YP sample and Balsamiq

[heg]

First I have found Canappi to be interesting and I see its value and I am interested in learning more and possibly using this to do mobile development.

One thing that attracted me was that you could use Balsamiq to build the wireframe prototypes of your screens and then create a basic shell to start from.

I did one of the tutorials and build an application using eclipse and created the msdl file, gen the code and built it in xcode and ran the simulator.

Next I  read the documentation found in the canapé-getting-started-rc2 PDF and decide to  do the YP project, built my Balsamiq wireframes, ran the bmml 2 mdsl converter and viewed what it created.  As explained in the documentation it would not look very good.  I then opened the YP.msdl file on the web site and looked at the final results and compared the starting file to the ending file,  finding it to be so far from the starting file as to wonder WHY use Balsamiq at all.  

I generated the code for the YP project it created a yhere.bmml which rendered close to the original I had, but I found you could not use the bmml 2 mdsl converter on it since  it produced a blank file.

I guess my long winded question is there a good reason to really start with your Balsamiq mockups, since you are re-coding it anyhow?  I guess as a guide to code to is the best answer I can see.

Thank you

heg

[Jean-Jacques Dubray]

Heg,

thank you. Yes Balasmiq is used by one of our developer, you have to constrain yourself to use a subset of the widgets, but if you do that, you can get a lot done, in a very short amount of time.

We are also preparing (it's ready but not published) a mongodb mdsl generator like balsamiq for MongoDB. So you just create an entity model like this: 

entity Coupon {

description String ;

endDate Date ;

merchant Merchant ;

}

entity Reward {

description String ;

endDate Date ;

merchant String ;

}

and it generates all the layouts and CRUD operations (in MDSL), this can easily generate hundreds of mdsl lines of code, from there you can generate thousands of Objective-C and Android/Java code. 

>> wonder WHY use Balsamiq at all.  

I think if you are a developer you will not use balsamiq, it sells a bit better, people like visual, then they drop into code. If you use canappi, you will fall in love with absolute layout again, and then when you realize that from the same MDSL file you get an iPhone app AND and android app that looks the same (with the same unique coordinates), you'll be entire sold, this will become your new design tool. When you add mongoDB in the mix, you'll never be able to go away from it. I am so productive, I look at all the code I should have written, I can't believe it myself.

>> is there a good reason to really start with your Balsamiq mockups

Only if you are not comfortable with writing MDSL. Basically, with balsamiq, anyone can do something, but you will have to be a developer to finish the app.

Hope that helps,

JJ-

[heg]

JJ,

thanks for the response, Look forward to seeing the items you are working on.

I think that using the wireframe too guide you is good enough reason.

heg

[heg]

JJ,

I found this tool Napkee which is great at creating the UI from the Balsamiq mockup and has some pretty cool features, too bad it appears kind of dead and it would be cool if it could create msdl.

heg

[Jean-Jacques Dubray]

Yes, I was aware of this tool, it's true that the project looks abandoned. It is strange with 600 customers, how can you abandon a project?

JJ-