Towards a native windows GUI

[Marc van Woerkom]

>	1) There were no GUIs
>	2) Some very simple 2-D graphics API's emerged
>	3) Simple GUI's with window, mice, keyboard, 
>  	4) Complex libraries to make programming type 3 
>	5) The libraries became so complicated that nobody 

I muss some stuff:

One of the biggest advances in Windows 95 was the 
introduction of higher quality fonts.
There is obviously a race going on towards a 
graphical quality similiar to that of printed media.
There was Display Postscript on the NeXT,
and the Quartz engine (kind of display PDF) on MacOS X.
For the next Windows generation, there seems something 
similar in the making.

Then Mozilla introduced XUL, where a XML file holds 
information about the various widgets used (that's the
decalarative part) and JavaScript is used to handle
the various events.
This is one of the easiest ways to create GUI
applications! 
The available widgets are enough for most business 
applications.
Look at the JavaScript Debugger (Venkman) or the Chatzilla 
if you want to see what is possible.

A similiar technique is said to be introduced in next
generation Windows as well.

We use XUL in a commercial environment. It speeds up 
development dramatically. A box with Linux or some other 
free Unix and Mozilla is sufficient.
A drawback is the memory hunger (and some leaks in 
Mozilla) if you run many clients on one system.

Regards,
Marc