Hey Jerry ... Yeah, I actually use Xyle as well, and it's a cool
app. The major difference is that we often don't end up with an
actual valid page (in HTML terms) via static analysis alone. To
clarify, when I say "static analysis," I mean that we don't have a
runtime, so we have to try to construct a page purely from looking at
your bindings and structure outside of the context of real data.
Straight visualization of an HTML + CSS editor is relatively
"easy" (which is not to say it's ACTUALLY easy, just easy because
there are several existing apps that do it), but when you throw in
conditionals and repetitions, things get nasty really fast. A good
example is that <tr> example I mentioned earlier ... I'm definitely
trying to steal concepts from whomever I can, though :)
ms
On Oct 4, 2007, at 9:25 AM, Jerry W. Walker wrote:
> Hi, Mike,
>
> On Oct 4, 2007, at 8:19 AM, Mike Schrag wrote:
>
>>> - some sort of box around the block elements, and the ability to
>>> click on them to select them (yes, just like WO builder) so you
>>> can scroll to the end of that one and see what's next
>> I've tried out a bunch of various visualizations ... When I talk
>> trash about WO Builder, one of the major things I talk about is
>> that it doesn't do CSS. This is actually sort of true of this new
>> preview (I say "sort of", because mine is hardcoded at the moment
>> to do my own CSS -- I'm working on some tricks to do static
>> analysis of components to figure out which CSS files should be
>> used .. this is a very weird problem). In old WOB land, drawing
>> borders is not a big of a deal, because without CSS, page flow is
>> much more linear. The problem with a more modern page is that CSS
>> does all sorts of complicated layout, and you can't just draw
>> boxes around things anymore. I had a version that drew boxes and
>> it's completely useless because divs collapse from floated
>> contents, stuff moves all around -- it's just insane. Take a
>> modern CSS page and add border: 1px solid blue; to all of your
>> elements and you'll essentially see what I mean. The other
>> particularly nasty problem is tables ... The most common use of
>> tables is to put a WORepetition around them. But you can't just
>> draw a box around that WORepetition, because there is no element
>> you can put in a table that surrounds a <tr> tag (browsers push
>> these things below or above the table if you try to inject bogus
>> tags around <tr>'s). This preview is rendering with WebKit (on OS
>> X), so we're still constrained by the definition of HTML. I have
>> no idea how to fix this one at the moment ... For containment
>> right now, I do rollover background color changes with alpha
>> channel, so when you rollover a container, it turns light blue,
>> and when you rollover a subcontainer of that container, it turns a
>> slightly darker blue (because of the compounding alpha).
>
> Have you ever used Xyle Scope? I've found it incredibly helpful in
> parsing HTML/CSS pages for modification and refinement.
>
> http://www.culturedcode.com/xyle/
>
> I guess the best way to describe it is as a CSS viewer. Here's a
> graphic from their web site that shows what it does:
>
> <Screenshot_en.jpg>
>
> You might take a look at the demo for ideas, if you're interested,
> to see various ways that they show the source, the cascade and the
> layout.
>
> I emailed their CEO a while back to see if they might be interested
> in modifying/customizing their product into a WOBuilder like tool,
> but it was hard to make any business case for their doing so and
> they had new projects already planned.
>
> Sorry I haven't taken the opportunity more often to say what an
> awesome job I think you and the rest of the Wonder team are doing
> for the community but I've been under some intense production
> pressures recently.
>
> Regards,
> Jerry
>
>
>
>
> --
> __ Jerry W. Walker,
> WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial
> Strength Internet Enabled Systems
>
> jerrywwalke..ee-em-aye-eye-ell.com
> 203 278-4085 office
>
>
>
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