App Builder — The Low-Code Platform That Caters It All
What does the usual lead-up to app building look like? In general, what you have to do with the development team is:
- Collaborate through different tools or meetings
- Bring in stakeholders at different stages
- Calculate the costs and risks posed by given technology stack
- Build interactive prototypes
- Build proof of concepts with the chosen technology stack
And all of this before you even start with the actual building. You and your team have to decide; have to choose.
Yes, your design team can work on an app, crafting a design in Sketch or Figma, but your development team cannot start until you choose the technology stack. But think of this for a moment — what happens when you don’t have to choose the technology stack upfront? Is it possible to choose the technology stack after the application is already built to a certain extent, without having to rewrite it from scratch? Is it possible to change the technology stack after the choice has been made, again, without having to rewrite the app from scratch? What type of tool can achieve and cater to all of this?
The not-so-modest answer is App Builder™.
This low-code platform reshapes how teams think of development by bringing together the most popular app development frameworks and the most popular design tools. With an integrated design system (Indigo.Design) and full-featured UI components, App Builder modernizes not just the approach, but the mindset dev and design teams have about projects. Using it, you, in fact, are given the opportunity and the means to develop software, starting either from scratch within the App Builder or by using a pre-built screen design in Sketch and Figma imported into the App Builder. You can work on a new project with the idea of building AN application. Not Blazor or Angular or Web Components application but “A” technology-agnostic application that can be easily code-generated and downloaded against any of the supported technology stacks at any point of the development process.
This means you have the ability to choose what is targeted by that app at any point in time and not the other way around — to select the technology stack and build the app based on it.
Now, the dev community still appears to be divided by two key but significantly different beliefs in terms of low code:
- Some believe the end of human development is just around the corner, and low-code/no-code tools are just a tiny bit away from producing the most optimal output.
- Others shiver every time they hear the words “low code” because they doubt low-code/no-code tools can produce high-quality code and efficient software solutions.
But App Builder has already gone far beyond clean code generation only. Making a giant leap with the latest 22.2 product upgrade, it now focuses on things like:
- Component and feature-parity between target frameworks
- Data Grid, Tree Grid, and more availability on all platforms
- Full Web Components Code Generation output in addition to Blazor and Angular
- Complete UI Kit support by adding Figma UI Kits
- Ability to share app previews publicly
After all, this is what really completes the entire design-to-code story, empowering you to build an app and then choose what framework to target.
To demonstrate the complete feature and component parity capability, let’s say you want to create an app which contains a view displaying large amounts of hierarchical tabular data. You can start a new web application with almost no dependencies (web components) scaffolded with a CLI. Then you can add a view containing a Tree Grid component, again using the CLI, you can quickly bind your data with very little code and use a variety of events to customize the component behaviors. The difference with App Builder is that you can start building before you choose Web Components as your target. You can create the view and routing structure visually, and you can simply drag and drop the tree grid component onto the design surface in the desired view. Databinding is also part of the visual experience in the App Builder and it allows you to bind directly to already-existing RESTful services you have. Then, you can make the choice on the fly to generate against Angular, Web Components, or Blazor. You can also switch between frameworks on the fly or generate against multiple such. It’s built to be a click of a button away with App Builder.
Recap: Some Key Facts About App Builder With the 22.2 Release in Mind
Intended to change the way you build mission-critical solutions, the low-code App Builder enables you to kick-start your app with a new type of development techniques and methodologies, taking you very far before you have to write (or even generate) any code. And with the App Builder 22.2 Release, it marks one of the most significant upgrades in its capabilities to date.
- It now supports Web components as a target.
- It lets you generate the app in Blazor, Angular, and/or Web Components.
- Full component and feature parity between the target platforms.
- Now adds a band-new Figma UI kit that maps to a real component set.
- It arrives with tons of new components, such as a Tree Grid, Accordion, Rating, Tabs, Tree, and Navigation Drawer.
- Improved features, including OpenAPI improvements, filtering for endpoints, and Repositioned zoom settings.
- Offers full Safari browser support.
- Share App Preview functionality.
App Builder even provides the most modern approach and high-speed RAD development to desktop application developers, enabling them to migrate to larger web application projects with an upgraded UI toolbox with more grids and charts.
It still helps teams overcome the chaos of multiple tools, legacy systems, and cumbersome processes across teams while delivering business-critical solutions at the same time.
