Interface for plugins.

JD Hill

Ok - modifying the image is something one can not do in pure HTML+JS+CSS...

While it's nice to be able to use HLSL to manipulate images in the browser, there are other reasons as well.

The UI part of the project is about 70K lines at the moment, supports undo/redo for absolutely all actions, and operates in a fully modeless fashion within SketchUp. Imho, it would be much more difficult and error-prone to try to do this in JS than in C#. Also, the UI works exactly the same on SU6/7/8/Win/OSX.

For projects smaller than this, of course I agree that HTML/CSS/JS would often make much more sense.

tbd

JD: so the user needs the Silverlight installed on the machine ?

JD Hill

Yes, they do.

thomthom

Anyone tried the Flash FIR framework?

JD Hill

I'm not familiar with that, do you have any links?

thomthom

Sorry, my bad - typo - AIR.
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/

JD Hill

Ah, I really should have inferred that. It's basically just a runtime for running Flash out-of-browser, isn't it?

thomthom

I've not used it - but I was under the impression it also had a framework with pre-made UI widgets... ?

JD Hill

Just a guess, as I'm in no way a Flash guy, but I think you may be thinking of Flex, rather than AIR.

thomthom

Quite possibly I've gotten them two mixed up. I'm not a Flash guy myself.

thomthom

JD - your Silverlight UI - do you use a ready made framework? Skinned? Or did you build one yourself?

AdamB

Looks cool but you've stopped any possibility of doing this on non-Windows platforms.
No?

JD Hill

@thomthom said:

JD - your Silverlight UI - do you use a ready made framework? Skinned? Or did you build one yourself?

I did write this myself.

@adamb said:

Looks cool but you've stopped any possibility of doing this on non-Windows platforms.
No?

No, Silverlight runs fine run on Windows or OSX. There is spotty support for it in linux, but it lags the official SL version by a point or two. But linux was not an issue here anyway.

thomthom

Microsoft made something OSX compatible...?

JD Hill

@unknownuser said:

Microsoft made something OSX compatible...?

The official SL support list is, I believe: IE 6/7/8, FF 2/3, Safari 3/4, and Chrome. Maybe Opera now too, or in the near future.

thomthom

What I'd like to experiment with now - that IE9b is out - is using SVG and canvas for the UI. Make a big fat canvas in the HTML page where I draw everything - attaching CSS and JS.

DIEGO-RODRIGUEZ