Qrowd

Significant new functionality was added to Qrowd last week, to provide for “part properties”. Beta testers who looked at the sample eBay Showcase widget before part properties existed saw that the part had over a dozen settings exposed in the wiring editor. About half of the settings were to feed the part with data, the other half defined runtime options like colors and animation speeds. Now, part properties are used to control all the runtime options.

Part properties are defined much like the part definitions, using XML metadata. Part properties can use controls like entry fields, dropdown lists, sliders, and others to let users tweak runtime settings for parts, such as colors, animation speeds, and other settings part designers want users to be able to tweak. Part properties can be grouped into tabs, so logically-related properties can be grouped together.

From within the wiring editor, when an assembly is executed a new wrench icon appears at the top of the engine output window to allow all the part properties exposed by parts within the assembly to be tweaked.

The primary benefit is that all part properties contained within an assembly get exposed in the Widget Wizard, so end users can now easily customize widgets.

Now that part properties are implemented, some effort will be devoted to adding some more sample parts and assemblies into the system. First up is a new Map part that is already available. The map part currently uses a Yahoo! Map and only supports the Flash runtime. A DHTML map will be integrated soon, as will support for geo-coding. Additional parts will be developed in the days ahead based on feedback from beta testers.

The private beta period will continue into the foreseeable future.