AutoMagic developing a Runtime form designer with VWG
"Visual WebGui allowed the creation of AutoMagic in the fraction of the time… the application's performance …is nothing but astounding." With Visual WebGui, AutoMagic Runtime Form Designer offers end users and customers an eloquent way of customizing forms in run time using drag & drop and without redeploying.
Overview
The AutoMagic Runtime Form Designer for Visual WebGui allows an end user to customize forms in run-time with a similar design time experience as in Visual Studio (dragging, dropping, sizing, etc.). Any customizations made by the end user will be saved on the server for that specific user and displayed every time they open the form. At any time the end user can add more customizations to the form or remove the customizations.
The control can be configured in various different ways. For example, it can be configured to apply the customizations to users of specific roles or users and can also be configured to not allow an end user to customize the form. This could be useful for an enterprise since the web administrator is able to customize the forms (show different logos, button text, color schemes, etc.) for each location and have those customizations show for the users at each location.
Business Needs
Customers require the functionality to customize and personalize forms to suit their needs without having to modify and redeploy the application. Moreover, large enterprises need to have the capability to easily customize and differentiate between branches and users since they can require different logos, templates or terminology.
End user's personalization contributes to a more efficient user experience and therefore increases productivity. Better yet, the end user can apply those customizations to their work environment without the need for an IT personnel or developer intervention, which increases productivity even more.
It is also important to be able to implement those capabilities in a well known interface. Learning to work with new interfaces can be time consuming and therefore will possibly drive productivity down.
The Solution
AutoMagic looked for a platform that will enable it to allow those unique customization capabilities while still providing a simple well known interface. They found that Visual WebGui was the only framework that allows achieving such a high level of customization.
Visual WebGui provides the intuitive design time experience that they were looking for and lets users to simply drag and drop the AutoMagic Runtime Form Designer onto the form and apply their own preferences. "One of the greatest strengths is the seamless integration into Visual Studio that made the creation of a Runtime form designer even possible and it provides the user with a similar experience in run time that you get in design time"
The decision to build the tool on the Visual WebGui platform also allowed fulfilling the core requirement of customizing forms without having to rewrite the application. Rather than modifying the application changes can be done using the AutoMagic Runtime Form designer.
The Benefits
According to the AutoMagic developers, there are several benefits to using Visual WebGui as a development framework. Visual WebGui allowed the creation of AutoMagic in the fraction of the time that it would have taken with any other framework or with ASP.Net. Moreover, the application's performance achieved with Visual WebGui is nothing but astounding.
With Visual WebGui, the AutoMagic Runtime Form Designer has a similar interface as Visual Studio allowing the end user to customize virtually all properties at runtime that are available at design time. It also allows the customization while no coding changes or redeployment would be necessary.
Additionally, Visual WebGui has a large supported community and each new release of Visual WebGui offers more functionality and the framework just keeps getting better and better. "Visual WebGui is by far the best framework out there and it keeps on getting better."
As a result, the AutoMagic Runtime Form Designer offers end users and customers an eloquent way of customizing their forms.
Screen Shots
In Visual Studio simple drag and drop the AutoMagic control on to your form
Run the application
Right Click - Customize Option AutoMagically appears
Click the Customize menu option and the AutoMagic Runtime Form Designer Shows
Similar interface as Visual Studio
- Drag to size or move controls
- Allows changing of properties
- Add controls to form
Make your customizations and save the changes
All your changes are saved on the server and will display for you each time you access the page
The original AutoMagic developing a Runtime form designer Showcase on www.VisualWebGui.com