[Mono-dev] visual webgui for mono?

[Robert Jordan]

Hey,

Jesse Guardiani wrote:
> I just ran across this today while search compulsively for things like "AJAX WebOS",
> "AJAX Internet Operating System", and "AJAX Web Desktop":
>    http://www.visualwebgui.com
> 
> Looks really slick. I think the concept is that you code using the normal
> WinForms API, but the code generates HTML and javascript that runs in a
> thin AJAX client on the browser side.
> 
> The problem I see is that it doesn't work in firefox, only IE.
> 
> I've been thinking about AJAX a lot lately and I'm starting to think that
> an AJAX Desktop might be the development platform of the near future.
> 
> It looks like the Visual WebGUI folks agree, but I think the goal might be
> better achieved by an open source group. (supporting a broad range of
> browsers rather than just IE.)
> 
> Sounds like a massive amount of work. And I'm not sure if it would be better
> to recode an existing API or create a new, simpler API. But the obvious advantage
> to using WinForms, assuming a group of programmers could pull it off, would be
> that it is already a widespread and widely used API in the industry.
> 
> I'm probably smoking something.

Would you mind to share some of this great weed? :-)

Visual WebGUI seems to be very similar to Google's approach:

	http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

Since Mono/.NET has at least the same reflection power,
it should be easy to build a similar framework.

About WinForms as a "generic" API: it's far from being
the best API on this planet. It might be widespread, but
it also has a lot of design flaws. Its layout capabilities
(important for web browser output) are mediocre, etc.

Robert