At Agilix Labs where I am working, we are about to introduce the second
generation of our GoBinder product. GoBinder is a “digital
notebook” or “digital planner”. It provides a variety of contact
management and binder/organizer functionality. Our second
generation is a major rewrite of the product as we are moving
completely to a “plug-in” architecture. With these changes we
will open up GoBinder to unlimited extensions and possibilities.
Now Agilix, and any developer, can create new tabs (or pages) within
GoBinder that will provide new functionality. In fact, all of the
existing GoBinder functionality has been rewritten as plug-ins … so
GoBinder itself is truly becoming like an empty binder, providing the
basic structure to load and run plug-ins which provide all of the
end-user value. I am really looking forward to the completion of
this version as it will open GoBinder as a true platform for
educational, business, and entertainment plug-ins.
While reading on-line I came across this great article by one of the
members of the Eclipse project. It is about plug-in
architectures and many of the issues that have to be dealt with.
It’s a great primer for anyone wanting to learn more about software
plug-ins and plug-in architectures.