Editing Options

This section will cover the manual creation of XUI applications. XUI applications can also be generated dynamically and this is covered in the section Dynamic Content Creation

Hand coding

Hand coding XUI applications involves writing the XML for pages, styles, datasets and validations as well as the Java code which implements the UI / business logic. This approach is favoured by many people and the introductory and advanced tutorials provide detailed instructions on how this is done. You will need to download the required version of the XUI runtime libraries that you intend to target. This is a combination of JDK 1.1.8, 1.4 or 1.5 and Swing, AWT or SWT widgets.

Using the visual editors

The are now XUI editors for NetBeans and Eclipse which allow XUI user interfaces to be designed visually in the familiar WYSIWYG manner. Projects are setup using the wizard which guide the developer through their choice of project name, directory, widget set, size, application type, etc and will create the project structure with the correct runtime jar files required by XUI. This can be seen in the editor tutorial step here∞

Components are selected from the component palette in the usual way and dragged and dropped around the page designer. The editor allows for two-way editing of the pages meaning that the developer can edit the pages graphically or by editing the XML. This can be seen in the editor tutorial step here∞

Styles can also be created using the editor and mapped to components in the design view. This process can be view in the editor tutorial step editor tutorial step here∞

Events, navigation, validations, and layouts can also be handled by the XUI editor in order to put applications together rapidly.

XUI Pro offers more advanced editing features such as localization, binding to Hibernate POJOs and generating UIs from database schemas. Examples of how these are automated in the editor as can be seen in the videos here∞ and here∞


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