Example: imagine a Pizza Order card where you get to choose your toppings from a set of checkboxes, a field with a running total, and a checkbox for vegetarians.
The "Mediation" process: from the plugin palette and the Pointer Tool selected, you can click on each «topping» checkbox to assign mouse events for other objects to receive it, letting them respond accordingly. More specifically, one sender can be the Peperoni checkbox and the receiver objects can be 1) the field that manages the running total, 2) a List text field that keeps track of every item selected, and 3) the «Place Order» button that becomes enabled when (at minimum) one checkbox is selected. Similarly, the Peperoni checkbox is a destination of the event sent by the «Vegeterian» checkbox which will uncheck and disable the Meat group. The beauty of this is that the latter event will update the running total and the Place Order button will disable automatically! --unless, of course, a vegetarian item like mushrooms is selected
This leads to very scalable user interfaces. Among other things, the benefits include:
- No hard coding of objects
Much less code
Encapsulation of state and state-management
Transition of workflow is much more easily maintained
Automatic user interface semantic behavior
Undo and Redo
Garbage collection is easily maintained
The plugin: Through a palette, the Mediator plugin lets you click each screen object when the pointer tool is selected and builds a link between source and destination, as well as the dispatching mechanism that lets you then define the semantics of the event, including Undo and Redo. Among other things, the palette lets you prune the objects that get deleted in the development process.
Would you find this useful? Would you pay for such a tool? And if so, how much?
Thanks!
/Carl