[whatwg] about rich internat applications

[Jose Dinuncio]

El mié, 09-06-2004 a las 09:33, Didier PH Martin escribió:
> Hi Jose,
> 
> > In my ideal enviroment, the browser downloads a XML doc with a full
> > description of the UI of the app (is it XForms good enougth for a
> > modern, generic desktop interface?), it can handle the basic interaction
> > with the user (tooltips, status bar, etc.), and the real work is done in
> > the server (XMLRPC, SOAP).
> > 
> 
> good point. XForms is very limited for the moment. Let's say I want to
> define a web app as the following:
> http://www.netfolder.com/pdml/webtop/HTML%20Editor/
> 
> (caution: for the moment, it works only in IE, I am porting it to Mozilla).
> 
> The edited content is an XML document transformed into an HTML formatted
> content with an XSLT (for easy editing).
> 
> So the goal is to edit this XML content using a web app document.
> 
> Questions:
> A) How to define a menu bar?
> B) How to define a control bar?
> c) How to define a status bar?
> 
> In XUL or XAML, there are some constructs to do it, any suggestions?
> 

Why not just 

<hlayout>

  <hbox>
    <menubar>
      <menu title="F_ile">
        <option>Save</option>
        ...
      </menu>
    </menubar>
  </hbox>

  <hbox>  
    <controlbar><button img="bold.gif"/>...</controlbar>
  </hbox>

  ...

  <hbox>
    <statusbar/>
  </hbox>

<hlayout>


Actually, this is the way in which some GUI builders like Glade and QT
Designer store the View of the applications.

Why should we use <table/> to store the layout of controls? It is not
flexible enought. Why to use html to describe a window app? It is *not*
html. A nice way to go is to define a language/DTD for this specific
task in the same way that there is docbook to define papers, or svg for
vector graphics. The implementation of such language would be simpler
that svg.

Web applications shouldn't be tied to tables, forms and html. I see web
apps more like client/server apps using http to send the interface and
to comunicate state changes.


-- 
Jose Dinuncio <jdinunci at uc.edu.ve>
Universidad de Carabobo