Introduction

An application with a high quality user interface and user experience (UI/UX) results in more rapid adoption and more productive users, leading to lower support costs, a reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increased Return on Investment (ROI). The Nexacro Platform is a solution custom-tailored for business users, with all the features, functionality, and design elements required to support business requirements. The Nexacro Platform will empower you to create a high quality UI/UX, so that you can improve productivity and reduce repetitive data entry tasks in your business.

The Evolution of UI/UX for Business

The continued evolution of internet technology is now enabling connectivity for almost any physical object through the “Internet of Things.” As the scope of internet usage increases, web applications have also evolved to provide richer user experiences for corporate and individual users.

Prior technology generations included client-server (C/S) environments which provided acceptable performance, but included significant challenges associated with installation, distribution, and maintenance. Eventually, the World Wide Web fixed many of these issues, but slow data transfer speeds and limited UI functionality troubled users and developers. Several companies developed platforms to support the development of “Rich Internet Applications” to address these concerns while the HTML standard grew to enable more user interface technology over time.

Over time, the importance of usability has led application developers to focus not only on the user interface of an application but also on the full user experience with it. Those applications that deliver the best experiences to their users enjoy more rapid adoption and, since a good experience is an easy-to-use experience, these application lead to fewer support calls.

Recently enterprises have shown increasing interest in the "business view" where UI/UX is optimized for the business environment. Against this backdrop, we seek to improve the “Business User Experience,” including helping users make quick decisions and promoting productivity through an intuitive work environment, thereby creating business value.

BUX: Business User eXperience

Nexacro enables a great business-user experience by integrating three critical elements.

• A unified platform – One set of source code easily supporting different screen sizes, creating optimized results, across a wide variety of operating systems, browsers and devices, including tablets, phones and desktops.

• A unified development process - Nexacro Studio improves productivity by integrating all processes from development to testing and distribution while enabling simpler in-house development as well as advanced UI construction

• A data-centric unified data framework - capable of supporting structured and unstructured data as well as data from online transaction processing, online analysis processing, and big-data visualization applications.

Nexacro Platform

Nexacro Platform uses a JavaScript-based framework to accommodate enterprise demands. Applications developed using Nexacro Platform, with its write-once-deploy-many capability, support functionality on many different operating systems, browsers, and devices without requiring additional development.

Nexacro Studio, bundled with Nexacro Platform, is the WYSIWYG development environment that enables creation of mobile and web applications. Nexacro Studio offers developers a variety of technical capabilities including drag-and-drop editing of user interface components, an easy-to-use data binding capability, “Adaptive Visual Editor” - a feature that greatly simplifies support of varying device screen sizes and orientations, as well as a collection of interesting design effects, all of which collectively maximize development productivity.

The platform supports HTML5 and hybrid architectures using the same development process and setup files. HTML5 applications can be freely deployed without any special installation. Applications deployed with the in the hybrid architectures attain higher performance and reliability by leveraging an installed virtual engine optimized for each supported operating system.

Key Features

outline

Nexacro Platform provides a unified framework with JavaScript-based components to support a wide range of devices and operating environments. With a single set of source code, Nexacro Platform can be used to develop applications for any environment.

Nexacro Platform Unified Framework

Nexacro Platform Unified Framework is the conceptual map of the Nexacro Platform, enabling cross-platform application development using a single code base. Under the Unified Framework, components are created with JavasScript, assuring identical behavior regardless of environment.

Nexacro Platform Components

Nexacro Platform is composed of four elements. The programming language and development environment are identical regardless of the application's implementation architecture; although, the distribution environment may differ.

Programming language

Nexacro Platform programming is divided into two parts - one to define user-visible screens visible and a second used for the scripts that implement business logic. Additionally, Nexacro Platform provides capabilities for applying and managing styles and themes in screens.

Form (screen) definition language (FDL) is XML-based and describes information such as each component’s properties, binding, and events. FDL is used to describe the multiple layouts created using the Adaptive Visual Editor. Lastly, FDL includes a separate file structure that documents environment information needed to run applications.

The following table identifies files created when developing applications using Nexacro Platform (note that these are all development-time files that are not necessarily included in the application at run-time):

As part of the build process, applications built with Nexacro Platform will be converted to JavaScript. At run-time, it is the JavaScript code that will run.

Development Environment

Nexacro Platform includes Nexacro Studio, Nexacro's integrated development environment (IDE), which includes a WYSIWYG interface. You can develop applications on Nexacro Studio without being concerned about the operating environment. Code created will be saved in Nexacro Platform formats and languages.

Although Nexacro Studio runs only on Microsoft Windows, applications developed using Studio may be run under any operating system or device with a web browser that supports HTML5.

Implementation Environment

Nexacro Platform runs applications through the Unified Framework and provides an optimized structure for each supported operating environment.

Nexacro Platform supports a Hybrid and an HTML5 run-time environment. The Hybrid environment offers an operating environment optimized for the operating system. As new operating systems or operating system versions are introduced, Nexacro Platform can readily be extended with APIs. The HTML5 version runs through standard capabilities provided by web browsers.

The architecture of the run-time environment is diagrammed below:

The Run-time Environment

Distribution refers to the tasks required to install an application and the resources on which it depends. Depending on the user's environment and application, you may need to download applications and modules developed using Nexacro Platform and install them on the user's device (whether mobile, laptop or desktop).

Nexacro Platform applications run on client machines that the user will work on. The application may need to communicate with the Nexacro Application Server for tasks such as data processing, which can be performed by using the X-API module. Where real-time data must be processed on the client machine, an additional module, X-Push, may be used.

For basic distribution tasks, HTTP is the simplest protocol to use. In environments where Internet access is unavailable, you may need a separate medium to distribute resources and applications.

Additional steps may be required depending upon the run-time environment of the application. For further details on distribution and other issues, please refer to the Nexacro Administrator Guide.

System requirements

The environments in which Nexacro Platform applications can work are as follows:

• Runtime

• HTML5