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Experiencing RecipeXperience

Opinion
May 03, 20042 mins
Enterprise Applications

* RecipeXperience presents UIs in various ways

When you are building sophisticated Web applications creating an efficient and effective user interface is crucial. And the big trend in this area is to create UIs that are analogous to Windows or Macintosh interfaces. But to really ensure that you cover all of the possible platforms you have to consider how the UI can be presented as pure HTML, as DHTML, through Java and at varying levels of resolution for PCs, cell phones, and PDAs.

RecipeXperience (see links below) aims to do all of that with its RecipeXperience system that can even select the correct format for the target device automatically. Based on the company’s proprietary XML-based language called RXPML, RecipeXperience supports the creation of sophisticated multi-platform windowing applications.

Four specific output formats are available:

* DHTML – Internet Explorer 5.5+ only (relies on client-side ECMAScript support).

* Java Applet – For browsers that support Java 1.3+ applets.

* HTML – Flat HTML interface.

* HTML/lite – For PDAs and browsers with limited styling.

RecipeXperience requires an application server that supports Java Servlet Version 2.2 or above such as Tomcat and Resin. This means that RecipeXperience can be deployed under Linux, Windows, or any other platform that supports Java.

The demonstrations are impressive although I had some difficulty getting the Basic Desktop application to launch its applets – it appeared that I couldn’t double click fast enough for the events to be recognized as an “open” command.

As with another related product that we discussed a few issues ago (see https://www.nwfusion.com/newsletters/web/2004/0405web2.html), this system cries out from a graphical development environment to make development and deployment as simple as possible.

RecipeXperience (one of the stranger names I’ve come across) is a fascinating product with great potential in the enterprise. Pricing for a Server License, which includes a five-user license is £2,500 and each block of five additional users costs a further £250.

mark_gibbs

Mark Gibbs is an author, journalist, and man of mystery. His writing for Network World is widely considered to be vastly underpaid. For more than 30 years, Gibbs has consulted, lectured, and authored numerous articles and books about networking, information technology, and the social and political issues surrounding them. His complete bio can be found at http://gibbs.com/mgbio

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