We got few queries on "Why does Zoho Creator has got two modes - Edit and Live?" after my previous post on Zoho Creator demo. We replied back each user with our reasons behind it and I thought it would be better to blog it for the larger audience who have not questioned us so far.

Zoho Creator has two kinds of audience using the service. One - the application 'Creator' and the other 'User'. A creator is the one who has a requirement and creates the web application to meet his requirement (for eg: Project Manager who needs to keep track of his projects, creates 'Project Tracker' application) and the user (for eg: team members of the project) is the one who access the application.

There's no doubt that the two activities - creating and accessing need to be closely associated. But I'm not sure they should be done on the same screen. Sometimes, clean demarcation between two tasks - creation and access can make things easy and simple.

So we took up the challenge to design two totally different environment. Edit mode in 'Fresh Green' theme with all the tools and settings to create the application and Live mode for the users to enter the data. In the Live mode user can dress up the application with three different themes - 'Professional Blue', 'Professional Grey' and same 'Fresh Green' theme as of the Edit mode.

Now let me give you brief insight on how Zoho Creator user interface supports two different roles (Creator and User)-

In the edit mode, a creator can:

• Keep both Form and View in one tab or Form on one and View on another
• Display View as 'Table', 'Calendar' or as 'Summary' (we just added it)
• Make the application as public or keep it private among friends
• Share the whole application with friends or just share few tabs
• Generate auto filters or Custom filters with own conditions
• Set, whether others can edit/delete data
• Set, records display per page to 10, 20,....or 100

In the live mode, a user can:

• Enter the data
• View the data
• Manipulate data using filters
• Search among data
• Sort data
• Export data as spreadsheet, html, pdf, tsv and csv formats

We have worked hard to make both the modes 100% obvious and increasing rate of applications created each day proves it just right.

~ Roughic