Re: is xul a html replacement or a gui layout dialect

My observation on the topic is as follows.

First, it makes perfect sense to have a markup specification with 
complete round-trip engineering, revisioning, updating.

The question is this. If this mark-up describes a skin, should you not 
have a really good skin builder to build and test the skin? Is not a 
visual builder the essential work product to offer the cognitive 
interface builder? Does the event model (delegation, inline, etc) bind 
the skin to a specific toolkit?

-Lane

Eitan Suez wrote:

> hi denis,
>
>   here is my opinion on the subject:
>
>    relative to today's common practice of designing
>    html-based web applications, i believe that
>    xul web apps has the potential to really improve
>    things.  i think so far it has been mostly untapped.
>
>    xul provides the following things that
>    html does not that make it a much better
>    candidate for building web/markup-based applications:
>
>     a. application-like ui layout semantics (html follows
>      a document-style layout)
>     b. very rich widgets
>
>    one can hardly tell apart xul-constructed guis from
>    ones that are built the more 'traditional' fashion
>    (the hard way: by hand).
>
>    where i see xul falling short is in not addressing
>    web forms.  it doesn't mean that one can't do forms
>    with it.  it only means that more work is necessary
>    for javascript to bundle the various pieces of
>    information into a form in order to make a remote
>    procedure call.
>
>    i'm no expert on luxor, but what i like about luxor
>    is the realization that markup-based construction of
>    a ui is much easier and possibly more maintainable
>    than doing it by hand.. and that this has nothing to
>    do with the web.  that it is possible to write an
>    engine that will automatically translate xul markup
>    into a swing application.  so with luxor one ought
>    to be able to build guis more quickly than using the
>    traditional route.
>
>   i hope i've properly understood/addressed your question.
>
> thanks, eitan
>
> programmer
> austin, texas
>
> denis cardon wrote:
>
>> Hi subscibers,
>>
>> I wanted to get your feeling on the following point : If you look at 
>> xul specs (on xulplanet for example),
>> it seems that it has been designed as a html form
>> replacement, with extensability added (new widgets),
>> using javascript and jsp stype server-side
>> programming.
>>
>> In the luxor style of programming, xul is more a
>> layout engine, which is the way most of the gui xml
>> dialects works nowadays.
>>
>> So do you think the xul jsp type programming really
>> does has some potential or not? Asking this question,
>> I am also thinking in the type of programming model
>> (transport, client-side updates, etc.) that is needed
>> in a high latency network like the web.
>>
>> Hope my questions is clear enough.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Denis
>

-- 
Lane Sharman
Just Do IT, Better.
858-755-2868





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