Superficial is a fresh approach to design and coding of GUI applications.

Bridging the gap between architectural concepts such as Model-View-Controller and widget toolkits such as Java Swing, Superficial's novel conceptual approach offers practical resolutions to key issues in construction and management of GUI applications.

Superficial provides a powerful solution for data binding and application construction that already achieves or exceeds many of the aims of JSR 295, JSR 296 and JavaFX Script.

Applications can be developed using Superficial with such features 'out of the box' as

• concise, semi-declarative definition of widget layouts
• advanced data binding, transparent to client code
• multiple viewers on the same content
• multiple content open at the same time (MDI interface)
• data transfer (cut and paste, drag and drop) between viewers
• multiple content types in the same application
• custom painting and manipulation in viewers

The spike application (WebStart requiring Java plug-in) demonstrates the full range of features offered by Superficial, while a tutorial provides basic coding examples.

The Facets implementation of Superficial in Java includes a binding to the Swing toolkit, and provides for binding to custom Swing components.

Exploring Superficial

To explore the potential of Superficial for your GUI development projects, you can

• get an overview of the core Superficial concepts
• take the coding tutorial
• explore the Java API of the Facets implementation of Superficial
• download the latest Facets distribution
• download the white paper for a detailed account of how Superficial works

© 2007 David M Wright