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Re: The Browser Wars are Dead! Long Live the Browser Wars!

• To: tblanchard@m...
• Subject: Re: The Browser Wars are Dead! Long Live the Browser Wars!
• From: "m batsis" <mbatsis@n...>
• Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 15:19:37 +0300
• Cc: Paul Prescod <paul@p...>, xml-dev@l..., "Bullard Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Organization: Netsmart S.A., Greece
• References: <DD6AC914-E4E9-11D6-BFB3-0030657E2F34@m...>
• Reply-to: mbatsis@n...
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.2a) Gecko/20020910

tblanchard@m... wrote:
> 
> On Monday, October 21, 2002, at 11:36  AM, m batsis wrote:

>> Java certainly does include behavior although seperation of conserns 
>> is another subject. You may be interested in UIML [1] on that.
> 
> 
> I did mention Java might be an exception - but the implementations have 
> been really lacking in performance.  Honestly, when was the last time 
> you saw a really useful (cr)applet?  

This [1] has been my favorite applet for some time.

> Plus, Java is a good example of how 
> not to do an OO language.

I can do without this argument getting in this thread ;-)


> I looked at UIML and it looks like a bad joke to me.  I can't remember 
> when I've seen something less readable and more complicated that did so 
> little.  So much noise for so little signal.

So little? Reusing UI presentation and logic, including behaviour hooks 
for interaction logic to output to different UI formats such as Swing 
and HTML is lots more that "so little" and I have not seen any contender 
to UIML yet.


> Your later comment about hammers is particularly applicable.  ML's are 
> really poor mechanisms for describing behavior.  They're sort of poor 
> mechanisms for describing relationships (they impose a sort of 
> directional view via the element nesting that is artificial - is artist 
> inside of CD or is CD inside of artist - depends).

XML is a format with hierarchical relationship semantics build-in while 
non-hierarchical relationships can be described easily. And it's a text 
format, not a proprietery representation you cannot send over to your 
partner without tons of documentation and code for him to be able to use it.


>> But XUL and company is by far the most well designed framework I have 
>> some experience with. XBL [2] contains the behavior and provides 
>> almost unlimited extensibility in a flexible approach.
> 
> 
> You ought to spend some time doing WebObjects development.   Because XBL 
> also looks like a mishmash of Java and XML and is overly verbose and 
> unreadable.  I'm not too impressed.

Verbose and unreadable? It's by far the more efficient mechanism I have 
seen in action, it works without compiling enything and it's 
possibilities are unlimited. It also utilizes browser capabilities to 
the maximum. I have nothing more to ask of when it comes to web app UIs. 
I can come up with reusable custom elements representing widjets that 
work instantly, removing the mess of JavaScript code and it's binding to 
elements in the page. I can even come up with custom events, while 
anonumous content is something I could never even hope for.

And it's just JavaScript code in XML; the latter provides all the bindings.


> Examples?  I don't see one.  If I did, I'd use it for developing the 
> latest web based house of cards my client wants.

House of cards? Nope, not me.

[1] http://www.daml.org/sitemap/

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