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43 Essential Controls for Web Applications

2010-03-06 13:49
Designing a web application Familiarize yourself with Rich Internet Application technologies and the best UI controls for creating your application.Rich Internet Application technology has empowered us to create really amazing user experiences. The best RIAs on the web today rely on a discreet set of UI controls to provide a lively and timely experience. If you are moving from web site design to web application design, the best information you can have at your disposal is an understanding of these essential controls.Popular RIA Libraries, Toolkits, and FrameworksMost of these libraries, toolkits, and/or frameworks have an online gallery of controls (also called components, widgets, UI controls) you should explore. Why So you aren 8217;t one of those designers making a bunch of pretty pictures in Photoshop or Illustrator that can 8217;t be implemented (or are too expensive to be coded as designed).Ext JSAdobe Flex/AIRJQuery (plugins), JQuery UI, JQuery ToolsDojo, Dojo X, DijitOpenLaszloMooTools (plugins), JXLib for MooTools,Mocha UIVaadin Telerik for ASP.net,Telerik for SilverlightZKGoogle Web Toolkit ,GWT Ext, GWT MosaicYUI 2 , YUI 3LivePipeBackbaseSmartClientPrototype, Prototype UI and ScriptaculousRichFacesICEFaces43 Essential Controls Many products are siloed by the RIA framework they are using, and designers create novel controls when the framework doesn 8217;t have what they need. This can decrease the usability of the product, and increase the amount of design effort, usability testing, technical specifications and development time. Before you succumb to designing a brand new control, learn what 8217;s out there:Auto-complete/ Auto-suggest Auto-complete using VaadinOffer auto-suggest or auto-complete to help your users increase efficiency and reduce errors. You can even create a grouped and formatted set of suggestions like Apple does.Carousel/Coverflow Carousel by Moving BoxesControls for sliding content include carousels, coverflows, sliders, and slideshows and are available in almost every framework. JQuery has a variety of plugins for many different variations of the simple carousel. All of these variations provide a nice solution for browsing and reviewing visual content. Remember to offer a stop or pause button if you implement auto-play.Calendar/Scheduler Telerik RadScheduler for SilverlightNeed a full blown event scheduler You do not want to ask your development team to code one of these beasts from scratch. There are a number of functional Ajax ones available, all of which could benefit from some CSS love. Flex, OpenLaszlo and Telerik Rad Controls for Silverlight now have this control too.Charts and Graphs Flash charts on Discover Spend AnalyzerSome frameworks include charts, like Ext JS, Flex, Telerik, and SmartClient. But I have resorted to Flash charting libraries to create really rich experiences. Popular libraries include AnyChart, Dundas, JFreeChart, amCharts, Visifire for Silverlight. Lists of chart libraries are availabl...
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