Hello, allow me to highlight Michael Gloegl's blog story titled "XML is not ‘more managable’".
Here we go: Some time ago I encountered a really strange statement from somebody advocating XUL/HTML. He said that he thinks XUL/HTML is a great idea, because ‘it makes it easier to manage situations where multiple customers all want different customization of the GUI’. His reasoning was that ‘if you do it in Java, you’d have to manage multiple versions of the same class file, which is a pain in the ass’. Well I agree that this is a pain in the ass. But using XUL/HTML, does it really make the situation any better? Instead of multiple different versions of a java file, you now have multiple different versions of a XUL/HTML document. Wow great, and those multiple versions don’t have to be managed anymore? If you can just modify the XUL/HTML files once, and then leave them at the customer and just update the java files, well you can do just the same thing with classes. But the fact is that the customer will want to have more GUI customizations, and even more important, your core API will change over time when releasing new versions, and the old XUL/HTML files will no longer match the core API. Just a quick insertion: This is not XUL/HTML bashing. XUL/HTML might be the best thing since sliced bread, or it might be total crap (I rather tend towards the later opinion), this is not really the case here. What I really can’t stand anymore are those people who thing just moving things to an XML file makes it magically more ‘customizable’ or ‘manageable’. So in fact by introducing an additional layer of indirection, you have gained nothing and instead added another possible point of failure and another framework to learn for the developers. In fact if you have parts of an application which are required in many different versions, and can’t be guaranteed to be stable forever, you are in for a huge happy life anyway, no matter if it is a Java class or an XML document. There are a huge number of cases where recreating features of a programming language in XML just doesn’t make sense. I really wish those people would focus more on designing better APIs and less on XMLisation of everything. Source: http://www.gloegl.de/blog/archives/xml-is-not-more-managable Well, if Michael thinks it doesn't matter if your UI is using Java or XML I challenge you to recreate your blog story page using Java Swing and see if you can match the (X)HTML+CSS combo. If you're still not convinced why not try to recreate lets say the Amazon.com frontpage using Java Swing online @ http://www.amazon.com for some more insight? Or why do you think is Sun's frontpage @ http://www.sun.com not a full-page Java applet? Do you see why Java is irrelevant and why a REST-style XML format beats an API anytime? - Gerald ------------------- Gerald Bauer XUL Alliance | http://xul.sourceforge.net United XAML | http://xaml.sourceforge.net The Thinlet World | http://thinlet.blog-city.com ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by Black Hat Briefings & Training. Attend Black Hat Briefings & Training, Las Vegas July 24-29 - digital self defense, top technical experts, no vendor pitches, unmatched networking opportunities. Visit www.blackhat.com _______________________________________________ xul-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xul-talk
