Ajaxy form builders and awesome interface goodness.
Here’s a post straight from Ajaxian about form builders. The most impressive of the bunch, by far, is Wufoo, whose demo you should really try out. What would it take to have interfaces like this for all our content management tools? Using Wufoo, I don’t even need instructions. The interface is just crystal clear and damn near fun to use.
To build tools like this requires designers, client-side scripters, and a keen focus on usability. But the payoff is that the people who spend their working hours in them don’t feel like they are being punished, and the time saved can be dramatic. Personally, I think we should have on staff an interface designer who focuses on tool development, working with engineers who spend time in the tools themselves, all with an eye on how technologies like ajax can make the tool easier to use and more fluid. Here’s the full Ajaxian post:
Ajax form builders are all the rage lately, so here’s a quick roundup of three of the players in this space.FormBuilder from the Form Assembly has been around awhile, so it has an impressive feature list:
- produces standards compliant XHTML/CSS
- multi-page forms and conditional sections
- can use predefined themes or user created css
- optional hosting at the form assembly for easy tracking and usage stats (requires payment)
Its based on the open source libraries wForms and freja. Also check out the form templates available in the library and stylesheets in the form garden.
JotForm is a WYSIWIG, drag and drop builder with scriptaculous under the covers. According to Aytekin Tank, the creator, its similiar to the builder in Visual Studio. Right now its compatible on Firefox and IE with Safari support coming. Check out the flash-based tour for a feature lineup.
Wufoo is a form creator from the guys at Particle Tree thats just an interface demo right now. It uses Flash 8 under the covers and works in FF 1.5, Safari 2, and almost IE6. It has some thoughtful ‘higher level’ widgets for things like phone number, star ratings, tags, and dates. The interface follows more of a wizard type approach and certainly looks cool with some nice transition effects.
Which builder do you see as having some staying power? Which one, if any, could you see using in your day to day development? Will you stick with hand coding and only use these for quick prototypes, if at all?