Profound Logic Software has announced new enhancements to Genie, its visual green-screen modernization tool. Genie modernizes green-screen systems on-the-fly without requiring source code, letting organizations modernize entire applications to a browser interface. Genie also provides sophisticated development tools such as a visual rich internet application (RIA) designer to improve the legacy system’s user interface and functionality. The enhancements in Genie 3.8.0 include a number of back-end changes to increase performance and provide front-end improvements for better usability and easier customization of screens.

One of the most notable back-end changes in this release is the addition of smart caching for screen definition files. This feature allows for increased system performance and reduces response times by storing both individual screen enhancements and screen detection rules locally on the user’s computer. Once these rules and files are initially downloaded and stored by the browser, smart caching uses a custom identification system that can check if cached data is up-to-date and selectively download updates when the cache is not current. The Profound Logic development team also added support for more DDS GUI constructs to allow for DSS elements such as menus, checkboxes, and buttons to be accurately translated from the green-screen to the browser during web-enablement. In addition, a number of new functions were added to Genie’s API library, as well as improvements to Genie's session handling.

Front-end enhancements include the ability to perform inline editing of elements in the visual designer, the addition of property value highlighting for values that have been altered and are being saved to the screen definition file, and improvements to the installer and the administration interface.

A free, 30-day trial of the tool along with an updated development guide is available online at profoundlogic.com.