Is there are web framework that allows creating of custom Web UI designers that can be embedded into a webpage/webapp?
What I am looking for is to create a web UI that allows users to edit the UI in a drag and drop style editor. It should be possible to select some widgets (like these: http://scaffy.railsware.com/futurico/#pagination) and to select a data source (will be provided by back-end, nodejs).
Background: I am not a web designer and have no previous web experience. I just want to know if it possible to create what I am looking for and how much effort it would be. My background is in embedded Linux development and I would like to create an easy way for people to create machines with single board computers. The embedded stuff is pretty much complete and I am exploring ways to create nice and user editable user interfaces.
I think what you want is possible.
However... as far I know nothing exists which will do exactly what you require.
There are thousands of UI widgets on the Web to choose from but you would need a custom built backend cms developed especially for your needs
There plenty of Web agencies who could provide a bespoke solution. They could also assist with updates and adding new widgets.
So it can be done (and may encounter some browser incompatability issues), but you'll just have to be prepared to spend money.
Related
VS2013 update 5, MVC5 using Areas
I have a stand-alone function programmed for a website. The functionality is a specific user interface to collect survey responses in a particular way. It has several controllers, a model and a group of views. The functionality is completely contained in an Area of the project, except for the Shared _Layout file that provides the main menu for consistency.
'Is it possible for me to' / 'how do I' compile this Area into a single or set of .dll file(s) that I could then add conveniently to other websites? I'm assuming creating something for transfer/download is very standard functionality. For example, I used Elmah.MVC for this site. What I want to do is pretty much create a package that can be downloaded in a similar way to how we integrate Elmah.MVC into a site. (Be certain I'm not talking about creating error logging software, I'm only using Elmah.MVC as an example of software that is easily integrated into other website applications.)
I've never compiled any website functionality into a .dll(s) for use elsewhere and would appreciate either some specific guidance, or perhaps what would be easier is to provide a link with a good step by step tutorial or explanation for how to do this. Most of what I've found on the web describes bits and pieces of doing this, but it's not enough for me to feel confident with it.
It seems to me there are a lot of 'moving parts' to taking a particular piece of an MVC application and turning it into something that is easily added to other projects.
A particular issue I don't quite grasp is the difference in downloaded packages between getting code and getting just the .dll(s). For instance, when I download an MVC5 site, I get controllers, models and views, but when I download Elmah I get a .dll and no code files. Also, I do understand the concept of transforms, but I'm just struggling right now with even getting from my programmed application into a 'package' regardless of the transforms that make it easy to integrate into another website.
These are just some of my questions I have about how to perform this particular process in developing deliverable and/or shareable software.
What you are looking to do is create a portable MVC Area project. A Portable Area is a set of reusable multi page functionality can be dropped into an application to provide rich functionality without having to custom build functionality that is literally the same in every application. An MVC Portable Area is really just a dll that contains the views, controllers, scripts, etc… needed to use in a website that is either a Web Forms website or an MVC website. A developer can use them for a reusable widget or a complete engine. I have actually used them for both. Here is a link with some basic info to get started. http://elegantcode.com/2012/04/06/mvc-portable-areas/
I have an application that will need to better support tablets in the future. I have seen some apps already created with UP1 and ExtLib Mobile Controls but I was wondering if anyone knows of specific functionality that simply is too challenging to even consider bringing to a mobile device?
For example, are there partial refresh issues on specific devices? Can managed beans still be used behind the scenes? Is dynamic content totally viable on mobile?
I'd be interested in hearing what big challenges/functions people had to give up when they mobilized their existing XPage apps.
There isn't really anything in XPages that would prevent building mobile web apps as with other web app dev models. In other words: Everything you can do with web apps on mobile you should be able to do with XPages.
XPages 8.5.3 UP1 comes with Dojo Mobile 1.6.1. However that does not prevent developers from using other frameworks like JQuery or anything else.
There are some advantages in general for native apps and hybrid apps. But personally I think most of the typically rather simple business apps can be built with mobile web apps. If you need local data/offline that might be different though.
