CODEWITHSUNDEEP
user-interfaceframeworksdrag-and-drop
S Red
S Red

Reputation: 121

What is the best, quickest tool that an amateur programmer can use to create a GUI application?

The application is very simple - it would need to allow a school teacher to enter a large number of english words to the application, and then provide a student with a way to view the words, one at a time, and drag and them into different pre-labeled "buckets". For example, the buckets could be "nouns" "verbs", etc.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 152

Answers (3)

HostileFork says dont trust SE
HostileFork says dont trust SE

Reputation: 33607

"Easy" is relative. My opinion is that these days if what you're doing is as simple as described, you will probably do yourself more favors by developing it for the browser than by tying it to a particular platform. Most importantly it means it will be easy to demonstrate and share to anyone remotely...without worrying about installation/etc.

You might start by looking at something like a magnetic poetry tutorial:

http://tenderlovingcode.com/blog/web-apps/magnetic-poetry-in-10-easy-steps/

...and adapt it to use some drop targets for your buckets, which can be relatively sophisticated:

Drag and drop with 2 drop target

As for your list of words and which bucket they belong in, it wouldn't be hard to write your own app. There are plenty of spreadsheet-like grids to build upon for the UI, and plenty of Rails or Django server-side frameworks that can easily handle storing and manipulating a list of words:

http://www.trirand.com/blog/jqgrid/jqgrid.html

Less work would be if your teachers are tech-savvy they can just enter them directly in JSON at the place hosting the page. Or you can let them enter the list anywhere on the web, such as on a blog, and then have your program fetch and process the data from that URL.

(Note: If you're reading data from a remote site where your page is not hosted, the information will have to be served as JSONP.)

Upvotes: 0

Mechanical snail
Mechanical snail

Reputation: 30637

Think simple. There is already a GUI drag-and-drop application that comes with any graphical operating system: the file manager.

Create directories nouns/, verbs/, etc. and several (empty) files whose names are English words. Put everything in a directory, and open that directory in the file manager (e.g. Windows Explorer, Finder, Nautilus). Then have the student drag the files into the appropriate directories.

To avoid confusing students with irrelevant buttons, consider putting the files on the desktop. Your directory structure would be:

Desktop/
    nouns/
    verbs/
    [...]
    nitwit
    blubber
    oddment
    tweak
    thank
    you
    [...]

Upvotes: 2

CamelSlack
CamelSlack

Reputation: 573

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. Doesn't get any easier then that, simple drag-and-drop interface.

Upvotes: 0

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