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Table of Contents | Markup Tutorial | Interfacing with Java™ | Web Services |
 Getting Started |
eNode has defined a powerful and flexible markup language for describing user interfaces of interactive web applications — much like HTML is a language for describing web pages. The language is designed to describe complex user interfaces and related collections of objects as completely as possible using a declarative XML-based syntax.
More Control Over User Interface
| The advantages of using HTML to describe user interfaces for browser-based clients
are well-known. However, in the final analysis, HTML is still a language for
describing web pages, not for describing user interfaces —
It takes a lot of low-level code to describe even commonly used controls, and many
types of controls just cannot be described in HTML without the support of Java™
applets or other kinds of active objects. But while browser clients at least have the option of using Java applets to get around the limitations of HTML, Java clients have no real alternatives when it comes to describing user interfaces in a markup language. The markup language defined by eNode fills this conspicuous hole left open by the Java platform, and gives you more control over your application’s user interface than is possible with HTML. |
Describing and Realizing Objects
Your markup data may be authored using a simple text editor or standard XML editing tools, or they may be generated dynamically through servlets or Java Server Pages.
An application can manifest or reconstruct objects described in markup using eNode Object Realizer. Although you can use a markup language to describe components defined by the Java platform, it is not a substitute for Java any more than HTML is a substitute for Applets and JavaScript.
Dynamic Object Composition
User interface descriptions written in Java are frozen at compile time, whether they are hand-coded, or generated by RAD tools. By realizing objects from markup that may be generated at run time, eNode Object Realizer brings unprecedented dynamic behavior and personalization to Java applications. Additionally, the choice of XML as the language for describing objects, opens up new possibilities with XSL Transformations and other emerging standards based upon XML.
A markup language is great for dynamic object composition. The language makes it very easy to mix and match loosely coupled components to create intricate designs that would be difficult and relatively expensive to develop using other methodologies. For situations where you would rather use precompiled classes, the language provides pervasive support for substituting any API-compatible class for an element’s realized form directly in the markup.
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