GUI in Dart?

[GoranT]

What is the actual status on GUI Elements in Dart? Since it is for
complex client apps, there should be also some nice UI elements.
Datagrids, trees, tabs, etc etc

[Seth Ladd]

Hi Goran,

Thanks for reaching out! The team is still busy on the fundamentals, like reflection (via mirrors), getting the language to 1.0, and cleaning up the core libraries. The Dart team wishes to ship some sort of "app stack", with guidance around views, data binding, etc. High level widgets like trees and tabs aren't on the radar yet. Hopefully a combination of Dart and Web Components will provide the framework for widget libraries to appear, either from the team or the community.

Curious, what are you trying to build with Dart?

Thanks,

Seth

[GoranT]

Hi Seth,

The first thing that right now came to my mind:
http://www.silverlight.net/content/samples/sl4/toolkitcontrolsamples/run/default.html
They had there a bunch of controls to create some nice applications.

Right now we are talking to create an app which would connect to a
webservice, send some request like: get all employees from XY. On the
erver-side that would be parsed and Dart would access a database and
respond with JSON of all requested data. AND that DATA i would display
within a Grid (client-side).

It seems to me, that you all put a lot of effort into pleasing the
"experts" for programming languages. Maybe you should also focus more
on simple developers who want to develop some real applications. Not
only b2b but also b2customer. I know that dart is in alpha version but
if a developer wants to develop in dart he also needs to convince his
boss/some manager to develop with dart. And when i would start talking
about Gilad or Seth or some bad ass theretical fundamental great
programming stuff in dart, they would like to see something. And they
do not want to see source code....

[Dirk Detering]

Am 17.04.2012 10:18 schrieb "GoranT" <geronim...@gmail.com>:
> It seems to me, that you all put a lot of effort into pleasing the
> "experts" for programming languages. Maybe you should also focus more
> on simple developers who want to develop some real applications.

Real applications are written in programming languages. So you must fix this first. Then you can apply it to build great stuff. The other way does not work.

To create a good programming language, you need expert discussion before, to come to valid conclusions.

And the requirements of real applications are more complex today, so a good PL designer must consider all that.

The 'expert talk' is like listening to car engineers, trying to build a chassis and engine for a modern, economic, flexible hybrid car, with you pleading for a comfortable drivers seat and readable gauges.

They should and will be build, but we need a running car first, before designing the traveller's cell.

> if a developer  wants to develop in dart he also needs to convince his
> boss/some manager to develop with dart. And when i would start talking
> about Gilad or Seth or some bad ass theretical fundamental great
> programming stuff in dart, they would like to see something. And they
> do not want to see source code....

1.) A decider (manager? Really?) should want to see code of the language he is going to decide about.
2.) If a developer wants to develop in a language he should be able to do... As long as it is not business relevant. Otherwise much more criteria are to be applied.
If you are trying to sell Dart for business relevant purpose, then you are simply too early. No manager would accept a technical preview, with or without sexy Gui library.
3.) Do you want to sell him the language or the library built in that language? Dart as a language can show its strength in a client/server prototype using isolates, performing, counting lines of code a.s.o a.s.o.  There is no need for a sexy UI for that.
If you only want to show nice GUIs, that is not the property of a language. And if a manager decides for a language based on the appeal of a UI, than he should reconsider his position.

Just my 2ct
Det

[Chris Buckett]

The thing to bear in mind is that Dart was released to the general
public much earlier in the language's development than C# for example
- Google are essentially developing the language "in the open" rather
than behind closed doors. This is great, as it allows us, the
community to be able to discuss and possibly influence the language
and tools based upon our real-world use-cases.

Currently, in Dart, you can write your own client side grids and UI
components, data access layers (using server side sockets) and so-on -
you'll just be one of the first to do so, in the same way that someone
was the first to do this for JavaScript.

As you say, Dart "the language" is in Alpha version. Once the
language itself becomes more stable, then there is likely to be a
bigger push to develop UI frameworks and so-on - but there is nothing
to prevent the community developing these components in the meantime -
see http://www.lucastudios.com/trybuckshot/ for an example UI
framework.

Hope that helps,
Chris.

[nai...@gmail.com]

I agree with this comment that UI is necessary. Dart is a great language and has a lot of appeal to .Net developers. (Maybe not so to hardcore web guys that love jQurey and all the mad libraries around javascript that they love). 

We love to use it in prototypes, but first we need a nice and easy way of doing UI. Maybe not so much the UI widget, but stuff like data binding, etc. I think Dart team should bring this techs higher in priority so that people can start developing libraries for Dart.

[Seth Ladd]

Thanks for the feedback! We agree that it's a high priority to build out the fundamentals for a web app: data binding, layouts, templates, etc. If you need to get started today, there are a few options from the community: Buckshot and PureMVC come to mind (check the Dart community projects)  Meanwhile, if you have any particular use cases, please do share them.

Seth

[Henri Chen]

Hi!

Rikulo(http://www.rikulo.org) just published some Examples(http://rikulo.org/examples/) that handle some typical UI usage that you might feel useful.

Most typical one is probably the "List" example(45 lines).

Here is a blog talking about how to build it: http://blog.rikulo.org/posts/2012/Jul/Tutorial/building-a-list-view-demo-using-rikulo/
And the on-line demo: http://rikulo.org/resource/js/examples/index-list.html

Please don't hesitate to give us feed backs.

/henri
The Rikulo Team

On Thursday, July 26, 2012 9:28:18 AM UTC+8

I agree with this comment that UI is necessary. Dart is a great language and has a lot of appeal to .Net developers. (Maybe not so to hardcore web guys that love jQurey and all the mad libraries around javascript that they love). 

