| Abstract: | Typical software companies want the applications they market to have a consistent look and feel, so as to brand or identify their particular family of products or product line. Current user interface (UI) implementation techniques serve this business need poorly, tending to treat each application as a unique, independent artifact sharing little, if any, UI implementation code with other applications. Coupled with the overwhelming complexity found in modern UI toolkits, this results in unnecessarily high development costs for interfaces, and is at odds with the need of software companies to devote their resources to value‐added application code rather than incidental user‐interface implementation. This paper presents a model for a domain‐based UI application framework that addresses these issues: consistency in a family of products, both in operation and presentation; reduced implementation costs; and rapid development times. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
