Business App Design

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  • I am learning Construct 3 right now to develop a game but I usually develop Business Applications. I am curious if it is possible to design business apps here as I am really enjoying the software and prefer to stick to one software if possible.

  • I am learning Construct 3 right now to develop a game but I usually develop Business Applications. I am curious if it is possible to design business apps here as I am really enjoying the software and prefer to stick to one software if possible.

    It is possible, but certain things are really difficult without a lot of effort. I spend about 50% of my development time working on more traditional applications, and the remainder of the time working in Construct 2/3.

    I have done one major project where I built something that would typically be a standard web app entirely within Construct 2. It is called "ChemThink", and has teacher and student account management, the ability for teachers to create classes, assign tutorials, and review results of quizzes, and many more functions. Please note that this was built in Construct 2, and some of the plugins I used are not available in Construct 3. Also please note that this is an HTML5 port of a Flash app built in 1997. I kept the original teacher-drawn graphics, and Construct 2/3 are both capable of looking a lot nicer than what you see here:

    http://simbucket.com/chemthinkserver/chemthink/index.html

    Here are a few of the stumbling blocks:

    1. Scrollable lists - These are a pain to implement, as they are not hardware accelerated like they would be if you were using CSS or native scrollview/listview solutions. I used a plugin called "iScroll" which is only available for Construct 2. It is possible to do this by hand in Construct, but it will take A LOT of experimentation to get everything looking right.

    2. Button styling - You can't use native or CSS buttons. Every pixel must be drawn by hand in a separate program and imported if you want something more than colored rectangles.

    3. Masking - Masking takes a bit of work, and isn't automatic like it would be in native or CSS. There is no concept of container views, so you have to create masks manually for any pictures or text that go out of what you would otherwise build as a container view.

    For simple business apps, things that I would do in 30 seconds in Xcode (I used to develop for iOS) took me weeks to figure out in Construct 2. However, having a full video game engine meant that I could do things very simply in Construct 2 that I wouldn't even attempt when building a native iOS app or CSS-driven web app.

    In addition, POST and GET requests are dead simple compared to native. This is where Construct really shines, in my opinion.

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  • Thank you for the great information and sample. I am getting into Construct 3 and think for now I'll have to keep the 2 separate as I have only been programming for just over 5 years in Business Basic code.

  • Yeah, gui stuff is much harder to do than you would expect in a html5 engine. Of course that's due to everything being rendered on one canvas.

    The good news is everything you would need is there, plus a few nice third party plugs, well sans C3 till that parts caught up anyway.

    We really need to start pushing for a full svg implementation when it does.

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