Aida "Visual Designer"

Hello,

However, his immediate response was, "If the browser can create accessors for me, why should I have to create an "App" class with a "viewMain," etc..."

So...I have been working on some code generation for him, and was going to create an application administration module, sort of like Seaside has (only easier to use!).  You know...select your model, what port you want to listen on, the name of your site, which style class you want to use...that sort of thing.

Anyway, the natural follow-up to this is to ask the question:  "Would a web based visual designer be useful?"  I know I am new to Aida, but with a few basic principles to create a parts bin of some kind and drag controls around in the browser, it seems like it would be pretty doable.  You could attach the app to a domain model and from there attach components to aspects of the model.

There would, of course, be some "behind your back" code generation going on, and I'm not sure how you would handle fixing things up when someone simply changed the code by hand.

Of course, once you've gone that far you could put a workspace, browser, transcript, etc... in those prototype-ui windows you have been demo-ing, and away you go.

Do you think something like this would be useful, or does it somehow go against the Smalltalk philosophy?

Just wondering, because everyone I try to show this (Smalltalk) to is amazed by the efficiency to deal with the problem domain but doesn't want to give up all their Visual Studio-like features in exchange, and because of the framework you have written I think this is actually something I could do with a few pointers to get me started!

Rob