We love to use it in prototypes, but first we need a nice and easy way of doing UI. Maybe not so much the UI widget, but stuff like data binding, etc. I think Dart team should bring this techs higher in priority so that people can start developing libraries for Dart.

On Tuesday, April 17, 2012 8:07:19 AM UTC+10, Seth Ladd wrote:

Hi Goran,

Thanks for reaching out! The team is still busy on the fundamentals, like reflection (via mirrors), getting the language to 1.0, and cleaning up the core libraries. The Dart team wishes to ship some sort of "app stack", with guidance around views, data binding, etc. High level widgets like trees and tabs aren't on the radar yet. Hopefully a combination of Dart and Web Components will provide the framework for widget libraries to appear, either from the team or the community.

Curious, what are you trying to build with Dart?

Thanks,

Seth

[Cassio Tavares]

+1

I would like very much to use Dart in my next projects but I really need some UI Widgets. It doesn't need to be like the fancy ones that we have today on other languages. 

I just need that because I use C# on the back end. 

The most important ones IMO:

-Grid with filtering, sorting and binding.

-TreeView

-Sliders and Collapsible's
-The simple ones (buttons, text input, label, combo)

We can build a lot on top of that, extending them or not. And I'm not sure if I should use the third party libraries that we have today. I'm sure they will become obsolete as soon as the official comes out.

I was wandering if I could temporally mix Dart with JQuery UI or other UI toolkit while that doesn't happens.

Thanks

[Bob Nystrom]

On Fri, Jul 27, 2012 at 6:39 AM, Cassio Tavares <cas...@gmail.com> wrote:

We can build a lot on top of that, extending them or not. And I'm not sure if I should use the third party libraries that we have today. I'm sure they will become obsolete as soon as the official comes out.

A UI library from Google won't nullify or make obsolete any other third-party libraries. People are making a wide variety of diverse web apps, and different UI frameworks will be better for different apps. A healthy Dart ecosystem will have a bunch of different frameworks for users to choose from.

Cheers!

- bob

[Menkaura Abiola-Ellison]

Hi Seth

Entaro Adun Inquired about a year ago about the state of play in regards to GUI Editor for dart.

What is the status, when are we likely to see this addeed to the dart editor

Thanks

Menkaura 

[Seth Ladd]

On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 4:53 AM, Menkaura Abiola-Ellison <fes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Seth

Entaro Adun Inquired about a year ago about the state of play in regards to GUI Editor for dart.

What is the status, when are we likely to see this addeed to the dart editor

Hi Menkaura,

Thanks for reaching out. To the best of my knowledge, no one on the team is working on a GUI Editor in Dart Editor. Also, I suspect it'll be quite a while before work on that begins, if ever.

Can you please let us know more about your needs for a GUI Editor? What would it look like? Are you building a Dart app for your job? Are you using Web UI for your web app components?

Thanks for the additional info,

Seth

 

Thanks

Menkaura 

On Monday, April 16, 2012 10:10:11 PM UTC+1, Entaro Adun wrote:

What is the actual status on GUI Elements in Dart?  Since it is for
complex client apps, there should be also some nice UI elements.
Datagrids, trees, tabs, etc etc

--
Consider asking HOWTO questions at Stack Overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/tags/dart
 
 

[Menkaura Abiola-Ellison]

Hi Seth

Thanks for your reply. I do have a large project I wish to convert from desktop written in vb6 to dart. The GUI dart editor could look something like GWT Designer or something like this http://www.linb.net/VisualJS/UIBuilder.html

I am new to dart but from what I see this is  the language I've been waiting for, for some time. But without a good GUI editor the task to convert would take a very long time. In this modern age of RAD good productivity tools are essential to businesses. The current Dart Editor is a great start but imo if you wish it to find it's way into corporate companies it will imo require tools that their employees can rapidly develop and deploy applications. 

Menkaura

On Monday, April 16, 2012 10:10:11 PM UTC+1, Entaro Adun wrote:

[Günter Zöchbauer]

I thought about building my own components.

A blocker was, that I couldn't find a way to build complex web_ui components by composing basic web_ui components.

I know that I can compose or rather aggregate components at page level (content tag inside components) but that does not really solve the problem.

As a simple example:

I build a fancy password input box component and a i18n-enabled Label component and maybe some other stuff

and want to build a reusable selfcontaining login component from this building blocks.

I couldn't find way to do this.

This is a somewhat constructed example, but I would also build an editable datagrid or similar complex components from smaller building blocks.

Should this work or is this planned to be implemented in the future?

BTW: I really like Dart and the work of the Dart team

Günter

[Vin Soni]

Why can't it be done parallely? Remember how java became so popular? It was because of AWT and then Swing. How did Borland (Delphi) and Microsoft (VB) succeed? 

 

Maybe this is for the server side world ha ha.

[macdevign]

I believe 1.0 version of dart is more of getting the core language and core libraries right because the GUI library will be built on these very foundations. It is very challenging and tedious to build gui library in parallel if the language and core  is still undergoing changes, and result in wasted effort in refactoring the gui library later on.   So it is best not to expect too much of gui library in 1.0 :} ,  based on what is seen in v1.0 of Javafx and Java's AWT :}. It is more realistic to expect that the standard gui library will be available later on .

[Daniel Lang]

hi,

perhabs is useful. I use DWT. Its inspired by GWT.

http://dartwebtoolkit.com/

cu daniel

[Nik Graf]

Bee provides a collection of lightweight Web UI components and over time we will add more.

https://www.blossom.io/bee

best regards

Nik

--

Nik Graf, Co-Founder of Blossom

w: https://www.blossom.io | t: https://twitter.com/nikgraf

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