Re: Pointless

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Re: Pointless
by Dominic Chambers on Thursday 25/Mar/2004, @23:41

I have no experience with XAML but I have used XUL to create a non-trivial application. That application turned out to be a failure in many ways, but it did enable me to realise that XUL is a flawed implementation of an otherwise sound idea.

Some people have compared XUL/XAML to Qt but they are not quite the same. I think the difference is more that the two technonogies foster different methodologies. In a Qt or VB type designer you place a widget and set its properties; likewise with XUL.

The end result is somehow different though. The XUL developer creates more widgets since its so easy to do and since it keeps the UI code clean. The XUL developer may also create smart widgets that have environmental awareness so that they change their behaviour dependent upon the widgets around them. This is likely possible in Qt, but it's easier in an XML UI language (XPath dependent methods or layouts, etc) and enables richer functionality to be expressed declarativey, again allowing the main UI code to be kept cleaner.

So the difference is more that the XML UI developer is more acutely aware of the mess he is making to his UI file, and has better tools to create widgets that allow him to express more of that functionality in a purely declarative manner. The disadvantage of this is that re-usable widgets take longer to code, but the advantage is that non-programmers that can understand declarative markup languages can create richer UIs before needing a programmer to take over, since the creation of richer widgets by programmers is more encouraged in the first place.

Just my tupence.

Related Links

·   Articles on Qt
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Re: Pointless
by koos on Friday 26/Mar/2004, @13:28

We've seen this before. Creative WEB designers using Java applets for all kinds of UI enhancements. Applets that came with the designer tools. Big disadvantage was the limitations of HTML and heavyness of Java VM. So we have Flash these days. But interaction between make up language and plugin objects is still poor.
Wonder how this will develop. If designers are able to create fancy looking pages with highly interactive/controlable .net objects (*), that may be the next step in network applications indeed.
(*) objects run in a sandbox, likely companies specialize in selling/sharing these (like with vbx)

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