Software Review: ForeUI Prototyping Tool
I was looking for a good prototyping tool the other day and I came across ForeUI. This little gem packs quite a punch. Whether you want to create mockups of a desktop application or a web application, ForeUI has everything you need. A six minute demo of the application is available. ForeUI is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, or Solaris.
The canvas where all the work is done is called a plot. Each plot can have 1 or more pages of mockups, similar to Microsoft Excel workbooks. To assist with prototyping of cross-platform applications, the mockups can be drawn in four different modes – Hand Drawing, Wire Frame, Windows XP, and Mac OS X. The canvas width and height can be adjusted and can even be made to look like wrinkled paper for that real hand-drawn prototype look.
Just about anything your imagination can come up with, can be mocked up. The palette comes with over 40 widgets and whatnots that can be used to mockup anything from a simple windows application to a complicated web site. Frequently used mockups such as dialogs and navigation panes can be saved as custom widgets in the palette. Go check out some screenshots and samples of the software in action. Anything placed on the canvas can have an action associated with it. This allows for the creation of an interactive mockup that can be used to simulate what the application will do in a real environment.
Plots can be exported as an image, PDF, or DHTML. A plot can be ran as a slideshow. In slideshow mode, the mockup can be marked up with a red pen. This mode is good for demonstrations and team discussions. Plots can also be run in a simulation mode. In simulation mode, a new window is opened in the default web browser. If any actions were setup for the mockup, such as clicking buttons and activating menus, those things can be interacted with in the browser window.
At $79 for a single user license, ForeUI is a great deal. There are also pricing plans for multiple users. A 7 day trial can be downloaded for evaluation.
Strange Loop 2009 – Day 2
My notes and thoughts about day two of strange loop 2009.
Also be sure to check out my Day one notes.
jQuery – Matt Taylor
- http://weblog.dangertree.net/
- Showed numerous examples how easy jQuery makes it to select and edit HTML elements. Made me realize I should use jQuery even in small apps.
- Also showed examples of the jQuery AJAX functionality
Mobile Development 101
- http://www.slideshare.net/michael.galpin
- http://fupeg.blogspot.com/
- This session was full which doesn’t surprise me since mobile development is about to get easier thanks to Android.
- Started off going how to develop apps for the iPhone
- The emulator and development software only run on a Mac
- Has to be written in Objective C
- I wanted to throw up when I saw the objective c examples
- No garbage collection. Memory is limited on phones so this is an important issue.
- Maybe I’m just to much of a simpleton, but I really don’t ever want to write any objective C
- MVC framework – cocoa touch
- No background processing on iphone
- Android
- Can run any language that is built on the JVM
- XML format for UI develoment
- Does not use standard MVC pattern. Uses something called Activities and Intents.
- There are multiple android emulators
- Mobile dev best practices (not specific to android or iphone)
- Need lean web services
- Limit network traffic
- Limit audio/video/images
- Mobile Web Application
- Alternative to writing an iPhone/Android app
- A lot of phones have the same browser now
- Some mobile browsers leak memory
Entrepreneur Talk – Panel Discussion
- This book was mentioned, Outliers: The Story of Success
- Someone said that you need irrational arrogance to start your own company.
- Another person said that start ups are all offense and no defense. Just keep putting stuff out, early and often
- The idea was presented that everyone has risk even the person working for a company because you can be fired at any time
- The current work culture is sort of like having one client at a time because developers change jobs so often.
Polyglot Grails – Jeff Brown
- http://www.nofluffjuststuff.com/conference/speaker/jeff_brown
- http://javajeff.blogspot.com/
- You can use many languages with Grails. Jeff even gave an example of Grails with a simple language he created
- methodMissing(string name, args) is a very interesting feature of Groovy
Minimalism – Alex Payne
- http://twitter.com/Al3X
- http://al3x.net/books_talks.html
- Interesting talk about little m minimalism and how it be applied to code
- Alex made a few comments about how programming is a young field
List of slides on strangeloop.com
Day two sessions
Strange Loop 2009 – Day 1
A new developer conference has started in St Louis this year named Strange Loop. Normally I don’t go to developer conferences because they are either in a different country or on the coasts. This one was close by in St Louis, MO. And from the quality of speakers and diverse sessions I predict next years conference will sell out very quickly unless they increase the capacity. Below are my overall topics/themes I took away from the conference and some interesting points from each talk I witnessed along with links to the speaker’s site and slide show if available.
Day two
Strange Loop Thoughts Overall
- open source, open source, open source
- every talk envolved open source. The FUD around open source is finally withering away.
- DRY constant theme
- Mobile development is upon us and will be for maybe ever
- Scala, Clojure, Groovy are HOT languages on the JVM
- Great conference that covered many relevant topics
- All the talks were technical, no boring management oriented sales pitches
Functional Ruby – Dean Wampler
- http://deanwampler.com/
- Link to slide show
- I atteneded this talk because I’m interested in the functional programming line of thought. And I don’t get to see much ruby code.
- Recommends learning a functiona programming language: Scala, Hascal, Cojure
- Multiprocessor systems are making it more important to use threads. Threads and synchronizaton is hard to get right. So functional languages that have immutable objects/values are easier because immutable objects/values don’t require synchronization.
- Try to avoid a bloated domain objects that have numerous properties to fullfill multiple requirements for different use cases. Have smaller objects for seperate uses.
Polyglot Programming – Dean Wampler
- Link to slide show
- polyglot programming: using more than one programming language. Not like using CSS, JS. But like using Groovy and Java or Groovy and Clojure.
- Dean thinks that Scala could become very popular in the future
- Hybrid object and functional language
- Multiple cpus is driving the need for functional languages
- Mentioned the famous quote: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
– Antoine de Saint-Exuper
Griffon (Swing just got fun again) – James Williams
- http://jameswilliams.be/blog/entry/index
- http://groovy.codehaus.org/Griffon
- Mentioned that the swring application framework is dead
- Griffon is the unofficial grails for the desktop
- It really did looks rails like from the project layout to the build process
- Suggested Groovy In Action for anyone that wanted to earn Groovy
Future of Java – Bob Lee
- http://crazybob.org
- Writes his talks in Java. I’m serious. Here is the SVN repo for his talks
- Talked about how/why he wanted better resource management in Java.
- Said he searched the JDK and found that 74 out of 110 the JDK has leaks for a certain IO functionality.
- Talked about his work on JSR-330 dependency injection in JDK
- @Inject annotation
- New quicksort that was developed for Android JVM (Harmony)
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