Tired of Complicated Code? This New Tool Lets You Build Web Apps with Simple Instructions!
Hey everyone, John here! Welcome back to the blog. Today, we’re looking at a brand-new tool that got me really excited. It’s called XMLUI, and its main goal is to make a very tricky part of creating web applications much, much simpler. Think of it as a new way to build the parts of a website you can see and touch, but without needing a degree in computer science to do it. Let’s dive in and see what it’s all about!
So, What Exactly is XMLUI?
Imagine you want to build a house. The traditional way would be to learn all about architecture, engineering, and construction. You’d have to cut the wood, mix the concrete, and lay every single brick yourself. That’s kind of like modern web development—it’s powerful, but it requires a lot of specialized knowledge.
XMLUI offers a different approach. It’s like being given a set of pre-built walls, windows, and doors. You don’t need to know how they were made; you just need to say, “I want a wall here, a door there, and a window over there.” XMLUI lets you build the visual part of a web app using simple, descriptive instructions instead of complex code.
Hi John! You mentioned it helps build “React-based user interfaces” without needing React knowledge. That sounds a bit confusing. What are React and UIs?
Excellent question, Lila! Let’s break that down.
- A User Interface (UI) is everything you see and interact with on a screen. The buttons you click, the forms you fill out, the menus you browse—that’s all the UI. It’s the “face” of any application.
- React is a very popular, but also very complex, library that developers use to build those UIs. It’s like a powerful, high-tech engine for a car. It can do amazing things, but you need to be a skilled mechanic to work with it.
What XMLUI does is it takes the power of that React engine but puts a simple, easy-to-use dashboard in front of it. You get all the benefits of the powerful engine without needing to know how to build it from scratch!
How Does It Work? The Magic of “Building Blocks”
The secret behind XMLUI is its huge catalog of ready-to-use parts, which developers call components. These are like digital LEGO blocks. Need a table to display some data? There’s a component for that. Need a sign-up form with text boxes and a “Submit” button? There are components for those too. You also get lists, buttons, and many other common website elements.
You simply write down which components you want and where you want them using a simple language called XML. This is a markup language, which means you use tags to describe your content. It’s a bit like telling your computer, “<place_a_button_here> and <put_a_list_here>”. This is what’s known as a declarative approach—you declare what you want, and XMLUI handles the hard work of actually building it.
Hold on, John. The article also says developers can “read and write APIs.” That sounds super technical. What’s an API?
You’re right, Lila, that term pops up everywhere! An API (Application Programming Interface) is basically like a menu at a restaurant. It gives a list of dishes (or data) you can order and a clear way to ask for them. When one computer program wants to get information from another, it uses the second program’s API. So with XMLUI, developers can easily connect their user interface (the front of the restaurant) to the data sources (the kitchen) to create a fully working app.
A Throwback to a Simpler Time: Visual Basic
One of the people involved with the project, Jon Udell, made a really interesting comparison. He said XMLUI brings back the spirit of an older tool called Visual Basic (VB). In the past, VB made it incredibly easy for people to build applications for Windows. It had a rich collection of components that you could literally drag and drop onto a screen and then “wire” together to make them work.
It allowed many people who weren’t expert coders to create useful software. XMLUI aims to do the same thing for the modern web, which is dominated by React. It wants to let developers stand on the shoulders of the expert coders who built all these powerful React components, without having to become experts themselves.
Making Things Even Easier with an AI Helper
Here’s where it gets even more futuristic. The XMLUI project also provides a special helper tool called an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. Think of this server as a helpful translator or guide that works with AI coding assistants (like the AI in tools such as Claude Desktop or Cursor).
When a developer is working with an AI to build an app, the MCP server helps guide the AI’s attention. It tells the AI, “Hey, focus on this part of the project right now,” making the collaboration between the human developer and the AI much smoother and more efficient. The goal is to get to a point where developers write very little code, maybe just a few tiny snippets of JavaScript, and don’t have to worry at all about something called CSS.
Okay, last question, I promise! What are JavaScript and CSS?
No problem, Lila, these are important ones!
- JavaScript is the programming language that makes websites interactive. When you click a button and something happens, that’s usually JavaScript at work. It can get very complicated.
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is the code that makes a website look good. It controls all the colors, fonts, spacing, and layout. It’s what makes a website beautiful instead of just a plain black-and-white document. CSS can also be very complex and tricky to get right.
XMLUI’s big advantage is that it “encapsulates” both. That’s a fancy way of saying it hides all the complexity of JavaScript and CSS inside its easy-to-use components. You just use the component, and it comes with all the beautiful styling and interactive behavior already built-in!
The Mission: Make It Easy!
This whole project was thought up by Gent Hito, the founder of two successful software companies. The mission for his past companies was to make network communication easy and data access easy for developers. Now, with XMLUI, the mission is perfectly clear: make building user interfaces easy for developers. It’s all about removing barriers so more people can create great things for the web.
A Few Final Thoughts
John’s take: I think this is fantastic. For years, building for the web has been getting more powerful but also more complex. A tool like XMLUI that focuses on simplicity and accessibility is a breath of fresh air. It lowers the bar for entry, which could lead to a whole new wave of creativity from people who might have been intimidated by code before.
Lila’s take: From my perspective as a beginner, this is exactly what I’d want! The idea of just describing what I want to see on a page, instead of learning three different complicated languages to build it, is amazing. It makes the idea of creating my first web app feel possible instead of impossible.
This article is based on the following original source, summarized from the author’s perspective:
XMLUI builds React-based UIs with simple markup