You can use Xpages to do anything that is possible with mobile web developement. Dynamic content may not be the way to go for everything, but it will run just fine. In ITANA available for free on openntf.org, i created a simple replication engine to replicate notes tasks from the local device using sqlite to the domino server. This makes it run very fast and allows the app to run offline as well.
So i believe anything you want to try will work, you can make the Xpage output anything you want, from html, to xml, or json, to accomplish your tasks.
I know that XPages was totally incompatible with older Blackberry's. I assume that's not the case these days but back at OS 5.0 I think even buttons wouldn't work. So if you're doing anything with BB make sure it's modern and tested.
We're not really getting tablet support in ext. library until the next dojo rev I think. But there is a preview of tablet support somewhere that you can get. I've not looked yet but it was mentioned at Lotusphere. so if you want to hit tablets you might want to roll your own right now until that comes available.
Tablets are a little more challenging as the mobile controls are designed for the mobile phone size devices. That said with a little trial and error you can get a nice navigator split screen and still use the one page app mobile controls to streamline it, with records opening in their own page just like the phone version. Type ahead as I'm discovering should be handled differently if you are using the iPhone themes from oneui2.1
The oneui2.1 gives your navs and views nice styling. The forms may need a bit of custom styling.
Split your design into custom controls then you can use a server ate xpage for mobile devices and straight web. Or if you forgo the use of mobile single page controls you can always just have a seperate style sheet to accommodate the iPad. Really depends on the functionality needed. Good luck
My suggestion for anyone wanting to do tablet specific development using XPages is to move to Notes 9.0 and dojo 1.8 asap. Dojo 1.8 has an experimental control called ScreenSizeAware. This is miles ahead of anything else either the Extension Library Mobile controls or Dojo provides for Tablet development.
I'm looking for a free, simple and efficient CMS for building website for a small company.
Prerequisites are:
The website is nothing more than a presentation - with informative content and gallery. The website should contain a nice-looking gallery with js/ajax flavour. Nothing more is planned for now, but it would be nice if CMS would feature some more generic modules/extensions in case I would like to use them in future.
Design templates should be easy to adopt and change.
Coding as little as possible.
I thought about Drupal, but is there any other CMS which would better fit to these requirements?
Please don't list available CMS-es here. Give it a reason!
Wordpress is nice too :p It has a big community behind...
I say Drupal.
Drupal is really good in content management. You can create different content types, and assign them fields (in Drupal 6, you will need the CCK contrib module). You can create a gallery with Views and it's output plugins. There are dozens of them, using different layout and JavaScript effects (mostly different jQuery plugins, but there are plugins for lightbox and thickbox also).
Drupal has a group of themes called "starter themes". These themes are half-ready, and it is very easy to create your own custom themes with them. All you need is to create a subtheme. (Basically making an info file and copy some other files. There are really a lot of howtos out there.) There are also starter themes for 960 (CSS framework), so you can make the site layout really fast. The most famous starter theme is called Zen. You might want to use that.
Except for the theme, I don't think that you have to write any code. Writing a theme for Drupal is not hard, since it uses PHP to render the themes.
Still in beta (0.5) phase but looking very promising: Orchard, a new ASP.NET MVC based CMS created by the people from Microsoft.
Orchard will create shared components for building ASP.NET applications and extensions, and specific applications that leverage these components to meet the needs of end-users, scripters, and developers. Additionally, we seek to create partnerships with existing application authors to help them achieve their goals. Orchard is delivered as part of the ASP.NET Open Source Gallery under the CodePlex Foundation. It is licensed under a New BSD license, which is approved by the OSI.
The intended output of the Orchard project is three-fold:
Individual .NET-based applications that appeal to end-users , scripters, and developers
A set of re-usable components that makes it easy to build such applications
A vibrant community to help define these applications and extensions
In the near term, the Orchard project is focused on delivering a .NET-based CMS application that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites, and an extensibility framework that will allow developers and customizers to provide additional functionality through module extensions and themes.
It depends on what kind of CMS you are after
pity you don't like programming otherwise i would suggest django, an awsome CMS framework
if you are after something simple like a few static pages and a news feed or something like that then wordpress might suit your needs well, except i have found i don't like how it handles gallery's
if you need anything more, like more advanced custom content types for products, i would recommend Joomla or Drupal, and have plug-ins that has good support for photo galleys
Joomla! will probably be a better choice. It is very easy to use and is highly extensible.
