm looking for a way to navigate through and debug the rendered VXML in much the same way that Firebug allows one to do this with HTML. I have some proxy-like tools that let me inspect the rendered code as it is sent to the VXML browser, but there's a ton of JS, which makes traversing the code by hand rather difficult.
Has anyone worked with a product that allows for this?
Thanks!
IVR Avenger
There is JigSaw Test suite - has free trial license and reasonably priced.
There is IBM's debugger - part of WebSphere Voice Toolkit.
Many other products have debuggers - a very good summary is here
Disclaimer: I am the development manager for Voiyager (www.voiyager.com), a VoiceXML testing tool. It doesn't meet your criteria nor do I believe it is the type of tool you want, but I thought it was worth mentioning it.
As far as I know, there isn't such a test tool for VoiceXML. In fact there are very few VoiceXML tools on the market and hardly any of them test or analysis. The vendors that created development tools, have all been acquired by other companies. Some of them offered did offer various forms of debugging that were specific to their tool set or stayed at the Dialog (caller input) level. From your question, I'm assuming you need much lower level debugging capabilities.
I think the alternative paths are minimal and somewhat difficult. I believe your primary goal is to debug or rewrite an existing application, but you haven't provided any specific challenges beyond the JavaScript. Some thoughts or approaches that may help:
Isolate the JavaScript and place the code into a unit test harness. That will go a long way to understanding the logic of the application. Any encapsulation of the JavaScript you perform will probably go a long way towards better code maintainability.
Attempt to run the VoiceXML through a translation layer to HTML so you could use FireBug. The largest challenge would involve caller input (ie processing the SRGS grammars). You could probably cheat this by just having the form accept a JSON string the populates the field values. There are tools on the market to test grammars. Depending on the nature of your problems, you could take a simple and light approach and attempt this over just the trouble areas.
Plumb the application with a lot of logging. This can be done through the VoiceXML LOG element, or push the variable space back to the server. By adding intermediate forms, you may be able to provide a dump from each via the VoiceXML Data element.
See if your application will run in one of the open source VoiceXML browsers (not sure of the state of the open source browsers as we've built and bought for our various product lines). If you can get it mostly working, you can use the development debugger to provide some ability to step through the logic. However, it is probably one of the more difficult paths as you'll really need to understand the browser to know when and where to stick your breakpoints and to figure out how to expose the data you want.
Good luck on the challenge. If you find another approach, I would be interested in seeing it posted.
An alternative debug env is to use something like Asterisk with a voicexml browser plugin like the one from http://www.voiceglue.org/ or for a limited licence, i6net.
You can keep all the pieces separate(dynamic html and vxml application in php/jsp/j2ee/, tts processing, and optional asr processing as separate virtual machines with something like virtualbox. If the logic can be kept the same, then it is just a matter of changing the UI based on the channel.
A softphone is all you need to call a minimal asterisk machine, which has the voicexml browser with the url of the vxml in the call plan.
I just used Zend Framework as php is used in this environment, and changed view suffixes(phtml vs vxml) based on the user-agent string.
Flite for tts is fine for debugging, and when your app is ready you can either record phrases, and there was a page on the ubuntu forums with directions for how to increase flite quality with some additional sound files.
Do you have tried Eclipse VTP or InVision Studio?
Eclipse VTP
This is Eclipse plugin. But I feel that it is user-unfriendly a little (of Japanese viewpoint).
InVision Studio *Required create user account*
This is Convergys's IVR tool. It has to edit standard VXML mode. (Unfortunately, It's not exact matching.)
For just debugging vxml, I use Nuance Cafe's VoiceXML checker. It doesn't give you a visual tree or anything, but it's pretty good at spotting syntax errors and is free. I think they might also have more advanced debugging tools if you look into it, but I haven't had the need. (Note: I have no association with them)
http://cafe.bevocal.com/tools/vxmlchecker/vxmlchecker.jsp
I'm looking for the same problem that most of the links are down. I found a document where they propose an open source solution, which works as a plugin for Asterisk (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228873959_Open_Source_VoiceXML_Interpreter_over_Asterisk_for_Use_in_IVR_Applications) and is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/voxy/
I would like to know if there are current options to create a VXML structure graphically, like the next image.
There are many more technologies and tools available to build the front end for an application.
Which is the best technology/tool/platform available using which I can build a better GUI, by which I'll be able to build a nice looking as well as an efficient GUI?
Definition of "better" includes factors such as efficiency,user friendliness,better content control mechanism, navigation and many more.
I know this is a question about which GUI toolkit you should use, but your first technology for producing a user-friendly UI is pen and paper. Sketch out some mock-ups. Draw buttons and menus on construction paper, cut them out, and glue them together. Then try your mockups on about a half-dozen people. You'll quickly find out what makes a good UI.
It doesn't matter how good the UI looks or whether it uses the latest snazzy effects -- if your users can't figure out how to use it, they'll go elsewhere. You need to learn what works for your target audience before you write a single line of code.
Read Don't Make Me Think to learn how to make mock-ups and do user testing.
If' you're tracking an IP address, you'll definitely want to create your GUI Interface in Visual Basic.
Use the .NET framework in Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010 Studio. I haven't developed in any other environment, but I have been able to create nice looking apps in this IDE / Framework.
