Toolability

UI technologies are divided into two camps. Those that are toolable, and those that are not.

Some definitions

Untoolable UI technologies, telltale signs -

• Developers are controling or even designing UI code.
• Design professionals hand versions of the UI to developers. Developers to transcode from the designers preferred technology into the source of the application
• Breaking the UI into fragments of source and using 'include' at runtime to build a large UI, figures in its architecture

Toolable UI technologies

• Designers work in a tool that is compatible with the source of the application
• Developers take the resulting source, and without transcoding it, add functionality to turn it into an application

Roundtrip toolable User interfaces

• As toolable but the the designer in a design tool and the developer can take it in turns to edit the UI source to the application

Swiby?

Swiby aims to be a round-trip toolable technology. The builder-syntax lends itself to toolability, and if the tool is smart it will preserve closures that it does not understand.