Lazycoder

IBM Reflexive User Interface Builder

alphaWorks : IBM Reflexive User Interface Builder

i’ve had this link floating in my ‘drafts’ folder for a while. Not sure what to really say about it since I haven’t played with it much. It’s an interesting idea that I’ve been kicking around since I discovered XML way back when. The idea of using XML markup to generically define an interface. But instead of directly translating that markup into a graphical UI, running the markup through a code generator that will create the UI definition code in any language you want. The problem with this is that it’s limited to the Java platform.

What I’d like is to be able to define a UI in markup and then translate that markup to UI code for any language I choose. So if I want to output a DHTML front end for a web site and have the same UI done in Java and Visual C++/VB.NET I could. I first thought of this as a way of making cross-platform development easier and more developer friendly. Since the hardest part of creating a cross-platform application is usually the UI, this would ease the pain somewhat. Maybe make it go away all together.