Softalot Ozone - Navigation Toolkit with optional User & Permission Management

Now in Beta! Do you need a streamlined UI for navigation of your web applications? A facelift for legacy applications?
A central framework for applications that share user data and permissions? Participate in our beta program for free.

What is Softalot Ozone?

The general purpose is to provide an ultra-light UI framework which can house one or more web applications under one roof and provide a uniform interface for the end user. It was originally designed as a "facelift" for legacy applications and is now available in 2 flavors: (a) Ozone Zero - a platform-independent set of JavaScript classes with no server side code. These classes focus entirely on the client side presentation and can be used in concert with any server side technology. It has been tested with Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari browsers. (b) Ozone One - the same set of client-side JavaScript classes plus a central user and permission management component. The latter requires server side code and database functionality and is currently available as Active Server Pages (ASP) for Microsoft Internet Information Services. The purpose of this central user management is to allow for single-sign-on and to share permission management across functional modules or even across applications.

Example screen shot with navigation bar on the left, menu at the top and main content on the right.

Ozone UI has a very common default layout, and should therefore be easily understood by most users. The left section, a.k.a. Navigation Panel, acts as a table of contents for detailed information that appears in the larger main section on the right. Over time, the concept of what is a table of contents has been broadened to include functionality such as search forms, filter settings, short cuts, and other features that will help you navigate to the detailed information on the right, but the basic principle is still the same.

How does it work - generally speaking?

As a developer, you register your web applications and functional modules with the Ozone framework (JavaScript classes). As a result, the navigation pane of the UI will present one navigation bar per module (lower left). Users of the application can click on these navigation bars to switch between functional modules of your applications. You may also create a menu definition per module which results in a horizontal menu to be displayed at the top. For each menu item you provide code which gets executed when the user interacts with the menu item.

Features and Benefits:

Ozone Zero & Ozone One

1. Common layout with Navigation Panel, Module Bars, Menu Items, Tooltips, Status Line, and Main Content Panel.
2. Support for 3 frequently used browsers: IE, Firefox, and Safari.
3. Lightweight - all presentation logic happens on the client side and the framework requires only small amounts of memory.
4. Easy to integrate with existing applications.
5. Easy to use by end-users.
6. Full source code and developer documentation.
7. Colors, dimensions, and fonts are defined as CSS style classes and are easy to modify.
8. Each module keeps its own set of windows for the navigation panel, menu, and main panel which allows to keep state between modules and applications. In other words, if you switch between modules, you will always find the latest state when you return.
9. The module bars have an auto-hide feature. If you have many modules, the bars would take too much real estate on screen, so auto-hide will reduce each module bar to a minimum when not in use.
10. A central dispatch function (like a Windows message queue) keeps interaction between applications, navigation, and menu items organized in a central place.

Ozone One only

1. Central user and permission management across all applications.
2. Single sign-on.
3. Easy to integrate: As a developer you define which permissions are relevant for each application / module. Then, at run-time you can use predefined functions to query the permission set for the currently logged-in user to determine whether or not he has access to a given functionality.
4. Permission test functions are available both client side and server side. You will encounter many situations where you will offer information, functionality, and menu items based on local (client side) information. For security reasons, you will also verify the same permissions when responding to requests on the server-side.

If you are interested in participating in our current beta program, please send a quick email to beta@softalot.com with the following information: Your business contact information and a very brief synopsis of how you would be using our product. Please send this email from your business email account, as we use this for authentication purposes.