iFactor Consulting has released the Dialog Designer™ (DD) as an open source project for the benefit of the entire Smallworld development community. We feel that intuitive, well-built user interfaces help improve the user experience in Smallworld, and that better user experience helps drive wider adoption of a this platform in every organization. Thus, we seen great benefits to all Magik enthusiasts through the widespread adoption of this product within your development processes, and felt that an open source distribution was the best way to promote this concept.
The Dialog Designer allows users to create Smallworld Magik GUIs by simply dropping GUI components onto a layout. The Dialog Designer creates all of the necessary Magik code behind the scenes, making GUI creation a snap. Dialog Designer enables Smallworld developers to create the essential Magik source code for simple or complex GUIs for Smallworld Application Framework (SWAF) in a matter of minutes, rather than hours. This tool allows users to create and manipulate the key portions of a GUI without writing any Magik or XML.The idea is to develop the GUI quickly to the stage where the GUI activates and its layout, structure and work flow can be analyzed. This provides functionality the developers in other mainstream IDEs have had for years, allowing quick creation of the presentation of a GUI. With an active GUI to view and discuss, designers and end users can spot requirement shortfalls, design flaws and enhancement potential. Quickly defining the form of the GUI supports quick development, testing, and acceptance cycles.
The user can place common GUI controls, menubars, statusbar and toolbars without writing Magik code to XML. With a single button the GUI code is generated, compiled and activated. Backend code that makes the GUI functional within a specific environment is for the developer to write but is not modified by DD so that future layout enhancements can be made to a dialog with the DD.
This DD distribution (v2.6) includes Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish supporting message files.
