[Seaside] XUL

[tblanchard at mac.com]

Why do you not use the squeak plugin and write a UI layer for seaside?

On Sunday, May 11, 2003, at 08:41  AM, Stephen Pair wrote:

> Avi Bryant wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 8 May 2003, Stephen Pair wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Has anyone built any applications using XUL (as opposed to HTML...see
>>> http://xulplanet.com for more info)...I'm considering building an
>>> application using Seaside for the server and XUL for the GUI (it 
>>> needs a
>>> richer UI than HTML can provide).  XUL seems like a nice alternative
>>> because it's supported by Mozilla/Gecko and thus runs on any 
>>> platform.
>>>
>>
>> I've never written anything with XUL, but I have played around with 
>> it a
>> bit.  The problem with using it with Seaside is that it's expecting a 
>> very
>> different interaction style - basically you're supposed to load the 
>> entire
>> UI at once, and control it with javascript on the client side.
>> Connections to remote datasources are all done through RDF, which 
>> feels
>> extremely unwieldy and heavyweight.  I did do some experiments in 
>> Seaside
>> 0.9x with abusing XUL widgets as if they were HTML widgets, and 
>> ignoring
>> all the JS and RDF stuff, but ultimately I wasn't very impressed.
>>
>> I do think it would be interesting to try to build an extended thin 
>> client
>> to work with Seaside - something that has the same interaction model 
>> as
>> HTML/HTTP, but fewer limitations in terms of available controls.  I
>> suppose if you built the client in Java or Flash, communicating with
>> Squeak over XML-RPC or some such, it would have almost the same
>> penetration as HTML... but I've never been convinced, yet, that it 
>> would
>> all be worth the effort.
>>
>
> Well, ultimately, I would want the client done in Squeak...my interest 
> in XUL is to get something cross platform working quickly.  All of 
> this stuff (HTML, XUL) is about serializing objects to move to the 
> client, and Seaside's component model is excellent for drawing a 
> boundary between the client and server, and for providing a nice basis 
> for implementing a capability based security model.  Seaside is so 
> useful in fact, that it might be useful even for providing locally 
> running UIs (it might help in the stabiliy of a Squeak UI for example, 
> because you have a clear dividing line between processes that are 
> rendering a UI, and processes that are interacting with the domain).  
> Seasides component hierarchy is effectively a DOM, you could transform 
> that DOM into anything, HTML, XUL, or a morphic world.
>
> - Stephen
>
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