A Methodology for Computer Supported Development of Interactive Visual Applications

Several tools to support the development of interactive applications are nowadays available. Often complex and integrated toolkits to design visual environments are related to specific application domains or require knowledge of programming languages and substantial coding efforts to perform any particular functionality, such as the implementation of interactive mechanisms. In this work, we propose a top-down approach to design, develop and specify interactive visual applications. The implemented user interface management system joins the advantages of graph-based design techniques with those of a components assembly mechanism. In this perspective it assures system flexibility, in terms of customization to develop specific applications, and components reuse. It also allows to perform automatic controls of correctness and completeness of the implemented environment. The visual models adopted both for static and dynamic aspects make more intuitive the design and the implementation. This has the effect to support novice programmers in the development of software applications while reducing expert designers’ workload