Collaborative Prototyping: One Tool for Success – Reify

Simplicity Meets Power

SmartClient Visual Builder makes it easy to create enterprise HTML5 web applications.
Business analysts and others doing functional application design can create functional prototypes using a “what you see is what you get” environment.

Visual Builder creates clean code that developers can further enrich using the entire SmartClient framework — the platform used by major software vendors to create sophisticated enterprise applications.

Drag & Drop UI Screen Building with Codeless Event Handling

With Visual Builder, you build applications by using drag and drop to add components to the user interface. Components can be customized via a property sheet that includes documentation for all properties and events.

To create business logic, events on components can be wired to actions on other components without writing a line of code.

Visual Builder is simpler to use than DreamWeaver or other code-oriented prototyping tools which may require knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript or even Java and JSPs. New users can get started building working prototypes and simple applications without a lot of training or a big learning curve.

Simple Data Binding

Visual Builder makes it easy to bind components to your data using DataSources.
In SmartClient, a DataSource provides a visual component with the structure of objects to be displayed and edited, as well as operations to load and save the data.

Dragging a DataSource onto a data-aware component causes the component to configure itself for editing the data represented by that DataSource.

Visual Builder includes a wizard to make it simple for you to set up DataSources to connect to data providers such as SQL, hibernate, public & internal web services, as well as, your own custom data providers.

Collaborative Prototyping using a Central Design Hub

Reify makes it easy to create collaborative prototypes between team members.
Because it was built using SmartClient technology, Reify is simply a web page and does not require installation.

This makes it easy to deploy Reify and allows teams with a mixture of technical and semi-technical users to collaboratively build and share prototypes of SmartClient-based applications.

Avoid “Throw-Away” Prototypes and Miscommunication

Most enterprise prototyping tools produce mockups, “wireframes” or presentation slideshows that are discarded when development begins on the actual application.

How did this colossal waste become accepted practice?

Why are we forcing photo editing tools and HTML editors on business analysts and product managers, who more naturally think in terms of data requirements and screen flow?

Visual Builder enables a more effective process — the right boundary between functional design and software engineering, with the right information being conveyed.

By providing a single, consistent environment for creating and sharing designs, Visual Builder facilitates communication and helps eliminate costly process problems, such as designs that can’t actually be implemented.

Extensible to Meet Your Organization’s Needs

Visual Builder is not just a tool, but a platform for building your organization’s ideal design environment.

Developers can extend Visual Builder with connectors to any kind of enterprise data provider, as well as any custom component that can be built in SmartClient — even third party controls.

Custom components and data providers can then be used by non-technical designers with the same drag and drop simplicity that Visual Builder enables for out-of-the-box components.

Plugging custom components into Visual Builder enables a degree of reuse and consistency not possible with traditional, desktop design tools.

Visual Builder can even be “skinned” to reflect your organization’s standardized look and feel.

Need help modernizing your development process? Work with the experts.

We can help you identify the shortest path to demonstrating ROI with a new development process based on Visual Builder.

It doesn’t take a grand upheaval — there are so many powerful ways of using Visual Builder that you can start small and still see dramatic benefits.

Start Working with SmartClient Today!

Do you need to integrate Visual Builder into existing websites, integrate with other collaboration software, or otherwise extend the tool?

We can help with that too. 

Contact us to get started or head over to SmartClient for even more possibilities.