FlashiXML

FlashiXML is a rendering engine for UsiXML-compliant user interfaces in a vectorial mode that is SVG-compatible. Any UsiXML-compliant user interface can be opened and rendered in this interpreter so as to create the truly working interface with presentation and dialog. In this environment, the UI can be resized at any time to address some constraints imposed by the computing platforms and to support some properties of Graceful Degradation of UIs, a sub-property of the Plasticity property. In this way, any UsiXML-compliant UI can be rendered on any computing platform equipped with a SVG or Flash plug-in or player. If you try this renderer, just resize the container window and the contained widgets are resized accordingly depending on the constraints imposed on them and their layout.

For this purpose, an underlying mini-toolkit has been developed in ActionScript in the Macromedia Flash environment so as to render basic widgets which were not available natively in the Macromedia Flash environment.

Screenshots/video

This video shows FlashiXML running on some example.

Requirements
It is required to install the Macromedia Flash Player. In principle, if you have a Flash Player for any particular computing platform (ranging from a mobile phone to a desktop platform), the user interface can be rendered.

Download the Flash player for Windows platforms
Download the Flash player for PocketPC 2003
Download the Flash player for mobile phones and smartphones

Note
This FlashiXML rendering engine is compatible with UsiXML V1.4.6. It it not yet compatible with the last version of UsiXML which is wider in scope and expressivity. FlashiXML is developed by Youri Vanden Berghe in his Master thesis in Computer Science at UCL.

Publication

• Youri Vanden Berghe, Etude et implémentation d'un générateur d'interfaces vectorielles à partir d'un langage de description d'interfaces utilisateur, M.Sc. thesis, Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, September 2004.