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280North posts

Filed under: Design, Developer, Utilities, Productivity

280North releases Atlas, an interface builder for web apps


I wrote a while back about Cappuccino, a web app framework that parallels Apple's Cocoa framework for desktop apps. That was back in September, when 280 North had just released an amazing presentation app called 280Slides that essentially brought Apple's Keynote to the web. Cappuccino has evolved a lot since then, and 280 North just made a big leap forward by releasing Atlas, which is roughly the web equivalent of Interface Builder for Mac desktop apps.

What does that mean, exactly? Basically, Atlas enables you to build an entire user interface for your app without coding anything at all. That's great news, because designers who are perfectly capable of planning a good UI might not be competent enough in the coding department to make it a reality. Atlas bridges the gap. If we want to see web apps that are on par with our favorite desktop software, the right tools are important. Kudos to 280 North for developing one of them.

Filed under: Developer, Open Source, web 2.0

Cappuccino and Objective-J make for a tasty open-source web app framework

Web applications that function like familiar desktop apps are all the rage these days. Web apps already have the advantage of being accessible from everywhere, but add in a UI that works like something users already know, and you've got something pretty cool. Cappuccino is an up-and-coming way of getting this done, and the code is now all open-source. It's a framework for building apps like this using some tools that are already pretty standard on the web, like Javascript, combined with what's basically a port of Apple's Cocoa APIs, and tying it all together with a language called Objective-J.

Objective-J is to Javascript what Objective-C was to C. As the Cappuccino site puts it, "programs written in Objective-J are interpreted in the client, so no compilation or plugins are required." Beautiful. The developers are pretty clear that Cappuccino is just for apps, not for building websites with "dynamic content," or whatever the kids are calling it these days. Want to see Cappuccino in action? We've actually already reviewed the first great Cappuccino app, 280 North's excellent presentation software, 280Slides.

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