Is it possible to create a graphical designer for a specific domain?

Question

I'm currently on the project where we are developing a designer that our developers and customers should use to create / modify our web pages.

I like the project a lot because of the challenges, plus I have an opportunity to learn other technologies. However, I don't believe in its success. I truly believe that it's going to be to inflexible for our developers and to complex for our customers.

Do you know any company or individual who was successfull with Graphical DSL? Microsoft created designers in Visual Studio, BizTalk, SQL but I don't know anyone who would use only these designers to create an application without typing a source code.

Answer 1

Check out Inkscape. With it, you can draw images, and it can output to SVG; which is just XML, so you can use that, then, to generate code.

-- Edit

Though re-reading, you don't appear to be asking how, but why, or if it's possible in general. If so, disregard me.

Answer 2

A couple years ago, we created a pretty advanced WYSIWYG graphical designer specifically for putting together Coupon Books. It was a database application with the graphical capabilities built in.

It output production grade files that were sent directly to press.

The cool part? 100% web based. We used PHP, MySQL, and ImageMagick to power the backend.

So, sure, it is possible.

Answer 3

Yes - it is possible. Microsoft has done this for windows forms :)

I believe your question is really is it cost-effective to do so. The answer is probably dependent on the level of user-friendliness, integration, etc. To do something like the designers for Microsoft forms probably costs millions. But, for a less-integrated but probably useful tool, a solution such as suggested by silky would probably be possible and cost-effective.