Automatic, look-and-feel independent dialog creation for graphical user interfaces

Abstract

Jade is a new interactive tool that automatically creates graphical input dialogs such as dialog boxes and menus. Application programmers write a textual specification of a dialog's contents. This specification contains absolutely no graphical information and thus is look-and-feel independent. The graphic artist uses a direct manipulation graphical editor to define the rules, graphical objects, interaction techniques, and decorations that will govern the dialog's look-and-feel, and stores the results in a look and feel database. Jade combines the application programmer's specification with the look-and-feel database to automatically generate a graphical dialog. If necessary, the graphic artist can then edit the resulting dialog using a graphical editor and these edits will be remembered by Jade, even if the original textual specification is modified. By eliminating all graphical references from the dialog's content specification, Jade requires only the absolutely minimum specification from the application programmer. This also allows a dialog box or menu's look and feel to be rapidly and effortlessly changed by simply switching look and feel databases. Finally, Jade permits complex inter-field relationships to be specified in a simple manner.