WysiwygJavaServlet

Last edit August 6, 2004
The main problem of servlet design is that code on the server side has to emit HTML. Are there any IDEs that allow real wysiwyg interface design?

-- Do it yourself

Actually there is: VisualAgeForJava. It includes a tool called the ServletBuilder that allows you to construct Servlets in the VisualCompositionEditor the same way you would applications or applets. Unfortunately, it's an idea that never quite caught on--and for good reason. I'm not so sure it's a good idea.

The way it operates is that it has a framework that parallels Swing that generates HTML from widget classes. These are dropped WYSIWYG on the workspace. Now, the problem is that the whole widget idea has a flaw: those widgets take up a lot of memory, and quite a lot of what you would want to do with them can be better done through JavaServerPages. So that's why IBM doesn't promote the ServletBuilder much anymore...

-- KyleBrown