Better GUIs

Every now and then I go and have a look back at Java land. Yesterday I found this blog entry
John O'Conner's Blog: Better GUIs are one step closer.

It's very painful making good layouts in Java. For my last large Java UI project, which was based on porting a large mainframe ISPF application to run as a desktop application on PCs, I ended up implementing a layout and look-and-feel with most of the CSS box model on top of swing. I would have used XUL for it, but it was a Java shop and adding another platform was too political. There already is CSS look-and-feels in Java, so it shouldn't still be an issue getting things lined up right.

Anyway, I tried to do the same thing in XUL, so that it looks like this on a Mac:





source
css

Now, this took a little while while I remembered that you have to specify widths to ensure each flexible box ends up the same size, but the declarative syntax means you don't really need an IDE and a graphical editor, and the full CSS support means you can skin things if you like.

But that's not the real problem. Better guis are not just better aligned guis - they are concerned with user experience. And if you have to produce that amount of code just to align your fields, then you won't be agile enough to respond to your users.


TME