Microsoft’s “Ink to Code” turns drawings into user interfaces
From Ars Technica
Sketching out rough ideas—traditionally on the back of a napkin in the US, backs of envelopes being preferred in the UK—is a common and important part of the design process, with the familiar pen or pencil and paper being favored for rough mockups and outlines. Ink to Code, a new Microsoft Garage project, hopes to turn those rough sketches into usable, working code.Read more: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/with-ink-to-code-microsoft-is-turning-back-of-napkin-sketches-into-software/Ink to Code is currently itself a rough prototype of an app. The basic premise is simple: designers can sketch out the bare bones of application interfaces with a stylus, and Ink to Code will turn those sketches into real code, specifically the XML markup used for Universal Windows Platform apps and Xamarin apps for Android. It uses the Windows 10 Ink APIs to recognize the objects that have been drawn, converting handwriting into text and boxes into screens, buttons, text boxes, and image placeholders.
Currently, the app is only an early prototype—a basic proof of concept rather than a fully fledged development tool. It recognizes only a few interface elements, along with rules and guidelines for aligning things, and it produces only basic code with no functional parts. The company has various ideas of how to develop it further but wants to hear from real designers and developers where to focus its development efforts. Some obvious directions are supporting a greater range of interface elements and producing more functional code; one can easily imagine how it could, for example, identify login screens and automatically plumb in authentication workflows
Is this going to make a bunch of high tech front end coding jobs obsolete? Yikes I didn't see that aspect of automation killing jobs coming. One usually thinks of laborious repetitive tasks as being victim to automation but it looks like no one is safe.
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this will make the sketch designing more enjoyable and easy
thanks for sharing this with us
That's pretty slick. Its not going to take jobs away because people still need to draw this.lol
This looks like a very promising project that if implemented correctly will be revolutionary. Thank you for sharing and keeping up the great content.
It amazes me how many of these things are invented in someone's 'garage'.
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