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Mozilla 1.0 ad - that's a parody on an old Netscape 4.7x ad (when Mozilla was already well underway and 4.x horribly outdated).

Free the Lizard! - Beware the Lizard - it has been freed!

The OOUI project tries to realize that.

From Overview:

The idea behind OOUIs is to leave as much of the UI creation as possible to kits on the server side and so to reduce the static information (shipped with the application) to the minimum.

This gives the largest flexibilty to adapt to the user's environment (e.g. computing platform) and preferences.

The OOUI project tries to realize that.

From Overview:

The idea behind OOUIs is to leave as much of the UI creation as possible to kits on the server side and so to reduce the static information (shipped with the application) to the minimum.

This gives the largest flexibilty to adapt to the user's environment (e.g. computing platform) and preferences.

Ben Bucksch (who also works on mozilla) has started a project he calls OOUI. Basically, he hopes to create an abstraction for user interfaces that will allow a high amount of separation between applications and UIs. This will (hopefully) let application developers write programs that will work well on wingui/macgui/console without too much work, and will let users set preferences about how he/she wishes to interact with his/her programs or a specific program (window arrangement, font scaling, voice interaction).

From his overview of the project goals (formatting changed for slashdot):

Legitimation for the existance

The idea behind OOUIs is to leave as much of the UI creation as possible to kits on the server side and so to reduce the static information (shipped with the application) to the minimum.

This gives the largest flexibilty to adapt to the user's environment (e.g. computing platform) and preferences.

Abstraction

To make as less assumptions about the UI implementation as possible, the description of the UI should be very abstract (from the application's point of view). The description should be mostly semantical, because this provides the necessary level of abstraction. Many ideas from object-orientation are used.

This level of abstraction gives the possibility to create very different, unforseeable UIs from the description.

Modularity

Choices

Moving nearly all of the UI out of the application (modularity) gives the user freedom.

E.g. if a user likes the way, the GIMP arranges its windows, he can make all applications behave that way; if he prefers console programs, he just has to switch kits; if he has a true 3D environment, he again just has to get new kits; if he has only his cell phone available, he can still use the same application. Now, that's "portable" :).

Consistency

Because the concrete UIs for all applications are created by the same entity, the OOUI kit, a high level of consistency is reached.

Faster application development

Once the programmer knows how to create OOUIs, the use of them should shorten application development time, even if only one platform is targetted, because there is no need to care about UI implementation details. However, this is just a positive side-effect, not a goal.

A comfortable filemanager similar to Microsoft Windows Explorer could be created in one day. An example diagram (which represents the most important part of the OOUI description) has been developed in 2 hours. When the simple backend code using OS commands is written and some icons and texts are defined, the filemanager is finished.

(end modified quoting from Ben's OOUI overview)

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Ben Bucksch (who also works on mozilla) has started a project he calls OOUI. Basically, he hopes to create an abstraction for user interfaces that will allow a high amount of separation between applications and UIs. This will (hopefully) let application developers write programs that will work well on wingui/macgui/console without too much work, and will let users set preferences about how he/she wishes to interact with his/her programs or a specific program (window arrangement, font scaling, voice interaction).

From his overview of the project goals (formatting changed for slashdot):

Legitimation for the existance

The idea behind OOUIs is to leave as much of the UI creation as possible to kits on the server side and so to reduce the static information (shipped with the application) to the minimum.

This gives the largest flexibilty to adapt to the user's environment (e.g. computing platform) and preferences.

Abstraction

To make as less assumptions about the UI implementation as possible, the description of the UI should be very abstract (from the application's point of view). The description should be mostly semantical, because this provides the necessary level of abstraction. Many ideas from object-orientation are used.

This level of abstraction gives the possibility to create very different, unforseeable UIs from the description.

Modularity

Choices

Moving nearly all of the UI out of the application (modularity) gives the user freedom.

E.g. if a user likes the way, the GIMP arranges its windows, he can make all applications behave that way; if he prefers console programs, he just has to switch kits; if he has a true 3D environment, he again just has to get new kits; if he has only his cell phone available, he can still use the same application. Now, that's "portable" :).

Consistency

Because the concrete UIs for all applications are created by the same entity, the OOUI kit, a high level of consistency is reached.

Faster application development

Once the programmer knows how to create OOUIs, the use of them should shorten application development time, even if only one platform is targetted, because there is no need to care about UI implementation details. However, this is just a positive side-effect, not a goal.

