IBM Releases Maqetta: Open Source HTML5 Editor

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IBM Contributes Maqetta - HTML5 Visual Authoring Tools - to Open Source Community

Free Web Hosting and Downloads Available at Maqetta.org

ARMONK, NY - 11 Apr 2011: IBM today announced the open source contribution of Maqetta to the Dojo Foundation. Maqetta provides WYSIWYG authoring of HTML5 user interfaces using drag/drop assembly, and supports both desktop and mobile user interfaces.

HTML5 is an umbrella term for dozens of new features that ship in modern browsers (desktop and mobile) that allow rich user interfaces, graphics, multimedia and fast performance using open standards. HTML5 ships in the latest versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple Safari, and on modern smartphones, including iPhone, Android, RIM Blackberry and Windows 7 Mobile.

The Maqetta application itself is authored in HTML5/Ajax, and therefore runs in the browser without requiring additional plugins or downloads. Some Maqetta features include:

• a WYSIWYG visual page editor for drawing out user interfaces
• drag/drop mobile UI authoring within an exact-dimension device silhouette, such as the silhouette of an iPhone
• simultaneous editing in either design or source views
• deep support for CSS styling (the applications includes a full CSS parser/modeler)
• a mechanism for organizing a UI prototype into a series of "application states" (aka "screens" or "panels") which allows a UI design to define interactivity without programming
• a web-based review and commenting feature where the author can submit a live UI mockup for review by his team members
• a "wireframing" feature that allows UI designers to create UI proposals that have a hand-drawn look
• a theme editor for customizing the visual styling of a collection of widgets
  
• export options that allow for smooth hand-off of the UI mockups into leading developer tools such as Eclipse
• Maqetta's code base has a toolkit-independent architecture that allows for plugging in arbitrary widget libraries and CSS themes

The Preview 1 release of the Maqetta application is available for the community to use for free at the open source project's Web site, http://maqetta.org. Alternatively, users can download builds that they can install on their own servers.

Source: Maqetta.org Edited April 16, 2011 by Growled
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