Having just finished reading the very same article, I had almost exactly the same reaction.

There is a solution, though it's not one that would likely be espoused in an article for JavaWorld:). The answer, to my way of thinking, is HTML, or rather XHTML + stylesheets.

Stylesheets are about the most advanced presentation layer that I know of in terms of their ability to abstract the presentation of information in multiple formats. The audio-abstraction for blind users is there, though I think there are few, if any, implementations around yet. It is also theoretically possible for a table to be converted to a historgram or pie chart (assuming the table contents are transmutable).

Once objects display themselves, in terms of XHTML+stylesheets, the average browser can be used as a UI, which, with some obvious limitations, makes the apps usable from almost anywhere, even via text-only, or audio-only browsers. If the 'command line' facilities within the browsers where improved to include history, local scripting facilities etc., it could be quite a usable system even for those with sufferiing Musophobia:)

As an aside. Opera (and probably others) has a facility for maximising a particular frame on a framed html page. I find this invaluable when you encounter one of those sites that insist upon taking up half the screen with a header, footer and sidebar frames and forcing me to read long articles by scrolling in the small space left over.

It just struck me that it would be a really nice feature if when using a multi line edit field (like the one I'm typing in) if I could hit a key sequence that would expand it to fill the screen. If the browser was already in full screen mode, this would be almost the same as using a full screen CLI. Add the ability to shell commands to the OS and it could be even better.

Then again, an alternative would be to have a key sequence that invoked my favorite editor, allowed me to type my data into tha and the retieved it and posted it into the textarea?

Note. I would only want the above facility if it could ONLY be used from the keyboard, and not from any form of active scripting from the server side.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
Hooray!

In reply to Re: OOUI: multiple views in an object. by BrowserUk
in thread (OT) OOUI: multiple views in an object. by BUU

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