Modular And Integrated Design 2.1

Rating:
Summary: Most useful thing I have ever had
Review: MAID is a bit hard to describe. Essentially it is a GUI editor that uses a drag and drop methods to draw up a GUI dialog. But this kinda misses the point because it how you go about adding functionality that is the real powerhouse.

Each part of the dialog (controls - buttons, menus etc) can be made functional by adding in a simple rexx script. Ie MAID draws the button (for instance) and supplies you with events (button-down for instance), open up the event and simply type in the script you want executed when this event is triggered. Simple.

Then MAID also comes with hundreds of commands everything from searching files to polling IO devices. Something which I did not expect was how easy it was to improve and add to dialogs I had made. As all the code is broken up into functional fragments under visible objects it is very easy to follow what is going on and as the scripts are relatively small and usually only doing a few things it is again very easy to make changes without fritzing the whole thing.

Strangely scripts tend to get smaller and simplier the more they are editored and changed. This is unusual and has happened too often to be a fluke, but I think because it is easy to see how one control relates to another and that each part of script presents as a simple function it just becomes obvious the most direct way of getting something done - hence the scripts get smaller and simplier.

This is simply the must have program for anyone using a computer to get things done. I have my own specialisied utilities and often do quick and dirty little dialogs to get some job done and have found this the quickest and surest method. I don't know what else I can say I just can't believe that its not better known (great to see it finally on Amazon).