CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gwtprototypejsf-2wysiwygwicket
Lars
Lars

Reputation: 1043

Java Web Framework Prototyping tools

At the moment Iam evaluating java web frameworks. More precisely Iam talking about GWT, JSF2 and apache wicket. One very importent criteria in this evaluation is prototyping.
The prototyping process in my company can be described by the folloing:
The customer can produce GUIs with an easy to use WYSIWYG editor, by drag&drop-ing web components on the corporate predefined website structur. There is also a need for some litte dynamic being like navigation from one frame to another.
So Iam looking for tools. These tools should not only provide nice GUIs but also deliver some basic code, which can be forwarded to the development. The aim is to avoid missunderstandings between designers and developers as much as possible. More or less the developers just have to implements the code, but not to implement the optical requirements. In addition it would be desirable to customize the components thats been used in the WYSIWYG editor. Does anyone know any good tools for the mentioned frameworks (GWT, JSF2, wicket)?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1826

Answers (4)

mmohab
mmohab

Reputation: 2373

if you are planing to use a javascript library, you may use extjs, http://www.sencha.com/products/js/

they have developed a nice designer www.sencha.com/products/designer/

there is also a port of ext in GWT www.sencha.com/products/gwt/

You have to pay for a commercial license if your application isn't open source!

Upvotes: 0

Brian Topping
Brian Topping

Reputation: 3295

One of the challenges with WYSIWYG tools for UI is that you generally have to pick between rapid prototyping and maintainable code. Even then, as soon as you want to do something that's not supported by the prototyping tool, you can implement it as you would without the prototyping tool, but your round-trip functionality (namely turning your app back into something that can be edited) is broken or crippled unless extra work is done to generate the metadata that the editor needs.

Upgrading between major releases is another issue. Vendors and groups who have developed these tools have a historically spotty record of when they stop supporting older versions, reasonably because of limited resources and sometimes difficult problems with how to track solid innovation happening in the framework itself.

My suggestion instead is to prototype with an RIA prototyping tool like Balsamiq Mockups or use a grid system like 960 Grid to generate rapid prototypes, then use a web development framework that allows your developers to run the code with or without the backend server. Wicket has a tag called that is great for this kind of thing -- web devs can fill a div with stuff that a component should generate, and Wicket devs can wrap the contents of that tag with after they implement it. Both parties can coexist for a long time that way.

Upvotes: 3

ireddick
ireddick

Reputation: 8388

There's nothing like this for Wicket that I know of. The closest you would get to any kind of resource reuse from your customer would be to give them a drag and drop HTML editor - the resulting HTML could then form the basis of Wicket page/panel layout.

Upvotes: 1

Chris Boesing
Chris Boesing

Reputation: 5279

Try GWT Designer for GWT.

Upvotes: 2

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