> ASWing is without doubt GREAT and BEAUTIFUL (iiley, you rule!). But it > would be better if it was possible to create ASWing GUI's with XML...
Olá João.. I have nothing helpful to say about ASWing (i've never used it). But i'd like to take the opportunity to talk about XML-powered GUIs in general. This is something i always wanted to write down and discuss with the Flash community, so here it is. There's a sh*tload of XML dialects for GUIs either available or being developed at the moment. Just to name a very few: Adobes MXML, Microsofts XAML, Laszlos LZX, Netscapes XUL, and from the OSFlash camp ActionSteps ASML (or Renaissance) and ASWings AWML. All of them are proprietary formats (plus most of them are direct projections of the underlying, proprietary APIs), and all of them require some decent amount of script code to be written in order to actually make the UIs work. Problems: to author sophisticated applications i need extensive knowledge of the XML dialect itself, of the API and the scripting language, and probably of the underlying platform API too. For most 'next gen' RIA platforms much of this is proprietary stuff, so i better choose wisely what technology to dive into for the next months/years. I also better be able to think 'code' in order to make my RIA a successful reality. Wouldn't it be nice to develop web applications using open, standardized technologies that everyone is already very familiar with? Let me introduce you to the W3C, and please try to forget about browsers in general and men with white beards wearing birkenstocks in particular for a moment. Contrary to popular belief, the W3C is working on really cool stuff. Some of it you're already very familiar with: (X)HTML and CSS. The *real* cool stuff though are W3C technologies that haven't made it into the mainstream yet (because they aren't supported by mainstream clients, or because they're being worked on yet). I pick two of those technologies and briefly introduce them here, as i think that together with XHTML, they pretty much cover everything a RIA framework needs: XFrames and XForms. XFrames The technology that is supposed to supersede HTML Frames. XFrames of course is going to support framesets as we know (and hate) them today, but there's so much more. Using CSS, frames can be styled to appear as floating windows or tabbed panes for example, and using a new URI scheme it will be possible to easily link not only a frameset but also it's content, example: domain.org/index.xframes#frames(id1=uri1,id2=uri2,...). XForms The technology that is supposed to supersede HTML Forms. XForms is going to significantly change the way we author forms. Basically, it separates the model from view and controller, as you can now have multiple data instances (usually XML, both inline or external) that you can bind controls and widgets to (using XPath). Validation is handled in a purely declarative way via XML Schema datatypes. But again, there's much more, for example: <switch> and <case> to show/suppress parts of the UI (to be used for e.g. wizards, tabbed interfaces or dynamic forms), or <repeat> (to be used for e.g. filling tables with rows, or datagrids, or just about anything UI that repeats itself). Of course everything is styleable by CSS and can be bound to data instances. Sounds familiar? It sure is. And did you know that the latest ColdFusion uses XForms under the hood? Yes it does. If you mix all those technologies mentioned above, and throw in some more, like SVG, SMIL, and maybe even XUL, that'll be my vision of a sane platform for Web 2.0 [sm][tm](c). Ok, Web 3.0 then. A sane platform to develop RIAs on. Don't even get me started ranting about the current state of the web as too many people see it. What the web needs is innovation, not hyped acronyms for old crap, or yet another proprietary markup language. Of course such a framework needs to be developed yet. With the Flash Player 9 in our hands, the great performance boost compared to version 8 and a way better API (minus native text rendering.. still sucks), i'm sure it's absolutely doable. If only somebody with some angel $$ would share my views, or if only everybody would work together with open minds instead of cooking their own soup... We even have a proof of concept, anybody remember DENG? That was Flash Player 6. I'm also writing all this because i think most people misunderstood DENG and see it as a better HTML-enabled TextField or something, or worse, as a HTML browser. It was supposed to be the beginning of an application framework. Of course it's missing A LOT yet to really become one (and of course Flash Player 6 was way too slow to do such stuff), but again, with Flash Player 9 and some likeminded developers, this could become quite a blast. Thanks for listening :) cheers, Claus. _______________________________________________ osflash mailing list [email protected] http://osflash.org/mailman/listinfo/osflash_osflash.org
