APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE FOR USER INTERFACE CREATION

• US 20110072371A1
• Filed: 09/18/2009
• Published: 03/24/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 09/18/2009
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Tewari, Ritwik, Shoemaker, David, Segal, Todd, MacDuff, Jeffrey Michael, Suri, Prakash Ajay Kumar, Robinson, Brett, Ma, Xiangying, Matteson, Michael
• Application Number:
  US12/562,401
• Publication Number:
  US 20110072371A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/763
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/38 for implementing user interfaces

Abstract

Various embodiments related to an application programming interface for user interface creation are disclosed herein. For example, one disclosed embodiment provides an application programming interface, embodied on one or more data-holding subsystems, comprising user interface creation services for intermediately defining a user interface including one or more user interface elements as declarative extensible markup language data. The application programming interface further comprises compiler services for providing aspects of the declarative extensible markup language data to one or more compilers for compilation into two or more different machine code implementations, where each machine code implementation is natively executable without a virtual machine by a different hardware platform to present the user interface intermediately defined as declarative extensible markup language data.

Claims

1. An application programming interface embodied on one or more data-holding subsystems, comprising:

user interface creation services for intermediately defining a user interface including one or more user interface elements as declarative extensible markup language data; and

compiler services for providing aspects of the declarative extensible markup language data to one or more compilers for compilation into two or more different machine code implementations, each machine code implementation natively executable without a virtual machine by a different hardware platform to present the user interface intermediately defined as the declarative extensible markup language data.

2. The application programming interface of claim 1, where each machine code implementation is natively executable without a virtual machine by a hardware platform of an embedded device.

3. The application programming interface of claim 2, where the declarative extensible markup language data is human and machine readable.

4. The application programming interface of claim 3, where the user interface creation services comprises vector graphic services compatible with a vector graphic design application having an interactive front-end visual editor environment for designing a look and a feel of the user interface independent of operation logic.

5. The application programming interface of claim 4, where the user interface creation services comprises logic assignment services for receiving from a development environment application one or more operation logic assignments corresponding to the user interface that are independent of the look and the feel of the user interface.

6. The application programming interface of claim 5, where the vector graphic services and the logic assignment services are independently operable.

7. The application programming interface of claim 3, where the user interface creation services is configured to specify one or more of the user interface elements as managed objects associated with a code object to be instantiated upon parsing.

8. The application programming interface of claim 2, where the declarative extensible markup language data is Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) data configured to define user interface elements, data binding, and eventing, where XAML elements map directly to common language runtime object instances, and XAML attributes map to common language runtime properties and events on those common language runtime objects.

9. An application programming interface embodied on one or more data-holding subsystems, comprising:

user interface creation services comprising vector graphic services configured to interface with a vector graphic design application enabling visual design of a user interface including one or more user interface elements, and logic assignment services to interface with a development environment application enabling assignment of operation logic to the user interface, the user interface being intermediately defined as human and machine readable declarative extensible markup language data; and

compiler services for providing aspects of the declarative extensible markup language data to one or more compilers for compilation into two or more different machine code implementations, each machine code implementation natively executable without a virtual machine by a different hardware platform to present the user interface intermediately defined as the declarative extensible markup language data.

10. The application programming interface of claim 9, where each machine code implementation is natively executable without a virtual machine by a hardware platform of an embedded device.

11. The application programming interface of claim 10, where the vector graphic services is further configured to provide access to a web framework core of the vector graphic design application, the web framework core configured to integrate one or more of graphics, animations, multimedia and interactivity into a single runtime environment.

12. The application programming interface of claim 10, where the operation logic includes one or more of event handling, database manipulation, and business logic.

13. The application programming interface of claim 10, where the declarative extensible markup language data is Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) data configured to define user interface elements, data binding, and eventing, where XAML elements map directly to common language runtime object instances, and XAML attributes map to common language runtime properties and events on those common language runtime objects.

14. A user interface creation system for creating a user interface, the user interface creation system comprising:

a vector graphic design application configured to enable visual design of the user interface including one or more user interface elements;

a development environment application configured to assign operation logic to the user interface;

an application programming interface embodied on one or more data-holding subsystems, the application programming interface comprising user interface creation services comprising vector graphic services configured to interface with the vector graphic design application and logic assignment services configured to interface with the development environment application, the user interface creation services intermediately defining the user interface as human and machine readable declarative extensible markup language data, the application programming interface further comprising compiler services; and

one or more compiling applications, each compiling application configured to receive aspects of the declarative extensible markup language data from the compiler services of the application programming interface, and to compile the aspects of the declarative extensible markup language data into two or more different machine code implementations, each machine code implementation natively executable without a virtual machine by a different hardware platform to present the user interface intermediately defined as the declarative extensible markup language data.

15. The user interface creation system of claim 14, where the user interface intermediately defined as the declarative extensible markup language data may be subsequently modified by the vector graphic design application independent of the development environment application.

16. The user interface creation system of claim 15, where the vector graphic design application comprises an interactive front-end visual editor environment for designing a look and a feel of the user interface independent of the operation logic.

17. The user interface creation system of claim 15, where the development environment application is configured to assign operation logic including one or more of event handling, database manipulation, and business logic, independent of the visual design of the user interface.

18. The user interface creation system of claim 14, further comprising a web browser configured to render the declarative extensible markup language data and visually present the user interface on a display device.

19. The user interface creation system of claim 14, where the declarative extensible markup language data is Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) data configured to define user interface elements, data binding, and eventing, where XAML elements map directly to common language runtime object instances, and XAML attributes map to common language runtime properties and events on those common language runtime objects.

20. The user interface creation system of claim 14, where each machine code implementation is natively executable without a virtual machine by a hardware platform of an embedded device.