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XMLUI

blog.jonudell.net

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181–190 of 345 posts

Re: XMLUI

#181

Post by hdjrudni »

thisislife2 wrote: post #23

Seems like we keep reinventing the wheel - the previous version of of HTML, XHTML ( eXtensible HyperText Markup Language ) is a direct subset of XML. Also, related - Mozilla Firefox used to have something called XUL ( XML User Interface Language - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL - using which you could build complete desktop web applications with the Firefox / Gecko web engine (something that is now popular with th…

Don't forget XSLT. Worked directly in the browser. I only found out because the battle.net StarCraft page was made using it and I just happened to find it while poking around.

Re: XMLUI

#182

Post by mnafees »

mentos wrote: post #155
mnafees wrote: post #64

I wrote Qt C++ for 7 years as an open source contributor to KDE. This reminds me of QtWidgets’ .ui files—custom XML files following a specific schema. Later, Qt introduced QML, which I personally found unintuitive, and over time I lost interest in Qt altogether. That said, I still think XML for UI definitions makes sense, and it’s understandable that some larger environments continue to use it.

I believe the Blizzard game launcher uses QT? Blizzard to me has always had the best execution of UI in their software/games. Curious if there are any Qt projects you’d single out as being great?

I didn't know Blizzard uses Qt! In terms of some good Qt apps, VirtualBox remains my favorite.

Re: XMLUI

#184

Post by _micheee »

This reminds me of XForms and its fully declarative approach. It allowed you to add interactivity to your HTML without writing code.

Re: XMLUI

#185

Post by nosioptar »

criddell wrote: post #16
yoz-y wrote: post #8

As a programmer I found that all no-or-less-code approaches break up sooner than one would expect. Eventually I chosen to always use the programming language itself for data fetching, looping and leave the templating (lit html in my case) to just passing in the data structures.

I've also seen examples that are pushed way further than I thought possible. I'm thinking about some of the things people do in Excel.

I took a graphics programming class where one dude did a bunch 3d rendering stuff in excel.

Rather than try to understand, I decided he was into witchcraft.

Re: XMLUI

#186

Post by refulgentis »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #88
thisislife2 wrote: post #23

Seems like we keep reinventing the wheel - the previous version of of HTML, XHTML ( eXtensible HyperText Markup Language ) is a direct subset of XML. Also, related - Mozilla Firefox used to have something called XUL ( XML User Interface Language - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL - using which you could build complete desktop web applications with the Firefox / Gecko web engine (something that is now popular with th…

I don’t think this is a reinvention of XHTML. It’s definitely closer in spirit to XUL, but seems different enough still that I wouldn’t call it reinvention. What seems particularly novel about this is that it’s taken the compositional approach of modern UI component libraries, and distilled it down to units of composition that can express a lot of behavior and logic declaratively . At least at a glance, that’s an imp…

I'm curious, not talking down: would you be interested in sharing your age and/or years of experience coding, and if you're feeling very generous, the languages youve written code in for more than 2+ years?

I'm 37, 17 years full-time-ish, VB6, ObjC, Java, Dart.

I'm asking, I guess, because I feel like I've seen these concepts before in pre-iOS ObjC, and Java, and IIRC a good chunk of the late 90s and early 00s was obsessed with doing this stuff in XML.

I barely remember, in my hobbled, probably incorrect, perception the ideas are old enough to that I am a bit flummoxed at how to interlocute with the idea that they're novel breakthroughs.

I'm ashamed to admit I thought the page was parodying this concept from back then of anything + XML = awesome. Im admitting it to give a concrete sense of how my subconscious processed this as settled territory.

Re: XMLUI

#187

Post by mike_hearn »

hn8726 wrote: post #126
jeroenhd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Compose took over as the new direction for Android app development, the Android Studio designer IDE had a very VB6-style designer where you could drag and drop components, while the underlying UI files were all XML based. The callback generation wasn't as easy as with VB, and different phone sizes meant you had to deal with resizing (which VB applications usually just didn't bother with), but the experience wa…

> Before Compose took over as the new direction for Android app development, the Android Studio designer IDE had a very VB6-style designer where you could drag and drop components, while the underlying UI files were all XML based. It's important to note that pretty much nobody used the visual designer though. The resulting xml was pretty terrible, writing the UIs manually (in xmls, while looking at preview) was infin…

That's just Android though. A good example of doing this well is JavaFX with Scene Builder. The XML corresponds to the UI tree 1:1 and the designer makes XML that looks hand written (or vice-versa). FXML is also a pretty intuitive schema and there's a dialect of CSS intended for UI that I find more intuitive than web CSS.

Re: XMLUI

#188

Post by hermitcrab »

mnafees wrote: post #180
hermitcrab wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us are still programming in Qt using just C++ and .ui files. Never bothered to switch to QML. I wasn't convinced there were enough advantages to make it worth the effort.

Hah, that is awesome. How does Qt fare these days in the non-Linux world though?

Good on Windows. Pretty good on Mac, but never quite looks 100%. Not sure how well Qt is going to cope with macOS 26 style transparency though.

Re: XMLUI

#189

Post by nzoschke »

Looks neat!

As humans augmented with agents write more code, solutions that require less context shifting to get stuff done will win.

A common web stack may include API handlers, OpenAPI spec, generated TypeScript definitions, generated TypeScript client, React logic and effects code, TSX code, HTML, and CSS.

This generally needs filesystem watchers, code generators, transpilers, compilers to get stuff done.

Something that can go from a backend handlers straight to terse markup for reactive UI would be a massive simplification to all this, and a big productivity boost.

Re: XMLUI

#190

Post by art0rz »

ttul wrote: post #163
thisislife2 wrote: post #23

Seems like we keep reinventing the wheel - the previous version of of HTML, XHTML ( eXtensible HyperText Markup Language ) is a direct subset of XML. Also, related - Mozilla Firefox used to have something called XUL ( XML User Interface Language - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL - using which you could build complete desktop web applications with the Firefox / Gecko web engine (something that is now popular with th…

I spent an unhealthy number of hours working in XUL in 2000-2001 working on the Komodo editor, which, bizarrely, used Firefox as its GUI platform. XUL was neat, but oh god so complicated. XML was the new hotness around the peak of the DotCOM era and Mozilla’s use of XML for a GUI framework fit the zeitgeist.

Komodo was my favorite editor. There weren't many editors at that point in time that had great Perl support.
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