Re: XML/XSL on the client for dynamic UI

Subject: Re: XML/XSL on the client for dynamic UI
From: "Dale Asberry" <rdasberry@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 06:45:59 PDT
I've not really investigated beyond just a quick glance, but isn't XUL (eXtensible User-interface Language) supposed to support these ideas? I'm not sure if this is true, but I remember reading that the Mozilla group is strongly considering using XUL to define the browser interface. Anyone else see anything along these lines?

Dale

On Tue, 26 Oct 1999 12:05:05 +0100 (CET), Olivier said:

Apart from the capability of applying XSL style sheets on the server to provide the client with HTML pages dynamically created from an XML source, I'm currently trying to explore the capability of a more integrated XML/XSL couple on the client itself to provide the user with a powerful user interface.

The goal is quite simple, actually heritated from the
experience of traditional client-server applications for
which the link between data (in an RDBMS for instance) and
presentation (the UI front-end) has always been quite messy to
maintain (well, on the projects have been involved in, at
least) especially for data intensive application (the user is
having a lot to input) :
This goal would be to maintain on the client the XML data and
always automatically bind it with the forms used for the data
input. No need for an extra layer of binding, the data in
XML leaving the client browser is ready to be inserted in the
backend database for instance.

For this, I've been exploring two things so far:

  - XML on the client with an HTML page containing DSO data
    bindings of the HTML tags to the related XML elements.
    It works fine for prototyping but I'm having a concerned
    for the maintainability and the fact that the DSO is a
    Microsoft thing maybe not to be expected as a standard
    (anything like this in Mozilla too?)

  - A generic HTML page, and two data islands, one pointing
    to the XML data, one to an XSL sheet in charge of
    building the HTML forms dynamically on the client. Every
    time a field is modified, an onblur event is triggered,
    the XML is updated and the XSL stylesheet is applied
    again, regenerating the updated HTML front-end. It is
    interesting except for such basic UI things such as the
    focus on the next UI element which is lost, etc...
    XSL was sounding promising but maybe not now for such a
    purpose...

It is very difficult to find pointers on information going
into this direction so far. Has anybody the same kind of
interest, and would be interested in starting a discussion
group on this matter? Any feedback on the idea above? Anybody
working on such a way of building data intensive client UI and
applications exchanging data between a client user and a server?

Thanks,

Olivier.

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