The webbase 1.20 GUI library is now available for free download. webbase is a Java GUI-library which is used to automatically generate GUIs in HTML. Features include bitmap generation, uploads/downloads and many standard web components like tree views.

The developer needs no knowledge in scripting-languages and HTML. webbase runs stand-alone with its integrated web server, but it can also be implemented as a servlet in tomcat. For development and non-commercial usage webbase is free.

Read more about webbase

Download the free demo version here.

I for one think UI design is very difficult and complex, and requires designers, not programmers, to implement it. There seems to be a trend towards ridding ourselves of that pesky design team (Naked Objects), and I think its a bad idea.
UI design suffers from the Karaoke problem: everyone can sing, but not everyone should. Since UI is a human interface, everyone thinks they can design it.
As far as I can tell, this tool sticks your presentation inside Java, without any gain in abstraction (ie, ability to swap in Swing instead of HTML).
I say get programmers out of the UI business: stick to our expertise.

An illustration of your point, taken from the introduction on their flashy looking web page:

webbase is quiet similar to Java-Swing (Sun Microsystems) and needs no long working in.

As far as I can tell, this tool sticks your presentation inside Java, without any gain in abstraction (ie, ability to swap in Swing instead of HTML).

I would have to argue that implementing an event driven Java framework is a HUGE gain in abstraction. When you code to a UI component/event interface specification, that is almost the definition of abstraction. How can you possibly say there is no gain in abstraction?

I think you are arguing that in the case of web UI's that abstraction is actually a bad thing. Because clearly, this framework, and others like Echo, are all about abstraction, at the expense of allowing detailed control over look and feel. You don't use these frameworks to make a "website". you use them to make a web-based application. Different audience.

Check out Tapestry if you want HTML driven by Java objects rather than JSP's. Tapestry looks really good.

I for one think UI design is very difficult and complex, and requires designers, not programmers, to implement it.

No, UI requires programmers to implement it, it requires designers - if at all - to design it!

There seems to be a trend towards ridding ourselves of that pesky design team (Naked Objects), and I think its a bad idea.UI design suffers from the Karaoke problem: everyone can sing, but not everyone should.

Unfortunately it is quite often the designers that sing the worst songs! The best user interface is the simple and monotonous user interface and most of the designs I see designers come up with are just not that. Intuition is not something that magically has been dropped in your crip, it has been acquired and -yes - trained.

For example on Windows the best UI design is the one that matches the standard windows design, even if this standard design itself has loads of problems.

Since UI is a human interface, everyone thinks they can design it. As far as I can tell, this tool sticks your presentation inside Java.

Which is good if it sticks the abstraction inside Java, not the design of the abstraction.

If the page needs to reload for every numeric pressed in the calculator, then I think there needs to a serious rethink of the system.

This is not ready for commerical release.

jaseb

yeh, this IS crap

Nice looking javadocs though...