XTech 2005: XML, the Web and beyond.
The past few years have seen the introduction of several declarative XML-based user interface description languages: XAML, XUL, SVG, Flex, and the Laszlo platform for interactive single-page HTML-embedded applications. The Laszlo platform is unique in that it is installation-free on consumer desktop browsers, it has been used for commercial applications (by Earthlink and Yahoo, among others), it is open source as of October 2004, and it allows a novel approach to both the declarative construction of user interface components and their integration into presentations that change state over time.
This paper presents the key features of the Laszlo platform: time-based constraints, first-class states, two-way data binding, and "by example" component definitions. It discusses how these features come together to make it make it possible to create novel user interface components, as well as duplicate standard components such as window and slider with declarations and constraints.
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Oliver Steele
Laszlo Systems, Inc.
Oliver Steele is Chief Software Architect at Laszlo Systems. He leads the design of Laszlo's XML application description language. As Director of the Boston Office, he directs the team responsible for Laszlo's server-based compiler.Steele has extensive experience in software development and project management, particularly in the fields of 2D computer graphics, programming language design and implementation, and development environment tools. Most recently he served as CTO of AlphaMask, Inc., which was recently purchased by OpenWave Systems Inc. At Apple Computer, he was a contributor and project lead in both Computer Graphics and the Dylan Programming Language project. Steele is author of a patent on aspects of his computer graphics work and his programming language work resulted in publications. Concurrently with his graduate work in Linguistics and Computer Science, he was Chief Ontologist at Method Software, Inc, developing software to create conversational agents.