1. Generating beautiful UI‘s
With EMF, JFace and Databinding
Lars Vogel

2. Most (Business)
UI‘s are
horrible

3. • Mhotivation
• EMF as UI storage
• EMF as UI generator
• Future Plans & Discussion
… and I will show code & examples
The next 10 minutes

4. Typical UI Painpoints
• To complex
• Unflexible
• Overloaded
• Too many opions
• Too simple
• Not enough options
• ….

5. Inspiration
• Modeled User Interfaces are becoming
popular in e4
– Modeled Workbench
– Toolkit Model

6. EMF can be used to store the UI state
• Load EMF model at startup
• Save EMF model at shutdown
 Some but not huge advantages (similar to
Memento)

7. Approach
Use EMF domain
model information to
generate the UI
automatically

8. Application
Domain Model
UI Model (based
on Toolkit Model)
Generate UI

9. Generate flexibility
• Rename fields
• Hide fields
• Remember last input
• Re-arrange the UI‘s

10. Summary
• Generate new UI‘s Minutes
• UI can be adjusted by the end
user.
• Future steps:
– Use CSS styling
– in Migrate to Eclipse e4
– Evaluate alternative approaches
• Waazabi,
• Eclipse Presentation Modeling Framework

11. Contact & Future Questions
• Lars.Vogel@gmail.com
• http://www.vogella.de
• www.twitter.com/vogella

12. Photo credits
• Dog http://www.sxc.hu/photo/302062
• Agenda: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1089869
• Elephant: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/103473
• Mouse http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1097314
• Book http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1184809
• Student: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/660438
• UML Diagram http://www.sxc.hu/photo/33012
• Liquid http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1109534
• Person with remote http://www.sxc.hu/photo/485640