After spending many years doing GUI development (starting with XWindows, DECwindows, then on to Motif and Java Swing) I was recently given the opportunity to move away from the application space and into the web space. "Build the same application you did with Swing, but make it web based" were the marching orders.
Now, I have to say that UI development seems to have not changed in 25 years. Yes, we got color, a mouse, animation, nicer fonts, etc. but we still create and manage widgets, think object oriented always, and need to put together layouts that adapt to screen sizes. Without even cracking a manual (actually a Google search now!) one can sit in Eclipse and pretty much guess what the method might be for doing something to a widget or for setting up a callback.
...Back to building my Swing app for the web. I was to use a technology called ADF (Oracle's Application Development Framework) with the end product deployed using Weblogic. Being a new Oracle employee, I had no prior knowledge of this technology and found not a lot in the internet about "how to" do things with it, so I decided why not share my findings as I went. My ADF blog was born. In very little time, I was able to start a new complete UI from scratch, taking advantage of templates, css styles, and a lot of code sharing. The complexity came in when trying to model and display data that was stored in our backend database that was "not" a typical RDB conforming data store, but that is a different story for a different day. Let's just say that where many web apps (and non-web apps) fall down is in building a multi-user, concurrent, auto refreshing application where all users coexist in harmony and life is good.
So now I've moved on to a very exciting new startup and was given free rain to "pick" the UI technologies that will be used. Slick, fast, usable, state of the art were the marching orders. After evaluating and comparing Swing, GWT and Flash, GWT was the winner. This blog will follow my adventure into GWT for the first time.
I knew nothing of XWindows/DECwindows and built DECplan, aka Microsoft Project before there was a Microsoft. Then on to Motif based NETarchitect integrated with an ObjectStore backend and is still the "fastest" performing application I have ever worked on. Next came a Swing based networking Control Center and a Virtualization Manager. Last was the ADF based Virtualization Manager and now a GWT set of applications.
I guess starting from drawing lines with X and building menu bars by hand has helped lead me on the path of making UI design and implementation "natural". I'm just wondering what will lead us into a new paradigm and really change the way Gui's are done. Maybe next lifetime.
