Interface Design basics

Graphical User Interface (GUI) under Kuix, is based on 3 main characteristics :

1. it is layout oriented.
2. it uses widgets as graphical elements
3. it can be described with Java or XML/stylesheet

Layout oriented means that graphical elements are placed on a predefined layout that is able to adapt automaticaly to various screen size. This approach allows to design an user interface by describing constraints between elements and let the renderer engine positionning them at runtime depending on the device capabilities.

The widgets are some basic elements of user interface that can be reused to build more complex screens. Widgets can customized during the UI conception. Some specials ­- or users - widgets can always be defined and easily integrated in an application by inheritance.

Interface description can be achieved in 2 ways : XML/Stylesheet and Java approaches. The main benefits of the first method are :

• the separation of the development and UI design skills

• the business logic is apart from the user interface

Java design achieve higher performances because it does not require to parse XML and CSS files at runtime but does not allow to split skills in the development team.

XML/Stylesheet approach

With an XML/CSS approach, an interface can be describe with XML file and skinned with a CSS-like file. Simply load your XML/CSS files from your Java code.

Java approach

Everything you can do with XML and CSS can be done directly with Java code, but it could be less flexible and less human readable.