Have a look at:
CMS Made Simple
CMS Made Simple provides a fast and
easy way to create a professional web
site and manage its content, whether
it's for a small business or a
multinational corporation!
Features
General Features
SEO Friendly URLs
Integrated and online help
Modular and extensible
Easy user and group management
Group-based permission system
Full template support, for unlimited looks without changing a line of content
Easy wizard based install and upgrade procedures
Minimal server requirements
Admin panel with multiple language support
Content hierarchy with unlimited depth and size
Integrated file manager w/ upload capabilities
Integrated audit log
Friendly support in forums and irc
Small footprint
Design Features
Accessibility WAI, WCGA, Section 508
XHTML and CSS compliant
Auto-generated menu
Every page can have different theme
Design protected from content editors
Multiple content areas on one page
If you have a little C# experience then you can try Umbraco.
It is a very powerfull CMS written in C# for ASP.NET
It is one of the most powerfull both free and commercial CMS out there.
i recommend to check out the Feature Matrix so you can see if it fulfills your needs.
As an example http://asp.net uses Umbraco
have you tried DotNetNuke ?
I've been writing some simple webparts, and they communicate via a custom interface type. That's working fine.
I've got one ConnectionProvider, with a variety of ConnectionConsumers.
I see that the OOTB SharePoint webparts provide many standard connections, apparently through IWebPartField and IWebPartRow (IWebPartTable seems less supported).
I've tried to add a IWebPartRow interface to a provider, and found that it's not actually useful (apparently), unless it's sharing data that the OOTB components use, such as images, urls and users. Well, that's the impression I got, anyway... I've only done a quick experiment, and found it quite difficult to implement and test.
Is there any point in spending time trying to add support for the standard webpart interfaces?
Web part connections are a bit of a nightmare especially as to make them useful you will end up implementing both the old style 2003 interface and the new style 2007 interface because (for just one example) the OOTB list web parts in 2007 use the old style interface....
Is there any point in spending time
trying to add support for the standard
webpart interfaces?.
Yes if it makes sense to be able to connect OTTB and 3rd party web parts to your own web parts.
Also look at the implementing Filter interfaces - they are normally of more use than IWebPartRow etc.
A client wants us to develop a Picture Library system for them. The requirements are pretty typical - need to add pictures, tag them with metadata, store different sized versions and so on.
The client is keen on it being developed as a component which plugs into their existing SharePoint system. However, my feeling is that we would be better served building a standalone app - that way we don't have to shoehorn it into a SharePoint page and muck about integrating with SharePoint's APIs.
I am trying to look at this objectively and would welcome any arguments either way that people have.
Using an existing framework like Sharepoint imposes a lot of constraints on the design which makes the software architecture more uniform.
It does require some work on the part of the developer, because the developer does have to understand the API architecture and API's, etc.
However, developing a standalone application is the way that business's software architecture becomes a mix of 200 applications, using 20 different languages/architectures/platforms, half of which were developed by people no longer there - in short, a mess.
Sharepoint is documented, and will be supported probably long after you leave the company. Can you guarantee support for the application that you develop for as long as Microsoft will support Sharepoint?
You should do a cost/benefit analysis of integrating with SharePoint. You have listed some cons for integrating with SharePoint. Here are some pros.
Widely adopted platform.
Existing functionality to store/retreive/update images to data store.
Existing functionality to tag images.
Existing functionality to group several images together and treat as one virtual document (if using SharePoint 2010).
Keep in mind that you can integrate any custom ASP.NET page/application in Sharepoint so you can approach development like a standalone app. Your client wishes might include synchronization with Sharepoint's own picture library functionality and in that case you'll have to work with it's API.
It seems with SharePoint you are already done because it can more or less do what you describe already. What requirements do you have that cannot be met by OOB SharePoint?
I've used picture libraries for something similar before. While they have their quirks you do get a lot 'for free' like a UI, bulk uploading, metadata and 2 alternate sizes rendered.. My biggest gripe is they don't support the datagrid view so I cannot edit list metadata en masse like you can with other list types.