January 10, 2017

RAD Architecture Series: User Interface Widgets

Let’s continue our march towards understanding Rapid Enterprise Architecture, in this blog we will cover one of the most visible aspect of modern applications being the User Interface Widgets.

User Interface Widgets play a very important role in both the User Interface Design and the User Experience of the application. Both UI Design and UX Design if done right with users in mind, can make or break application usage.

WaveMaker Platform provides a number of User Interface Widgets out of the box for developers. In case of WaveMaker, the User Interface Widgets not only help in providing beautiful UI out of the box but also are designed to increase the overall productivity of Widget Interactions. For example, by default many of the Widgets give out of box pagination, default selections, security, templates etc.

In doing so, WaveMaker UI Widgets play a critical part in enabling rapid development of applications by enabling a lot more tasks than just front end UI development.

User Interface:
Modern apps dictate both sophistication and variety in terms of out of box widgets. Different use cases dictate various forms of the widgets being used. Widgets need to take care of flexibility and advancement in both form and function. Finally every widget needs to be responsive.  WaveMaker provides all the standard HTML5 widgets from lists, grids, containers, charts, forms, panels, and all other HTML5 controls that an app requires by default in responsive form. Explore the list of widgets. 

Back-end Integrations:
In case of WaveMaker, the widgets also handle the following common functions required in a full stack application,

  • Auto Wiring to back-end services
  • Managing CRUD Operations
  • Configuration of Widgets
  • Templates that provide default properties
  • Security (Visibility, Accessibility of individual fields etc.)
  • Pagination

WaveMaker leverages the concept of Data Binding by Angular, to bind Widgets with Data (View & Model). Widgets can be configured to bind UI Elements to specific fields of the Data Model provided by Variables.

The Variables provide data integration for the widgets. Performs updates and synchronization to the actual data services in the backend. Manages client-side memory efficiently with scopes.
The Variables,

  1. Holds the actual data rendered by the widgets
  2. Data structure used for binding, with attributes and related objects
  3. API source from where the model object is obtained (DB, REST API or Java Services)
  4. Events that control the updates between widgets and actual service, vice versa

In summary, WaveMaker Widgets are highly sophisticated that not only enable creating  beautifully looking UI out of the box for Web and Mobile Apps but also due to its backend functionality they can greatly increase the productivity in developing the applications.

Head over to WaveMaker Rapid Application Development Platform page to learn more about the features and frameworks.