A comfortable filemanager similar to Microsoft Windows Explorer could be created in one day. An example diagram (which represents the most important part of the OOUI description) has been developed in 2 hours. When the simple backend code using OS commands is written and some icons and texts are defined, the filemanager is finished.

(end modified quoting from Ben's OOUI overview)

--

Ben Bucksch (who also works on mozilla) has started a project he calls OOUI. Basically, he hopes to create an abstraction for user interfaces that will allow a high amount of separation between applications and UIs. This will (hopefully) let application developers write programs that will work well on wingui/macgui/console without too much work, and will let users set preferences about how he/she wishes to interact with his/her programs or a specific program (window arrangement, font scaling, voice interaction).

From his overview of the project goals (formatting changed for slashdot):

Legitimation for the existance

The idea behind OOUIs is to leave as much of the UI creation as possible to kits on the server side and so to reduce the static information (shipped with the application) to the minimum.

This gives the largest flexibilty to adapt to the user's environment (e.g. computing platform) and preferences.

Abstraction

To make as less assumptions about the UI implementation as possible, the description of the UI should be very abstract (from the application's point of view). The description should be mostly semantical, because this provides the necessary level of abstraction. Many ideas from object-orientation are used.

This level of abstraction gives the possibility to create very different, unforseeable UIs from the description.

Modularity

Choices

Moving nearly all of the UI out of the application (modularity) gives the user freedom.

E.g. if a user likes the way, the GIMP arranges its windows, he can make all applications behave that way; if he prefers console programs, he just has to switch kits; if he has a true 3D environment, he again just has to get new kits; if he has only his cell phone available, he can still use the same application. Now, that's "portable" :).

Consistency

Because the concrete UIs for all applications are created by the same entity, the OOUI kit, a high level of consistency is reached.

Faster application development

Once the programmer knows how to create OOUIs, the use of them should shorten application development time, even if only one platform is targetted, because there is no need to care about UI implementation details. However, this is just a positive side-effect, not a goal.

A comfortable filemanager similar to Microsoft Windows Explorer could be created in one day. An example diagram (which represents the most important part of the OOUI description) has been developed in 2 hours. When the simple backend code using OS commands is written and some icons and texts are defined, the filemanager is finished.

(end modified quoting from Ben's OOUI overview)

--

Ben Bucksch (who also works on mozilla) has started a project he calls OOUI. Basically, he hopes to create an abstraction for user interfaces that will allow a high amount of separation between applications and UIs. This will (hopefully) let application developers write programs that will work well on wingui/macgui/console without too much work, and will let users set preferences about how he/she wishes to interact with his/her programs or a specific program (window arrangement, font scaling, voice interaction).

From his overview of the project goals (formatting changed for slashdot):

Legitimation for the existance

The idea behind OOUIs is to leave as much of the UI creation as possible to kits on the server side and so to reduce the static information (shipped with the application) to the minimum.

This gives the largest flexibilty to adapt to the user's environment (e.g. computing platform) and preferences.

Abstraction

To make as less assumptions about the UI implementation as possible, the description of the UI should be very abstract (from the application's point of view). The description should be mostly semantical, because this provides the necessary level of abstraction. Many ideas from object-orientation are used.

This level of abstraction gives the possibility to create very different, unforseeable UIs from the description.

Modularity

Choices

Moving nearly all of the UI out of the application (modularity) gives the user freedom.

E.g. if a user likes the way, the GIMP arranges its windows, he can make all applications behave that way; if he prefers console programs, he just has to switch kits; if he has a true 3D environment, he again just has to get new kits; if he has only his cell phone available, he can still use the same application. Now, that's "portable" :).

Consistency

Because the concrete UIs for all applications are created by the same entity, the OOUI kit, a high level of consistency is reached.

Faster application development

Once the programmer knows how to create OOUIs, the use of them should shorten application development time, even if only one platform is targetted, because there is no need to care about UI implementation details. However, this is just a positive side-effect, not a goal.

A comfortable filemanager similar to Microsoft Windows Explorer could be created in one day. An example diagram (which represents the most important part of the OOUI description) has been developed in 2 hours. When the simple backend code using OS commands is written and some icons and texts are defined, the filemanager is finished.

(end modified quoting from Ben's OOUI overview)

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