Implementing User Interfaces

• User-event loop---levels of automation
  • Toolkits
  • Application Frameworks
  • Dialog Management
• Interface builders (see Past, present, and future of user interface software tools by B. Myers et al for a survey)
  • Window managers and toolkits
  • Interactive graphical tools (e.g visual basic)
  • Scripting languages (e.g. Python)
  • Hyptertext
  • Object-oriented programming

Discussion questions

• How did toolkits promote consistent design?
• How do OO objects hide the user event loop?
• How do Web OO objects hide the http protocol? Here is a simple ASP.net example with a calendar control (source code).
• Difference between visual editors (e.g. Visual Basic) and code-based layout managers (Java Swing -- code example)