Maqetta, the HTML5 alternative for Flash, Silverlight

In a report by eweek, IBM has launched Maqetta, an open-source project that provides WYSIWYG visual authoring of HTML5 user interfaces using drag-and-drop assembly, and supports both desktop and mobile user interfaces. Maqetta is written in HTML itself and the need for an extra plugin is removed and since HTML5 is supported by the recent versions of most top browsers.


“The problem in a nutshell is the Ajax ecosystem falls short in terms of tooling as compared to the likes of Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight and similar tools,” said Rod Smith, vice president of Emerging Internet Technologies at IBM, told eWEEK. “We had 120 companies in the OpenAjax Alliance and the biggest complaint was interoperation of the widgets and the need for visual tooling, so we decided to address that,” Boloker said.


"Strong visual tools are essential toward improving IBM's efficiency at delivering compelling and intuitive user interfaces. IBM offers hundreds of leading-edge software applications, nearly all of which provide advanced user interfaces running in the browser." Karel Vredenburg, director of IBM User Interface Design, said in a statement. "Inside IBM, Maqetta will be our strategic tool for designing and reviewing user interfaces, both desktop and mobile.


Maqetta features are:

• a WYSIWYG visual page editor for drawing out user interfaces
• a drag/drop mobile UI authoring within an exact-dimension device silhouette, such as the silhouette of an iPhone
• simultaneous editing in either design or source views
• deep support for CSS styling (the application includes a full CSS parser/modeler)