Programming language or tool for web-based Visio-like drawing as applied to product configurator

Question

I have extensive experience with MS Visio Solution development, and have a need to provide similar functionality in a web interface in the context of a heavily visual product-builder or "configurator". Visio functionality that I hope to reproduce:

• Visual shapes stored in a sidebar, from which the user drags and drops onto a drawing area
• Shape creation on the user's end is probably not necessary... just arrangement, sizing, changing parameters etc
• A back-end for extracting the parts the user has dropped onto the drawing area, including the parameters they've changed, dimensions, relations between components etc

In the most general sense, I just need an interactive interface.

Given the above parameters, is Flash a good option? Is there a development environment that might be better?

Answer 1

Flash will work for what you described here, but you could do it effectively with the canvas tag.

Now, Flash has a better development environment, since it has been around longer, but there are many tools for using javascript in various IDEs.

I would go with HTML5/javascript as it will work better with your page, so, you can just integrate your application into any web page, and it fits in better than Flash will, IMO.

If you want to get some ideas about SVG and canvas then you can get a basic idea at http://jmvidal.cse.sc.edu/talks/canvassvg/.

As to the development environment it would depend on how much you want to spend, and whether you want to have a drag and drop capability for UI components.

Answer 2

I would vote for Flex. Flex is a framework for ActionScript 3 that is designed for Rich Internet Applications.

Personally I think Flash/Flex/Silverlight will remain the preferred choices for heavy internet applications, with HTML5 being suited for more trivial interactivity.

If you were to go down the road of Flex then you would probably want to get Flash Builder to make life easier (cost). Alternatively, you could write pure AS3 in something like Flash Develop (free).