Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Automatic file backup UI design

Here's what I'm thinking. The back utility GUI will be a simple window with a text area that contains a list of file paths. There will be start and stop buttons, an interval for a timer in seconds, and a field with a destination path.

When the timer is started the backup utility will examine each file that is specified in the text area and collect modification date and time. Later when the timer ticks we will check them again to see if any of them has changed. If even one of the files is different we will back them up as a set.

To perform the backup the program will take the destination path and use it to create a unique folder by adding a number to it. Then it will copy all the files into newly created folder.

There will also be a status area in the window where the user will be kept informed about backup activities.

The configuration for the backup utility will be stored in a file. When the program is started it will be loaded and displayed in the GUI, and there will be a save button to save the configuration back to the configuration file.

More than likely this design will evolve as we actually build the program code.

Here is the beginning of our program, just the GUI code to start.

WindowWidth = 560
WindowHeight = 460
statictext #main, "Files to backup:", 5, 5, 94, 20
texteditor #main.listOfFiles, 5, 26, 530, 95
statictext #main, "Destination folder:", 5, 132, 107, 20
textbox #main.destination, 115, 127, 420, 25
statictext #main, "Backup interval in seconds:", 5, 157, 163, 20
textbox #main.interval, 170, 152, 100, 25
button #main.save,"Save",[save], UL, 495, 152, 42, 25
button #main.start,"Start",[start], UL, 5, 187, 75, 25
button #main.stop,"Stop",[stop], UL, 90, 187, 70, 25
statictext #main, "Backup status log", 5, 217, 106, 20
texteditor #main.statusLog, 5, 237, 530, 160
menu #main, "Edit"
open "Backup Utility" for window as #main
wait