Did he miss out on something? Yeah. MyXaml.
I also think he is too focused on the whole presentation layer thing and doesn't see the benefits of markup being used to drive generic class instantiation.
It's an uphill battle, getting people to think outside of the box that Microsoft has put over people's heads, it seems.
Marc
Gerald Bauer wrote:
Hello,
Vik David - an independent software consultant from Virgina - has written up a blog story titled "Choosing a UI Markup Language".
Vik writes:
Since HTML isn't enough for our next browser-based UI application, I checked out the alternatives. Several options use XML to describe the UI declaratively. This is not a radically new idea, but it is one that’s finally gaining momentum because Rich Clients Are Making A Comeback and UI programming in general is more API specific than necessary. Although I've looked at Thinlets before, I wanted to consider the competition as well. I grouped them into 4 options (ordered by usage of Java):
- Microsoft’s XAML (no Java) - Macromedia’s Flex (some Java) - Mozilla-backed XUL, pronounced "zool" (optionally very Java) - other Java technologies (all Java)
Great! I see 4 different, some very vendor-specific, ways of doing the same thing. Choose the wrong one now, and you’ll be locked in for the next 5 years or till the next big thing comes along. Maybe so, but it’s a step in the right direction because theoretically, you could port your XML-based UI code from say XAML to XUL using XSLT – probably less time consuming than porting .Net WinForms to Swing. Besides, a lot of API-specific UI code is repetitive and can be better handled declaratively (like HTML, but richer).
It’s hard to do a side-by-side comparison of all 4 options because some are not fully ready yet. Microsoft’s XAML and the accompanying Avalon rendering engine won’t be widely available till the release of Longhorn and not even Steve Balmer will say when that is. If you need to explore XAML right now, try out Xamlon and developer releases of Avalon/Longhorn. What's troubling is, since XAML is accompanied by “a whole new development platform”, is it likely to work on the huge installed based of existing versions of Windows/IE?
In contrast, Macromedia Flex apps work with existing browsers and they're pretty cross-platform thanks to the Flash player and server-side neutrality (.net or J2EE). So Flex offers some java-friendly bait. But then why aren’t Java developers biting? Well, Flex was announced fairly recently, you have to buy a Flex Presentation Server (starting at $12,000) and Java developers must learn a non-Java language for UI logic: ActionScript. Besides, it’s not like the Java camp is lacking in all-Java alternatives (see below).
The third option, XUL, is an XML markup language heavily used in the Firefox browser. Unlike XAML and Flex, XUL has some hard evidence available in the form of Firefox extensions written in XUL. Installing an XUL-based extension was a snap – just right-click download an .xpi file (XPInstall) and Firefox handles the rest. Like Flex, XUL can be used with server-side tools like JSP to build dynamic content. Unlike Flex, but like XAML, XUL's targeted toward applications that also run outside the browser with the help of a runtime environment (Gecko Runtime Environment).
Finally, it’s no surprise that the Java platform
offers the widest set of options for developing your
UI in XML. Java Republic’s recent poll asking
developer’s to rank their Java XML UI toolkit had
user’s listing out several options: Thinlets, Luxor (a
XUL implementation), SwiXml, and JDNC, among others.
Compared to XAML and Flex, the benefits of these
options are: available now, deployable in existing
environments and low-cost to free. These technologies
will see a lot of innovation before standardization so
I'll be checking back on the product vendors of XAML
and Flex to see how they intend to compete with Java's
benefits.
Source: http://vikdavid.typepad.com/fairbiased/2004/08/markup_language.html
Do you agree with Vik's analysis? Has Vik missed out on something? Do you have any advice for Vik? Let us know what you think.
- Gerald
------------------- Gerald Bauer
XUL Alliance | http://xul.sourceforge.net United XAML | http://xaml.sourceforge.net
Interested in hiring Gerald Bauer? Yes, I'm available.
If you know of an opportunity in Toronto or Vancouver, please contact me today.
------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by OSTG. Have you noticed the changes on Linux.com, ITManagersJournal and NewsForge in the past few weeks? Now, one more big change to announce. We are now OSTG- Open Source Technology Group. Come see the changes on the new OSTG site. www.ostg.com _______________________________________________ xul-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xul-talk
------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by OSTG. Have you noticed the changes on Linux.com, ITManagersJournal and NewsForge in the past few weeks? Now, one more big change to announce. We are now OSTG- Open Source Technology Group. Come see the changes on the new OSTG site. www.ostg.com _______________________________________________ xul-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xul-talk
