Flexible, interactive and fun software builder for users less skilled in programming languages, that mostly relies on drag-and-drop support, featuring a rich set of design elements, customization options, along with actions and conditions for events.
- Pika Software Builder
- Version :5.0.2.2
- License :Trial
- OS :Windows All
- Publisher :Pika Software
Pika Software Builder Description
Pika Software Builder is an interactive application whose purpose is to make your job easier when it comes to developing software tools for Windows, even if you do not have enough experience to do this.
It puts at your disposal a comfortable working environment and simple-to-use tools for building the project by dragging and dropping buttons and other elements in the design, right before compiling and running a project.
Wide array of available items to drop in projects
After a simple installation procedure, Pika Software Builder brings up a large panel with a dark theme, showing the default design right in the middle. A list with the types of items that can be included in this design is displayed on the left. These are basic elements such as buttons, images, labels, text fields, text and check boxes, and radio buttons.
Furthermore, you can place containers (page control, panel), interactive items (calendar, media player), shell resources, app events, balloon hints, color box, touch-specific items (gesture list view, ADO table), Flash, Indy protocols, database, and so on.
Customize items added to the software design
As mentioned in the beginning of this review, you can seamlessly put together a software project by dragging the items out of the box and dropping them in the window. However, Pika Software Builder’s functionality does not stop here. Each of these objects comes with a particular set of options that can be configured from the right side of the main application window.
All of them share some settings, though. To be more specific, the name of the object can be edited, while its position and size can be modified. Regarding buttons and images, for example, it is possible to tweak attributes in caption, hint, alignment and font, as well as assign photos from local GIF, PNG, JPG, JPEG or BMP files.
Trigger actions for various events
More importantly, you can explore an extensive list with functions powered by Pika that can be assigned to specific events, like when an image is clicked or the mouse is moved over it. These functions are general (e.g. display a message, resize a window) or related to the system tray (e.g. minimize, restore), files (e.g. delete or rename a file), Internet (e.g. download a file, upload a file to FTP, open a web page), a timer (start or stop a timer), components (show, hide, move), and others.
What’s more, you can indicate a condition for executing the action in question. Apart from Pika functions, the software utility lets you use Pascal source code for managing item functions. Next to the items section there is another tab that shows a hierarchical tree of the structure elements, thus making it easy to select them. Additionally, you can examine a list with all visual and non-visual items.
Compile and run the project
Once all settings are made, you can run the project and stop it at any time. Pika Software Builder implements a simple-to-use project manager backed by a search function, along with an area that allows you to import custom functions from file (Pascal source code). Another important aspect worth mentioning is that undoing and redoing actions is possible for correcting any mistakes.
Overall, a fun and interactive approach to software development
We have not come across any stability issues in our tests, since the tool did not hang, crash or pop up error messages. It uses a small amount of memory and has a good response time. To sum it up, Pika Software Builder provides less experienced users with rich and interactive tools and customization preferences for developing software applications.