Tom Sawyer Software (News – Alert), a provider of software for building high-performance data visualization and social network analysis applications, recently launched the new version of Tom Sawyer Perspectives. The fifth version of the solution will offer HTML5 rendering for web-based applications and boasts of a new feature in the form of rule-driven Google (News – Alert) Maps views, enabling web-based applications to represent data logically and geographically. Other new features include a new link navigation tool in HTML5 web-based applications and Apple (News – Alert) Mac OS X full screen support.

Tom Sawyer Perspectives enables teams to quickly develop production-quality data-oriented visualization applications. Developers use two graphic modules — the Designer and Previewer — to build applications around the specific types of data that drives each project. Using the Designer, they define schema, data sources, bindings, drawing templates, views, filters, and searches and specify flexible rules for the visual representation of the data.

Developers can also use the Designer to create context menus and to specify custom toolbars, tooltips, and graphical viewing and editing behaviors. With the Previewer, developers can iteratively view the application design without needing to recompile. When used together, the Designer and Previewer provide an efficient round-trip process that dramatically speeds up application development.

"The software industry has eagerly awaited high-quality graph visualization and analysis implemented with the latest HTML5 technology. Our graph visualizations are beautifully rendered and leverage the standards-based capability of the HTML5 canvas to support rich graphical content without relying on browser plug-ins or Java applets," said Brendan Madden, CEO, in a statement.

Tom Sawyer Perspectives applications can be designed without consideration of the deployment architecture. After the application is designed, it can be deployed to desktop, applet, and Web Start applications, AJAX thin-client image-mapped graphics applications that do not require plug-ins, to HTML5 Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) — providing interactive client-side graphics and reducing server loads.

In addition, this "design once" approach is built to support the Apple iPad and iPhone, Google Android tablet and mobile phone applications, native Microsoft (News – Alert) Windows and .NET web views, Microsoft Windows Mobile, and Microsoft Windows 8 on tablets.