ASP.NET MVC lets developers work on either the presentation layer or the underlying logic. To make it easier for the former, ComponentOne has released a community technology preview of Studio for MVC Wijmo, a tool for creating user interfaces for the Microsoft framework.
Studio for MVC Wijmo includes 30 new jQuery UI widgets, according to the company, as well as proprietary MVC Scaffolding enhanced for Wijmo widgets. MVC Scaffolding is a customizable tool for generating code based on templates for ASP.NET MVC.
“We believe that the best UI practices in MVC are simply rendered markup enhanced with jQuery UI,” said Chris Bannon, product manager at ComponentOne, in an announcement of the technology preview. “Our Wijmo MVC Scaffolding automates that entire process by generating rich interactive Views and Controllers for your entire Model.”
He went on to say that because the project templates are enhanced with jQuery UI, developers can create MVC applications that are richer than WebForms.
Among the UI widgets included in the package are those for the creation of combo boxes, lists, popups, sliders, tabs and trees, according to ComponentOne, with all the pieces necessary to create interactive menus and rich charts.
When using the jQuery UI widgets with ASP.NET MVC 3, developers can work either with the Visual Studio 2010 ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Application or ComponentOne’s Wijmo-optimized ASP.NET MVC 3 Wijmo Application, which uses Wijmo controls for the default UI and references the necessary Wijmo assemblies in its _Layout.cshtml page, according to the ComponentOne website. Wijmo libraries can be added or updated via the NuGet Visual Studio extension.
At the heart of Wijmo is Wijgrid, a tabular data grid that enables users to manipulate data. The grid can be customized for visualizing data so users can get a clearer understanding of that data, the company said.
