[aantix]

So, in order to layout an interface you programmatically create it? And so a designer has to learn yet another language for layout?

We made the mistake of adopting GWT a while back and it's been nothing but headaches.

Now instead of the designers being able to directly design in HTML (which they all have a familiarity of), they're required to download our entire project, edit the layout classes, recompile, just to see their work.

We've tried to have the developers take the designers mockups and translate them into working code, but the app seems to lose that designer "touch" in the process.

Designers need to be able to work with a familiar canvas.

[wmf]

In Cocoa you use Interface Builder to "draw" the UI. Does Cappuccino have its own IB equivalent?

BTW, do desktop GUI apps have non-programmer designers?

[bmj]

BTW, do desktop GUI apps have non-programmer designers?

Well, not non-programmers, but programmers who know the particular layout libraries of the platform better than the programmers writing the data access layer, for example. I'm not saying this is universally true, but when I worked for a larger team focuses on a single product, that's pretty much how it worked.

[andreyf]

In Cocoa you use Interface Builder to "draw" the UI. Does Cappuccino have its own IB equivalent?

I was under the impression that part of the point of copying cocoa was that you can use the Cocoa IB to make Cappuccino UIs, also. I would be cool, but I might be wrong.

[tlrobinson]

We've got a couple things we're working on to address this. There's already some hints in the public repository... (look for stuff about "NIB"s)

[aristus]

I agree about Google Web Toolkit. GWT is, at best, a way for hidebound Java programmers to feel comfortable making interfaces for the web. I have not looked at Obj-J very closely, but it seems like the same thing: a way to give Mac programmers a way to express themselves comfortably on the web. Encouragingly it looks a lot more fluid than a Java mudball.

It may also be a better and more compact way to build "rich" web apps, but that remains to be seen.

[alabut]

"it seems like the same thing: a way to give Mac programmers a way to express themselves comfortably on the web."

As a designer, every time I've seen Obj-J, I've thought about it being possibly useful as a bridge in the other direction: as motivation to learn Cocoa and go from the web to desktop and iphone.

I've been interested in developing native OS X apps for a while but haven't had the time or inclination to pick up a set of skills that are parallel and disconnected from web development, so finally being able to develop in a similar language for multiple platforms is very enticing.

Personally, I wouldn't mind letting go of the html/css if I could get pixel perfect precision in a different manner (can you get do that with Cappuccino?) that would also translate across platforms. I don't care about recycling skill sets - it's not like I can 1) use stylesheets on native apps today, other than for gimmicky crap like Dashboard widgets, or 2) will forget the html/css that's been hammered into my brain over the years, especially since I'll still be using it for informational and content-centric websites as opposed to web apps.

[johnyzee]

That's because a GWT app is not a web page. It's an application. In order to create a GUI for it you will need to be able to work with components and events, the same way you construct a desktop application, which was always the domain of programmers.

I assume Cappucino is targeting the same type of next generation web applications.

[alabut]

"And so a designer has to learn yet another language for layout?"

I've pretty much had to do that already to work with Flash. That's been a pretty limiting sandbox - we've been hearing "next year is the year Flash finally goes big on mobile and desktop" for a few years now, even from my buddy at Adobe on the Flash Light team - so I'm much more motivated to pick up a parallel set of skills for something that would be actually useful in the present day for something other than web development.

[trapper]

There is a GWT project for this very purpose (html template), but it's as simple as RootPanel.get(id) to get an element from a page. What's so hard about that? It works just like wicket.

[yan]

COBOL was a familiar canvas at one point.

[mikeryan]

Designers were writing COBOL?

[jamongkad]

So was Fortran but I don't see anyone building web frameworks on top of it.