Adobe AIR
I've been spoiled by the relative ease of developing interfaces using Web Technologies (Javascript, HTML, CSS) over tradition methods (OS-native API, wxWidgets, GTK, etc.). This put me off writing most desktop GUI applications. That includes my, now abandoned, C++ Cairo-based GUI framework I attempted to make to simplify desktop GUI app development. For the framework, all my motivation was sucked up by C++ (since it's easier to port a C++ library other languages, not to mention Cairo & native APIs are in C) and the current results being where I wanted to avoid. Programming desktop apps aren't as fun as their web cousins.
The closest I've probably used to being enjoyable was .NET 3 / WPF, which allows you do develop GUI using XML, quite similar to HTML. But .NET's visual studio is pretty slow, no cross-platform support, and XAML extremely verbose.
I finally started re-investigating Adobe AIR. I've looked into it in the early betas, but I don't quite remember what drove me away. Quite frankly, I'm perplexed why, it's a breath of fresh air from the traditional GUI frameworks I've been mangling with. Instead of focusing on building something that just looks sane and functions correctly, I can iterate on what's seems most usable (although I'm probably far from great UI usability design).
A personal "tinkering" project. Only CSS/HTML so far.
For those that aren't aware of Adobe's AIR framework, it's just about a browser with desktop-permissions. AIR utilizes flash and webkit for its rendering. AIR applications do require the AIR runtime framework, but it's relatively fast to install over the .NET framework and even allows users to quickly install air applications through their web browser.
My only critique of AIR is that you really need to love ECMAScript/Javascript, since all your heavy lifting will be in that language. Using Flash/Flex won't let you escape Javascript. Actionscript is a dialect of javascript. But if you're a web developer, that shouldn't be too much of an issue.
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Nat
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jeffhui