Dave Temkin, CTO of Lazlo Systems started promising blog with a great Lazlo overview.
Lazlo is an XML-based development environment and deployment environment for building rich internet applications. Basically, the compiler outputs SWF-files.
It takes some time to get used to the verbose XML syntax, but it looks like a couple of major players are moving in the XML/UI direction, e.g. XAML within Longhorn or XUL in Mozilla.
However, I’m pretty sure that using XML for UI development won’t change the basic premise: UI development is damn hard. I’m not talking “Hello World” type apps here, folks. I’m talking UIs for complex real-world applications.
How do we enable developers to create visually appealing, consistent UIs? How do we empower developers to extend the set of given UI controls in a consistent & straightforward manner? The latter is what all UI development environments/class libraries/frameworks etc. fail. But the latter is what UI developers are struggling with.
Using XML doesn’t change anything.
I work for Laszlo, as a developer on the compiler and other plumbing. I have to agree, UI development is damned hard for real world apps.
I believe the new Laszlo component classes do make some significant strides in addressing the issues you raise, such as how can classes be extended and customized, and how can some of the well known grunt work be handled by the system instead of by the developer for each app.
Anyway, UI development is so hard that I leave it to the experts.