why is XML good for GUI?. Dan Shafer asks a very good question about Laszlo: “Instead of direct manipulation of graphical objects to create pleasing interfaces, i get to write XML code (with its extreme overhead burden) to describe how I want the graphical experience to look and feel. And that's a good thing because…???” …
As an aside, for Dan who “still doesn't get Laszlo,” there's a whole lot more to Laszlo than XML. What makes Laszlo cool is its constraints system, animation geared to UI design, client-server data model, effective class re-factoring, and more.
Someday there'll be a GUI tool for creating and editing Laszlo applications. Let's face it: typing in pixel coordinates and RGB values is no fun. Ideally there would be a layout tool that directly created and edited LZX files. Most folks at Laszlo design in Illustrator or whatever and transfer pixel and RGB values to the XML files. By the way, this is often what folks do when building UI for desktop apps. [Sarah Allen's Weblog]