RoCHI, September 2009, Cluj, Romania
FormFactory
Building Interactive Web
Applications
Ciprian Amariei
“Al. I. Cuza” University of Iaşi

Outline
● Rich Internet Applications
● Frameworks
● Customizable Web Applications
● Entity properties editing tool – FormFactory
● UI patterns
● Modern EcmaScript programming

Rich Internet Applications
● Desktop applications → Web applications
● Platform independent
● Accessible anywhere
● No install/update process
● Web technologies ((x)html) – no native support
for rich interfaces

RIA – frameworks classification
● RIA-JSF (RIA JavaScript Frameworks)
jQuery, YUI, GWT, Dojo Toolkit etc.
● RIA-HF (RIA Hosted Frameworks )
Adobe Flex, Microsoft Silverlight, Java FX
● RIA-MF (RIA Mixed Frameworks)
OpenLaszlo

Customizable RIAs
User can customize the web application
(structure & interface)
User defines entities → properties handled by
application

Form Factory solutions
Inplace Editor (sol1)
(demo)
Form Builder (sol2)

FormFactory – UI & UX patterns
● Create → modify → … → save (upload)
● Highlight current element (editing)
● Drag&drop
● WYSIWYG
● Minimize online time
DEMO

FormFactory – modern EcmaScript
● Plugin based
● OOP
● Design patterns
● Serialization / Deserialization
● etc.

Conclusions & The Future
● KISS
● Educate users in small steps (unless you afford
otherwise – Apple )
● HTML 5 based RIA ( new elements, new APIs)
● Embeddable
● Semantic editor → output (link properties to
known concepts etc.)

Thank you!
Q ? (s)
http://students.info.uaic.ro/~camariei/formfactory/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ciprianamariei
http://twitter.com/acip
ciprian.amariei@gmail.com