User interface markup language

A user interface markup language is a markup language that renders and describes graphical user interfaces and controls. Many of these markup languages are dialects of XML and are dependent upon a pre-existing scripting language engine, usually a JavaScript engine, for rendering of controls and extra scriptability.

The concept of the user interface markup languages is primarily based upon the desire to prevent the "re-invention of the wheel" in the design, development and function of a user interface; such re-invention comes in the form of coding a script for the entire user interface. The typical user interface markup language solidifies often re-used program or script code in the form of markup, making it easier to focus upon design of a user interface in an understandable dialect as opposed to focus on function.

User interface markup languages, like most markup and programming languages, rely upon sub-application runtimes to interpret and render the markup code as program code that can be processed and put out in the desired form. In XML-based user interface markup languages, which tend to rely upon a web browser's layout engine as a runtime, most of the code is re-interpreted to the layout engine as JavaScript; this means that JavaScript can be used to extend the user interface markup languages to extents that are not covered by the present functionality of the layout engine.

XFD, which stands for XML Form Definition is the user interface markup language behind STARLIMS product (http://www.starlims.com), developed by Abbott Informatics. STARLIMS product has an entire ecosystem of runtime and design time tools to run and create visual forms using XFD language. STARLIMS v10 is powered by an XFD runtime developed using Microsoft .NET Framework and hosted in Internet Explorer browser. STARLIMS v11 introduces an additional XFD engine based on a server-side transformation engine that transforms the XFD into HTML5 compatible data designed to run on any HTML5 compliant browser. XFD is programmable in JavaScript based language.

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