One point I have tried injecting into the GWT community is the importance of fluent APIs. GWT's Java API is currently quite cumbersome for layouts and it seems folks immediately jumped to the conclusion that Java doesn't work and have gone the route of using XML for layouts. I am not against folks that want XML layouts but there are many that feel fluent APIs in Java for layouts will be even more productive Even if you layout your initial UI in XML you are still going to need to modify it dynamically in Java based on various events - so you end up having a eye sore mix.
I put out an example of a fluent API called AxisPanel (search for it) - its not a great implementation - but it pretty much let me layout everything pretty quickly and changed the pace of my GWT development drastically - especially when it came to modifying layouts with new requirements. Speaking for myself - I would like to see more such APIs (and better implementations than my AxisPanel) that folks can rely on as part of the Core GWT. I don't think developers starting a new GWT project would adopt XML layouts if they could fluently layout in Java right alongside the rest of their coding (at-least thats my theory).. Sony On Aug 10, 8:59 am, Arthur Kalmenson <arthur.k...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > We've been playing with UiBinder and I thought it'd be a good idea to > share what we've seen so far (and ask some questions). > > Some of the apps we write are used by more then one hospital and this > requires a tailored UI depending on the user's preferences and to > store additional information that a particular hospital needs to keep > track of. At the moment, writing UI in a swing style, we program to > interfaces and use GIN to bind everything together. Using different > AbstractGinModules and Ginjectors, we can tie the application together > in different ways using different UI implementations. What would be > the way to do this with UiBinder? From what we could tell, one would > use UiTemplate, but there doesn't seem to be a way to configure the > String in UiTemplate easily through a GIN module. Are there > alternatives? > > Following the programming to interfaces theme, we've been doing that > with UiBinder, but have run into an issue when trying to build a > larger UI page out of smaller ui.xml classes. It seems that referring > to interfaces in ui.xml doesn't work, so you need to work with direct > concrete classes. But this would force you to use a particular > implementation when we'd like to keep it generic. > > Lastly, I guess this is something just for consideration for the > future, but having the GEP work with UiBinder would make using it a > lot easier. For example, having code completion, refactoring support > and error messages right in Eclipse. This would be something like the > Spring IDE plugin that one you configure Spring XML files with all the > above features. > > Thanks again for the UiBinder, we'll definitely have to spend more time with > it. > > Best regards, > -- > Arthur Kalmenson --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Web-Toolkit-Contributors -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
