Building Mobile and Web Applications (Apps) Quickly & Painlessly

Don Cowan/Terry Wilkinsondcowan@csg.uwaterloo.ca

twilkinson@csg.uwaterloo.ca

An architecture and toolkit for mobile & Web-based systems

Agenda• Our goals• Why quickly & painlessly?• What is an application?• Examples• Demonstration

Our Goals• Holy Grail(s)

– Improve productivity substantially– Democratize application development– Make apps accessible to a wider audience– Put more application building tools in the hands of the

users (word processors, spreadsheets)• Why quickly & painlessly?

– Lots of data available - Open Data an example

What is an Application?• Different types of blocks like LEGO• An application block

– Block of text, map, picture, video– An invoice: header, body, footer– Connect to data – just another block

• An app page is a set of blocks (block)• Each application is a set of pages

What is an Application? Cont’d

• Use different types of blocks– Can build powerful apps– Application Development Language (ADL)– Mobile apps

• Crush the Crave, Building stories, NewsAtlas

• Apple, Android, BlackBerry stores

My real goal

Just glue them all together and you have an application

Examples – Hello World (1)

Examples – Hello World (2)

Examples – Hello World (3)

Hello World - 2 pages (1)

Hello World - 2 pages (2)

Hello World - 2 pages (3)

List Customers (1)

List (2)

List (3)

List (4)

List (5)

List (6)