A Release!!! - Well Idle hands make cool stuff...

What is It?

Basically Glade on steriods. (and it needs a good name!!)

What?

Well Glade the UI builder is great for what it does, however app.Builder.js attempts to solve a few roadblocks in Glade

• Moving stuff around is klumsy - no drag drop - It's not very good for prototyping layouts...
• It's limited in what widgets can be added
• Coding (when used as an Ajunta addon) is just downright messy.
• It's difficult to extend/modify (and in some cases next to impossible)
• Adding additional properties to widgets is difficult
• Information is often hidden from display (how many clicks to find out what signals are connected)
• There is no 'run it and see' option.

So what makes this different..?

• It's all done in Javascript - using a tree like structure (and it's fully self hosting) - the application is used to modify it'self.
• It uses GObject Introspection. which solves a number of issues
• All available properties can be set (and quickly listed, with documentation)
• how widget's can be packed, can be determined from introspection of the methods.
• all signals are available, and stubs are created for you to start implementing.
• Making extra widgets to the application is just a matter of editing files (eventually a UI will enable you to pick from a list of available Introspection elements... )
• You can build web Applications (using toolkits like RooJS) - ExtJS, Moo etc. could be easily added..
• It should be quite easy to build Clutter applications...

Do I need to know anything to use it.

Yes, one of the core concepts behind the builder is understanding XObject, a simple Javascript wrapper around GObjects
that enables you to create a JSON like tree, and XObject will turn your tree into an application.

Key features of the XObject are

• xtype - the name of the GObject (eg. Gtk.Window)
• packing - the pack property, can be a string (comma seperated indicating how an element is packed to it's parent)
• id - all objects can have ID's you can fetch any object using this.get('the_id') as long as it's a child of the current element. To look up the tree, use a '.' at the start, or to start at the top of the tree use '/', eg. this.get('/Window') get's you the window. this.get('/Window.toolbar') get's you the first toolbar in the window.
• el - when an element is created, the GObject is always stored in this.el
• |pipe - properties - currently the editor uses '|' as a prefix to indicate the value is raw Javascript (eg. a function or Value, that when used should not be quoted as if it was a string.

What state is it in?

Well, It's self editing.. - The application is used to create it's self, just create a new Gtk Project, and point it at the Sample directory, and you can edit the current codebase. (copying it to the Builder directory when you have a stable build)

What's to do...

Quite a few tweaks.. It works, but could do with more time in polishing the interface. My personal goal is to save time using it as a productivity tool, for development. Which is basically where it's at..

Where do I get it?

Download a tarball app.Builder.js.2010-05-25.tgz