Longtion Application Builder Free Edition

Designed as the free edition of Longtion Application Builder, this is an advanced software application that comes equipped with the necessary tools to help you create database programs with minimum coding experience. It has a built-in IDE and support for drag-and-drop, thus enabling you to quickly design and distribute software packages.

Before proceeding any further, you should know that this is an old tool that hasn't been updated for a long time, and it's not compatible with newer Windows editions. You can still use it on older versions, though, like XP.

After a fast and uneventful setup procedure, you are greeted by a large window that has several embedded panes which let you create and manage application forms, edit properties, and preview results.

It's possible to add as many forms as you want, as well as to customize form parameters when it comes to the form name, caption, icon, border icons and style, window state, position on the screen, margins, topmost status, transparency, font type and color, background image or color, along with the gradient style and color.

Other form properties revolve around the alpha level, fade effect, menu bar items, status bar panel, font, font color and height, cursor, hint, popup menu, left and top position, together with width and height, among other aspects. It's possible to duplicate or delete forms, change their order in the database, and preview them.

New database connections can be created by specifying a name, type, connection, timeout and login prompt. Longtion Application Builder lets you inspect tables, disconnect from a database, or customize the grid size and background color. The project can be saved to file and later resumed, as well as quickly compiled and run.

There were no kind of stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that the program didn't hang, crash or display error messages. Surprisingly, it left a small footprint on system resources consumption, running on low CPU and RAM. Too bad that Longtion Application Builder hasn't been updated for a long time, though.