Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

XMLUI

blog.jonudell.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 345 posts

Re: XMLUI

#71

Post by majewsky »

djha-skin wrote: post #61
efitz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All abstractions break down. The more the e difference in in expressivity or complexity between the abstraction and whatever it abstracts, the faster it breaks down.

I don't agree. Rather than breaking down, abstractions in UI have stabilized and centralized. Everyone uses React.

React is not an abstraction, it's a framework. The core abstraction is "a component takes data only from its parent, and only passes data back up through provided callbacks". The exact spot where this abstraction breaks down is whenever you need to use a hook.

Re: XMLUI

#72

Post by CharlesW »

franze wrote: post #55

Those who do not understand (or remember) XUL are forced to reinvent it. see https://www-archive.mozilla.org/xpfe/xui.html

If XMLUI is a reinvention of XUL, then XUL* is just a reinvention of the many XML-based UI markup languages before it.

* Fun fact: XUL was conceived at Netscape. Mozilla adopted it for XPFE.

Re: XMLUI

#74

Post by rzzzt »

djha-skin wrote: post #63
criddell wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In 2010 I was working for a student computer support shop. We had web developers building our own ticketing system. In those days, I was told that everything in the UI was just tables. It was the only way they could get enough control on UI elements before div tags became widely spread.

Also 1x1 pixel spacer GIFs.

Re: XMLUI

#75

Post by majewsky »

cheschire wrote: post #3

No mention of XSLT? Feels like it would be highly relevant since many folks have not considered transforming or styling XML since those days, and would be interested in understanding the huge leap from that to this. And given Jon Udell has written about XSLT before[0], I'm sure this was an intentional decision. Not sure I understand it though. 0: https://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/08/13/udell.html

Every time I've seen XSLT deployed, it was "that one hairball that no one besides the original author dares to touch". I'm not sure what it is about the technology, but it seems to either inevitably desolve into a complex mess or attract complexity fetishists. Either way, not something that would be an obvious choice for what OP is going for.

Re: XMLUI

#77

Post by leptons »

cheschire wrote: post #3

No mention of XSLT? Feels like it would be highly relevant since many folks have not considered transforming or styling XML since those days, and would be interested in understanding the huge leap from that to this. And given Jon Udell has written about XSLT before[0], I'm sure this was an intentional decision. Not sure I understand it though. 0: https://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/08/13/udell.html

>No mention of XSLT?

Nope, but they sure had to make 1/2 the content about "AI" (otherwise nobody would read it?).

Re: XMLUI

#79

Post by fghorow »

greatgib wrote: post #42

The author is probably too young to have experienced the crap of XML based interface. Like XUL and co. But with another stack, I miss how good and easy it was to do great interfaces with Delphi in the good old time!

Ummm, errr. Jon Udell[1] was a columnist for Byte (RIP) magazine. He has been around a looooooong time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Udell

Post reply on HN