Nowadays I am doing requirement gathering and analysis for a good project here in Gibraltar.So you can imagine lot of user interactions ,taking interviews of end-users , sometimes shadowing them to their specific work function and lot of questioning etc are going on…at least project started off good and we are heading in correct direction.

For successful execution of project,the team which is going to implement or code,should get understanding of the ideas and concepts and functionality and thus the need of good mock up tool arise. These tools plays a vital role of explaining the ideas and bringing the life to boring documentation. It is truly said that “1 picture is equivalent to 1000 words!”.

In my previous projects,I had mostly used visio and its sort of standard at my workplace for mockups.Though recently I had also tried out serena prototype composer for one project.These tools have their advantages and disadvantages.

Visio is the huge software.It is not meant just for prototyping or diagramming.However,it comes at a price and it requires a lot of time to starting off and be expert with it.You can find massive features are poured on as just any other Microsoft stable software.After using visio ,I came to a conclusion that visio is good tool ,but still not a very handy tool for creating mockups quickly.

I explored a bit more on internet and found Serena Prototype composer.Serena prototype composer scores over visio ,when you want a clickable prototype.But then serena prototype composer needs to be installed where you want to run your prototype and seems to be pretty rigid kind of a tool.I didn’t like it much though it has unique advantage of creating clickable prototype.

Then again in search of perfect mockup tool,I downloaded and tried many. One day(actually night),when on the verge of just concluding that there is not so much great tool other than visio,I found the gold “Balsamiq Mockups”!!!

As a practice,Without much hopes,I downloaded and installed it.As a authentic software engineer,I never use manuals or help to use software [In fact,I had reached to conclusion that if you need help or manual for running a software,there is a problem with usability of that software]. Firing up balsamiq tools,I was just kind of landed in my dreams!! Since,it is just made for making mockups!!! Very no not friendly,I will say inviting user interface.there are all UI elements at the tops with really big and wide tool strip which shows of drag and drop user elements some common like buttons,text,all types of containers(i.e. group box,tabs etc) and some uncommon like accordion,cover flow,video player,street maps etc.The most surprising is I found sticky[comments as they call it ] and charts and graphs as well.Wow! pretty genius work.Since,many business software always need this and very few people do have mockups for this stuff.

You can create a new mockup and start building your mockup by dragging and dropping these elements.When you drag and drop the vertical and horizontal guard lines appear to assist you for placing the elements,taking care of alignments which is again cool feature.

You can set properties of individual element by selecting the element and then property bar appears out of nowhere.You can drag it anywhere so that it will not disturb you or obscure the view of element that you are working with.Also The properties are fantastic set,Just as what needed no extras .These things truly live “YAGNI(You aren’t gonna Need It!!) agile principal.

On top of this,the mock up you created can be saved or imported as XML file or can be exported as PNG files or pdf or clickable prototype.

Balsamiq Mockups team has really come up with really genius product !!

However,there is a saying that greedy man and end-user can never be satisfied 

The community of Balsamiq Mockups is also good.And they had come up with several templates that you can find at http://www.mockupstogo.net .

All in all,It is insanely great tool built by genius people out there at Balsamiq.I think I can saved at least 40% of time required to create mockups with Basamiq compared to Visio.I will certainly recommend that try your hands on Balsamiq and you will be happy making your mockups ever after. We are also thinking of this tool to be "de-facto" replacement for visio.

BTW,on special note,We just done the event on "Agile" by well known speaker Stephan Forte. He has spoken on Balsamiq for more than 5 minutes in his speech. I think that proves the mettle this tool has!

RIA is already excelling in B2C environment with all sorts of applications being developed on it. Adobe AIR, Flex, JavaFX has contributed heavily to its popularity with their capability to animate, 3D UI with simple programming and lot many other things.

Enterprise applications’ RIA requirements are different than B2C applications. Enterprise RIA applications need complex graphics (charts, pie diagrams) and reports, large data sets, offline and online support through sync feature, high scalability, SOA and standards, platform independence, high performance, better security, and manageability with ease.

Curl is catering to enterprise RIA audience through its language built for text, graphics to computational logic. Curl has JIT compiler that compiles Curl applications to the native client hardware for fast runtime performance.

Curl offers better performance, better visualization, and low cost support. With proper development vendor enterprises can reap all its benefits.

The web world is becoming more and more demanding. Now, 7 out of 10 projects demand rich internet application (RIA). Since RIAs are bridging the gap between desktop and web applications they have become the topic of talk. RIA has taken web applications to a new level where it is difficult to distinguish web and desktop application interface. The user feels like he is using his desktop application.

The RIA frameworks that has made this possible are Flex, JavaFX, Air, and Curl. At e-Zest we work in all of these technologies. Recently, we have evaluated feasibility of these technologies for the development of rich internet application project.

Here is the brief and crisp finding of our feasibility study.

When it comes to a UI controls Flex, Air and Curl have it built-in. Swing comes to rescue when you want to use JavaFX for UI controls. In Flex and Air you can have your own controls. Eclipse can be used as IDE for all these technologies.

To be able to run your application at client user needs to have plugins and extensions. For Flex you require Flash plugin which is available readily on 90% of browsers relieving user from downloading and installing plugin for application use. JavaFX requires Java plugin with JavaFX extension to run application. For AIR, user requires to download Adobe Integrated Runtime environment to be able to use application in online and offline mode. For CURL a CURL runtime engine is required.

BlazeDS, a free and open source Java solution, can provide higher performing approach to connection Flex applications to back-end services. BlazeDS includes both Flex Remoting, which provides binary, serialized data transport, and Flex messaging services, offering real-time data push.

The JavaFX platform provides an essential set of tools and technologies that enable developers and designers to collaborate, create, and deploy applications with expressive content to browsers and desktops. Mobile application developers can use the JavaFX Mobile Emulator to preview applications for mobile devices using the JavaFX platform.

AIR are actually desktop application using system resources but they have all necessary ingredient to be called as feature rich RIA. AIR is becoming popular for social application extensions. When it comes to business and enterprise solution CURL applications tend to work well as they have excellent data-handling capabilities and good information presentation features. In addition, while Curl isn't as focused on animation and graphics as some other RIA platforms are, it does do a good job when it comes to data analysis and reporting graphics. Since Curl has been around for 10 years, it has a well-established base of users and support, too.

We are still evaluating Eclipse Rich Ajax Platform (RAP). Once we do that we will post about that.

This week an open cloud manifesto has got published with intent of beginning a conversation in the direction of formulating principles for open cloud computing. The companies behind drafting this open cloud manifesto are of an opinion that innovations happening in cloud computing area in terms of standards, interoperability, integration and portability should be guided by the principles of openness.

The manifesto has covered topics like importance and need of cloud computing today and challenges and barriers for its adoption. The cloud computing manifesto has identified goals like availability of choices, flexibility in cloud computing usage, speed and agility to respond quickly to changes and open cloud computing skills. This all should help building a foundation for open standards and architecture for cloud computing.

The initiative is criticized by Microsoft calling it as a secret cloud manifesto. A blog attributed to Steven Martin, senior director of platform product management, has said in its post that the document was asked to sign 'as is' without modification or additional input. Though Microsoft admits that there should be standardization, it feels that it is too early to do that. Amazon supported the initiative and Google is yet to comment on it.

The responses from Microsoft, Amazon and Google will be helpful in guiding the future path for this open cloud manifesto.