Two products emerged from MB Technologies in May: Version 3.0 of Bindows, MB's AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) toolkit, and InfiView 1.0, a software platform for developing interactive, dynamic graphical maps and diagrams for the Web. Their commonalities don't end at their release date: InfiView is based on Bindows and thus shares both its strengths and its weaknesses.

The Bottom Line MB Technologies InfiView 1.0 MB Technologies, infiview.com Good  7.4 criteria score weight Capability 8 30% Ease of development 6 30% Documentation 7 15% Performance 9 15% Value 8 10% Cost: Included in the Bindows Enterprise license; otherwise, $195 per developer, plus a deployment license. Enterprise deployment license, $5,000 per server per year. SOA/SaaS license, starts at $25 per user, per year. Free for deployment to free Web sites, with some restrictions Platforms: Any platform with a supported browser: Internet Explorer 5.5 and higher, Mozilla 1.4 and higher, Netscape 7.1 and higher, Firefox, K-Meleon, and Camino Bottom Line: Shops that already develop AJAX applications with Bindows will love the interactive graphical capabilities that InfiView provides. Developers will find that they can fairly quickly create applications that are either minor variations of what the InfiView wizard can produce or that are similar to existing samples. For other applications, InfiView will require a fairly steep learning curve -- plus they'll suffer relatively few development tools. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

Like Bindows -- which Test Center contributor Peter Wayner reviewed last November -- InfiView uses an XML-based markup language with embedded JavaScript that's normally launched from an HTML page. In spirit, this markup language is similar to Microsoft's XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language); it lacks, however, the same level of design and development tool support.

Bindows 3.0 includes unified vector graphics support, producing either SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) or VML (Vector Markup Language) depending on the browser; it also adds charts and gauges. InfiView builds on that foundation with a JavaScript class library that implements viewports, edges, nodes, events, actions, tools, automatic node layouts, and viewport navigators. You can embed any Bindows component in an InfiView application.

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InfiView comes with a wizard that can produce the basic shell of a whole family of Web design applications. If you want to develop a Web page that can be used to design networks or organization charts, the InfiView wizard can give you a credible starting point in a matter of minutes. Adding actions and extending the application is harder and more time-consuming, as you're basically editing XML and JavaScript using generic tools, supported by minimal documentation.

If your application doesn't fit the designer paradigm of an InfiView wizard page, your hope would be that InfiView's developers have supplied something similar as a demo application, which you can copy and modify. Several demos are available on the InfiView site and in the SDK. InfiView has some built-in support for the Google Maps API, but sadly, two demos and a short white paper are currently the only documentation for this.

My biggest difficulty with InfiView came from the relatively immature documentation. I don't mind browsing a class hierarchy, but I would really like an overview of the architecture and a structured introduction to using the classes. I'd also like to see a lot more samples, and better documented ones, at that.

My second biggest difficulty with InfiView came from the lack of tools. I do have several XML editors that I was able to use on InfiView XML files, but I felt "alone and afraid in a world I never made" trying to work with unfamiliar XML tags, namespaces, and JavaScript classes. I found myself yearning for the familiar comforts of Visual Studio or Eclipse and wishing for tag and code completion, not to mention context-sensitive help.

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MB Technologies has worked with JetBrains to provide a Bindows add-on for IntelliJ IDEA. As far as I can tell, IntelliJ IDEA doesn't yet recognize any of the InfiView tags or classes.

I found one bug in my testing: Internet Explorer 7 seems to be incompatible with the JavaScript that launches InfiView 3.0 applications from file URLs, unless you disable native XMLHTTP support. InfiView does work properly with IE 7 HTTP URLs and with Netscape using either kind of URL. I would expect MB Technologies to have a fix for this fairly quickly, as we diagnosed the problem early in my review cycle.

InfiView competes directly with Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flex, and Curl. There are other ways to create RIA (rich Internet application) graphics, based on ASP.Net, Ruby on Rails, and Java EE (Enterprise Edition) with AJAX and graphics extensions.

I would strongly encourage developers who are interested in InfiView to browse through its Web site, play with the demos, and view the screencasts. If it's still of interest, you can arrange for an evaluation of the InfiView Developer's Kit; if that passes muster, you can buy a development license for $195 per developer. Deploying InfiView can be free if you're using it on a free Web site, $5,000 per server per year under an Enterprise license, or $25 per user per year under an SOA/SaaS (software as a service) license.

InfiView could be a strong option for producing interactive Web graphics applications for some shops, especially those already familiar with Bindows. Developers who want to work in a more conventional programming language with better development tools might want to consider other options, such as Silverlight or Curl.