Chapter 5 – Software Tools

5.1 Introduction Tools valuable for –Specification –Interface Building –Evaluation

5.2 Specification Natural language not sufficient in many cases Menu Trees Transition Diagrams User Action Notation

5.3 Interface Building Tools May be described with different terminology Tools provide visual editing to allow quickly changing interface Tools provide interface independence Prototype can act as a specification Desirable if tool supports cross platform development

Design Only Tools May use simple tools Possibly some design specific tools

Multimedia construction tools Early – Hypercard Lately – WWW oriented

Visual Programming Tools Visual Basic Others

Development Tools Toolkits work with general purpose languages Java Javascript

Factors in Choosing Interface Building Tools Widgets Supported Interface Features Software Architecture Management Issues

5.4 Evaluation Tools Tools have been created Some things that could be measured … –Scale –Complexity –Consistency –Correctness –Use metrics –Other heuristics

End Chapter 5