New tool to optimize the development of business apps

Mobile devices are becoming increasingly widespread and offer new application possibilities with increasing performance. In addition to the consumer sector, the devices can also be used effectively in the corporate environment.

However, there are still very few apps for the B2B sector. At least if you look in the app stores, there are hardly any business apps to be found. The special requirements in terms of security, design and function are too different in the B2B sector. In addition, different mobile platforms are used, making developments for each of these platforms expensive and time-consuming.

The need to operate platform-independent apps and thus save costs and effort is therefore enormous. Web apps based on web technologies already represent a relatively inexpensive and quick-to-implement solution for this.

doubleSlash has now developed a tool with which the design and development effort can be reduced even further and at the same time supports a very agile approach.

Apperator - for the efficient development of web apps

A web app is usually created through the steps of designing the layout, creating a prototype and realizing the app interface.

The essential and unique innovation in the tool Apperator is that these three individual steps can be combined into a single step.

In detail, the Layout of the individual screens as before with a Mockup tool (e.g. Balsamiq) is designed. This creates a file that describes the designed layout as XML.

Various frameworks are also available for the actual implementation of a web app. Among other things, they provide special functions for interaction via touchscreens and the display of the interface (e.g. Sencha Touch, jQuery Mobile).

Our Apperator development tool now combines these two parts. First, the tool reads in the previously created layout description and automatically generates the basic structure and interface of the web app based on the defined framework.

Advantages of the Apperator at a glance

• It is possible to generate the app interface from the layout without any additional effort.
• The interface created can initially be used as a prototype to identify weak points in the layout or usability. Once the layout has been corrected, a revised version of the app is generated and the logic can be implemented.
• It is also possible to pre-assign basic technical functionality to the app during generation.
• The actual communication with the existing application can take place via interfaces that either already exist or are made available specifically for the app.
• The modular structure of the development tool means that both different layout tools and different frameworks can be used, which enables flexible use in similar projects.

The tool has proven itself in practice and in future there will be mobile versions not only for customer orders, but also for the standard software products secureTransfer and Marketing Planner.