[Dev] User interface

[Jack Bell]

Michael Bernstein said:
> I'm not sure that that XUL's advantage is as large as you seem to think,
> since (if I understand correctly) Chandler will most likely be using
> wxPython rather than wxWindows directly, and there is a project to make
> wxPython at least as accessible to Joe Superuser as VB is
> (http://pythoncard.sourceforge.net/).

Ya, I saw Pythoncard some time back and it was pretty cool, if not yet 
complete. It still doesn't give you built-in themes though, so you will have 
to roll that into the product if you want it. And it doesn't reduce the need I 
mentioned before to create a strong MVC functional separation. It just means 
you use the same programming language on the View as elsewhere, admittedly a 
good thing. Especially if it gets more people using Python. But more people 
*know* Javascript right now.

Michael Bernstein also said:
> The main difference between XUL and wxWindows is that a XUL app will
> look exactly the same on every platform, whereas wxWindows uses the
> native widgets on each platform.
> 
> Depending on the scenario, this is either good or bad.

Exactly. I was thinking in terms of allowing themes as well, which some (many) 
[most] UI gurus think are *evil*. Personally I like them and I would point out 
that products that allow themes tend to achieve greater market penetration 
than products that do not. Of course I don't have hard numbers for this, so 
feel free to contradict me with facts.

<SNIPPERS>

Michael Bernstein finally intoned:
> Similarly, if you are designing a brand new UI widget type, XUL makes
> this easier, as you don't have to create a new 'native widget' for each
> supported platform.
> 
> I suppose the OSAF designers such as Andy Hertzfeld would know whether
> they intend to do anything like that.

That is the part that I really like about XUL: Basically, if I can do it in 
DHTML or Flash -- and I can do damn near anything with them -- it is 
automagically cross platform. I have often had users complaining about UI's 
built from standard widgets who would point to some web page and say "Why 
can't you make it look like that?" But the same users would complain about the 
limitations a true web UI would introduce (such as modality and clumsy record 
selection). XUL lets me break those barriers and I am seriously considering 
using it in the future for those reasons. Mind you, I am often hired to work 
in all-MS shops and I don't get to choose the dev environment.

However, and this is where things might get really interesting, perhaps we can 
have the best of both worlds? Once again I will bring up the strong MVC 
separation, given that and given that we can embed a Gecko window onto a 
Pythoncard app (with full control of the DOM from and DOM events raised to the 
Pythoncard app), I can use the Gecko window for part of the UI, but only where 
appropriate. And I get to use Python instead of Javascript -- a win win. Any 
ideas about that? Is that in the wind for Pythoncard? Perhaps via this project?

Jack William Bell