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Concepts

The main thrive for starting Boxary development is that platforms, in general, are too complicated to learn. Some float on code and the addiction it generates, other ones push forward with their designs and smooth interactions, some nourish the argument of the MVC pattern, some claim to be dead simple. And they all come with a learning curve, be it steep or flat.

• The MVC pattern is successful because the pattern is populated with 'natural' components which everybody recognizes. But is recognition enough to build upon?
• The Observer pattern is successful because the mechanics are from real life. We observe all kind of things. We know pub/sub.
• Singletons are everywhere.
• Inheritance is known since Darwin.
• And so on.

Boxary starts with a metaphor that resembles desktop publishing, spreadsheets, photoshopping (ouch!). The Canvas.
Boxary knows about Apps, but different. Read about the things that Boxary does the Boxary way. The App.
Boxary maps entities and relationships onto graph models. The Structs.

Boxary separates its applications in a Box. That's why the name.

• Think in Packages, aka Boxes.
• When components hold several things call them a Container, which is a Box.
• When rendering with the help of style sheets use a Box Model.
• Wrapping is a common technique; wrapping in Boxes is what Boxary stimulates.
• Boxes come with purpose: black box, white box, Red, Green and Blue boxes, and on and on.
• Boxes are metaphors: the (yellow) box junction, out of the box features, box offices, thinking outside the box, and so much more trivial usage.

Data processing came to a long road with punched cards, magnetic tapes, random discs, relational calculus, object orientation, XML documents and nowadays graph databases. A broad spectrum of technologies is available and applications reached a graphical state. Some entities never disappeared: the listing, the form, and the screen. Current mnemonics are html5, css3 and javascript (like jQuery).
Boxary defines a canvas, a working area, that contains the data model, its viewable face and the domain rules it supports, as the central paradigm.

In a certain sense the learning curve of Boxary is overcome; well, if you know modern IT. Boxary applications make use of a graph notation, not to introduce a new approach, but alone to create a visual aspect to the application in the process of creation. The name canvas is one of them. Now, if you dare to expect the shortest path algorithm, a breadth-first or depth-first transversal you will get disappointed.
But Boxary defines vertices, edges and planars. You draw the application onto a canvas and at some point, you render it in the context of a browser.