MICRO-UIDT: A User Interface Development Tool

Abstract

A user interlace development tool called Micro-UIDT is described. Micro-UIDT provides an interactive design environment fur the user interface designers. The designing language for defining user interfaces are visual and nonprocedural. State transition diagrams are used as the notation for specifying man-machine dialogue control. Some extensions are added into the notation, so that the user interfaces with semantic feedback can be defined. The approach of specifying the presentation of application data is bottom-up and direct operation. The designing language for this has two major description facilities, one for describing graphics and another for describing the relationships between the graphics and the application variables. A concept of graphic object is used in the language, which can make the design result be abstracted and reused. The user interfaces developed with Micro-UIDT are small in size and fast in speed.