Profound Simplifies Screen Design in Genie Web-Enablement Tool

Published: March 16, 2010

by Alex Woodie

A new release of Profound Logic's on-the-fly Web enablement tool, called Genie, will make it easier for customers to customize their i/OS applications just to their liking. With Genie 4.0, customers gain access to more than 150 "widgets" that allow them to quickly add screen elements such as images and drop-down boxes to converted applications. Better session handling, DBCS support, and new integration capabilities round out the new release.

Profound introduced Genie almost three years ago to provide i/OS shops with a quick way to Web-enable the 5250 screens of their RPG, COBOL, or CL applications--even i/OS system screens can be converted. The software, which uses JavaScript, generates HTML interfaces by running 5250 applications' DDS output through templates.

Genie functions in real-time, does not require source code, and runs natively on the System i server, without consuming interactive CPW. This makes it a good candidate for consideration for fast, tactical i/OS application refreshes. (Profound offers a more powerful tool, called RPGsp, for bigger and more strategic i/OS Web-enablement projects.)

The biggest enhancements in Genie revolve around Visual Designer, the product's Web-based WYSIWYG screen designer that lets users customize the look and feel of the canned Genie screens by modifying elements of the template with the customer's choice of colors, fonts, and backgrounds.

With Genie version 4.0, Profound takes customizability to new levels with the introduction of widgets to Visual Designer. Widgets allow users to add a variety of screen elements to their Web-enabled Genie applications, including subfile grids, calendars, menus, charts, tabs, panels, and spinners.

Adding widgets is easy: All a user has to do is drag them from a toolbar onto the screen during a Visual Designer session. Genie handles the rest, and no coding or additional configuration is required, the company says. Profound even lets users customize the appearance of the pre-configured widgets by adding rounded corners, shadows, or color gradients.

Developers can drag widgets from the toolbar on the left of Genie's Visual Designer tool to quickly and easily add functionality to Web-enabled i/OS application screens.

Other Visual Designer enhancements in version 4.0 include the capability to copy, cut, and paste any screen element. New "undo" and "redo" commands were also added to allow users to quickly control changes during a Visual Designer session. Finding images from the element properties window is now easier thanks to an image explorer. A script editor has also been added for working with JavaScript events, Profound says.

This version also includes support for double byte character sets (DBCS), which will allow Genie to display characters for the Japanese and Chinese languages. An automatic disconnect feature was also added that will properly log off the System i server users when they close their Web browsers (the i/OS server is picky about those sorts of things). This feature will also allow users to automatically recover their old sessions when they log back in.

Profound also added new Microsoft Office integration capabilities with Genie 4.0. To connect with Office, users will initialize an applet (provided by Profound), which will then call the Office application to perform a function, such as exporting data to Excel or automatically creating an e-mail in Outlook based on data within the i/OS application.

Last but not least, Profound reminds us that applications Web-enabled with Genie can be accessed from Atrium, the i/OS application portal that went into beta testing last year, and became generally available in January.

Accessing Web-enabled Genie applications through Atrium provides several advantages. For example, thanks to the capability to "visually" create Atrium macros, users have an easy way to simplify common tasks, such as signing onto the system or automatically navigating users through various 5250 menus to get to the screen the user needs. Atrium macros don't require any hand-writing of code thanks to the graphical wizard that ships with the product.

Genie version 4.0 is available now. More info and trial downloads are available at the Profound Logic Web site: www.profoundlogic.com.

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