I was very happy when I first saw the webapp created by Thomas B. Nielsen of www.nobrainer.dk. Webapps come handy – I use them alot! Here I will write a first hand on this webapp that Thomas has created. Please share on www.dwfeatures.com if you have a webapp you wish to tell about or let other people use. Dont forget that you should give to the net, not only take!
The webapp is here: Dynamicweb paragraph webapp creator
The interface of the paragraph generator webapp
The webpage (webapp) will generate a number of paragraph templates together with a CSS file. The paragraphs are nicely structured and there have put some logically named classnames on relevant spots making it easy to target elements using CSS selectors.
Seeing is believing – the preview feature
Thomas B. Nielsen have added a preview to the webapp. You can get a preview which for a version 1 is okay. It could look like this:
Thomas B. Nielsen have added title to each paragraph preview with the name of the generated template, thumbs up for that Thomas. It seems that the preview images are also trying to use “getImage.aspx” (the great image scaling util available in Dynamicweb CMS), which ofcause does not work. I would therefore suggest that you use another image tag for the preview, Thomas. May I suggest that you use the online image generating util at http://www.dummyimage.com/. You simply add parameter to the URL like this: http://www.dummyimage.com/200×20/ccaeff/0011ff.png which would give you this image: 
When you are happy with your settings you simply click “Download” and get a ZIP file containing the structure with the paragraphs and css.
Webapps are very dynamic
One of the things I love about webapps, at least those I have seen on the web, is that they tend to be very easy to change. Especially when they are created using browserbased code like javascript.
The paragraph created webapp created by Thomas B. Nielsen will probertly also adapt to the wishes by the user, making it even stronger. I would for instance suggest:
- Let the user enter the name of the design folder. At the time of writing the generated template are packed into a folder named “designname”. I would suggest that I can enter that part too in the webapp.
- An option to use HTML5 markup, like using <section> tag instead of <div> with .section class – but that is a matter of taste.
- An option to make use of relative units. It would probertly add some challenges to you Thomas
- Lorim ipsum text? Maybe a checkbox which will make the webapp generate lorim ipsum text in the preview. You could use http://baconipsum.com/ which has an API to generate this “bacon variant” of the well known Lorim ipsum – just see here:
Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet bresaola pancetta cow jowl pig, short loin turducken jerky salami beef ribs. Leberkas turkey meatball meatloaf, ball tip capicola chuck kielbasa ground round corned beef. Ball tip leberkas flank pork loin, boudin t-bone pastrami. Brisket venison flank, bresaola rump swine tail pork chop tenderloin shankle biltong tri-tip. Sirloin corned beef salami, strip steak hamburger swine kielbasa ground round bresaola.
- The information on the webpage is in danish. Why not make it english? (a very small thing, I know…)
- Should you use a crop option on the getimage link,
MortenThomas ?
So again, thank you Morten Thomas for sharing this great tool!
Other webapps
- CSS3 border radius generator
- Prefixr.com – Cross browser css in seconds
- Matrix transformation in CSS3
- Dynamicweb paragraph webapp creator
Updates: Morten is ofcause named Thomas… Sorry, Mo… ups… Thomas!
Hi Sten,
Thank you very much for this very nice post :o)
I am now changing the language to English and will implement some of the nice ideas you have brought up here. A great deal of those was already planned, now i just need to make it happen.
One small thing, some places you write my name as Morten – should be Thomas ;-)
Thank you once more, now back to making updates.
Hi Thomas,
Firstly – sorry for calling you Morten two places in my blog post… Corrected :-)
I am glad to read that you will update your webapp with some of the changes coming from not only me, but also from other users – that is in line with the nature of webapps I think.
I was thinking about a new idea for you webapp, Thomas. Perhaps you could supply a direct URL which will then return the ZIP file containing the generated templates and CSS?
Also if you could extend it to also be able to generate whole designs/layouts :-) Then one could be able to add menues, placeholders and so on.
And what about if you saved the settings for each generated set of templates with a unique ID. Then people could enter the ID and then make modifications and re-download the package in its new modified version? Even share?
All this will put a lot of work on your sholders so I guess the next thing would be to add the project to say github? Then more people could put some coding into the idea?
/Sten
Hi Sten,
Once again thank you for inputs and ideas.
I like the idea about adding valies to the URL, this should make it easier to share and so on – added to my todo list :-)
I don’t really see the idea about creating complete page layouts in the webapp – this is something i would always code from scratch. How do you see a webapp assisting here?
Saving the settings pr. generated set of templates can be done relatively easy, but i think that there is so few settings/options, that it’s not worth saving the info – i think it’s just easier to go from scratch. But perhaps it can be added if i manage to get all the other things fixed :o)