[Tfug] Poor man's GUI

[Bexley Hall]

Hi Don,

On 3/11/2014 9:00 AM, Freeman, Don wrote:
> I take it the "little application" is yours also and that you are the one
> who will teach it how to parse the saved file.

Yes.  I'm more interested in the application than all the cruft
that goes into building a UI to make using it easier.  CLI would
be a dreadful UX.  But, throwing lots of hours (and megabytes!)
into a bunch of code that *just* "asks questions" (in effect)
is a dreadful DEVELOPER experience!  :-/

So, I'm looking for ways to cheat on the UI to come up with a
better balance between developer effort and user inconvenience.

For small/interactive/iterative UI's, I can fall back on some "text
GUI" interface libraries I've built over the years.  But, when you
have hundreds of "controls", you really want scrollable screens,
mouse input, etc.  Having to "tab" to each field gets old REALLY
fast!

> If that is true, then doing
> it right the first time within the web page should be a whole lot easier.

Yes.  Assuming the browsers "cooperate" (and I discipline myself to
not try anything too esoteric)

> That way you won't have to worry about what the various browsers may or may
> not do both now and in the future.<grin>

That was the nature of my question... trying to think of how they
*could* violate my assumptions.

E.g., I can't see how they can change the menu entries to fred,
barney, pebbles, etc. when they were originally A, B, C, D -- the
resulting saved web page would OBVIOUSLY be different!

And, while a browser may opt to display a menu differently
than some other browser, the order of the "controls" on
the form still has (?) to be preserved --otherwise the
form (page) is noticeably different, etc.

I guess the only real changes I can see a browser making would
be to store the page in some "proprietary" format (not HTML)
that *it* can parse but that other browsers (and my application!)
can't!

> Good luck.

If it works, it should be a simple way to dress up the front end
of an app without taking on lots of extra "cost" or complexity.

--don