"Best" depends on what your evaluation function is.
For ease of development, and high quality UI, in a non-web based app it's hard to beat C#/VB or any other .NET language and environment for a windows-based app. Depending on the quality of the UI, MPF will give you greater flexibility and control, whereas windows form will make it easier to develop.
Having used Windows Presentation Foundation for a while now i would highly recommend it. There is a pretty big learning curve and, to be honest, MSFT should have included some controls (the datagrid being the biggest one) that were not included by default (but will be in .NET 4.0). Where WPF and XAML exceed is providing a foundation from which you can build just about anything. You can style ANY part of ANY control and build your own composite controls from scratch. A lot of thought went into binding and value converters and once you get used to the declarative nature of XAML you wont want to turn back. The company I work for has been using it for a couple of years now and the difference between the GUIs we used to develop (mainly winforms and asp.net) and what we develop now are night and day in terms of both look-and-feel and functionality. My two cents anyway...
It depends.
What device will the GUI be used on, hand held, PC, Mac?
What platform Windows, Linux, Web?
What kind of application will it be, accounting, email client, web application?
What audience will be using the application (a GUI aimed at a child may be different than one aimed at an adult)?
All of these things must be taken into account before even starting to formulate an answer to your question.
You have several choices for developing a GUI.
first, if cross platform is an issue consider using Java or Python.
you can also use Adobe AIR and develop the gui in Flex.
If you direct the product to windows only users .NET WPF is the best solution, with a very rich set of control and examples.
You can also use .NET with mono for cross platform compatibility, but WPF isn't currently supported.
Desktop, Mobile, Windows, Linux, Database, OpenGL: Nokia Qt. Wiht Python - PyQt development process is shortest and easy. Application containing all required python & qt libraries and modules is around 30MB with Inno Setup installation is 8MB and will work on Windows 2000 and newer for Python 2.6.x, Python 2.5.x based application will run from Windows 95 to Windows 7.
I think all the attributes you list -- efficiency, user friendliness, etc -- are attributes of a good design rather than a good toolkit. Just about any toolkit can be used to meet those goals. I think the question might be different if you were asking about eye candy, fancy multi-media, etc. There are definitely some toolkits that do that better than others.
If you're interested in usability first (and it sounds like you are), focus on the design then pick whatever toolkit meets your current abilities and can handle your design. For example, if you require 3D images that might narrow your choices; likewise if you need to show videos, that will influence which toolkits you can choose from.
So, start with a good design. From that, create a list of requires for the toolkit -- rich editing controls, video, 3D, etc. And then look for a toolkit that provides what you need.
The best toolkit in the world won't make up for poor design.
Personally after having used Win32, Forms and WPF then going to Mac/iPhone GUI development, I very much prefer the flexibility and high quality of visuals in the Mac/iPhone GUI.
One of the most useful examples is the fact that in NSTable/UITable controls (ListViews or similar in Windows), every cell is a fully customisable View (a Control in Windows).
Where in a ListView you have very little customisation for each cell/item in the view since you only provide details, not an actual control, an NSTable/UITable asks you for a table cell which you can add anything to, such as buttons, switches and image views.
Mac OS GUI development to me is a LOT more flexible and more consistently flexible in that regard. Everything is a View so I can my own contents to anything.
Have you considered Silverlight?
It can be used to create internet applications, but it can also be run out of browser to create desktop applications. It's has significant overlap with WPF though there are differences which might catch you out when swapping from one to the other.
Expression Blend 3 is a very good visual designer and the code it produces is quite efficient.
I would like to create a report designer that has the same functionality and ease of use as the Visual Studio IDE. The ability to drag controls onto a form, select various subsets of those controls, align left, evenly space, etc.
The only tools I have ever encountered are really bad. Crystal Reports, the MS Access report crapola, ComponentOne, etc. Is there a third party tool that does this right, or do I have to roll my own?
Um, sounds like you want to do ad-hoc reporting. I have never seen one of these done well outside of a COTS product like BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, which I am using right now on one of my projects.
http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/web_intelligence/
I think you'll have to roll your own here.
The problem here is one of balance. Third party reporting tools have to be flexible, open and highly customizable to the whims of every potential user. As a result, these tools end being not usable to a lay person.
That said creating a visual report designer is not a trivial task. So my suggestion would be to distill the user's voice to find the minimal set of functionality (report elements, formatting, etc.) done first in a usable manner... may not be pretty the first time. And then iterate.
I'm working on a similar need and currently evaluating if MS Word with some custom add-ins would get the job done.
Some years ago I used Active Reports from a company called Data Dynamics. It was nice in that it allowed my users to create their own reports - and they loved not having to contact me to create some ad-hoc report. I am sure the product has evolved since 2001, might want to give it a look.
There is an SQL MS Reports Solution. It's called SSRS and you may have heard of it, but what you might not know it there is an OK end user targeted reporting tool. It works especially well if you are using datasets. The reports can be saved as files and run and/or built inside a VS project, within SQL SSRS, or using the free standing tool (i'd start here). They can also be run from a web control. They can export to excel and even PDF I think.
See SQL2008 Tool here - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9f783224-9871-4eea-b1d5-f3140a253db6&displaylang=en
More info here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Server_Reporting_Services
This is also available in SQL2005 also I believe.