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Ask HN: What is the best UI builder that you have ever used?
I am looking for examples of good UI builders, specifically those that can handle responsive UIs while maintaining fast development velocity. Most UI builders that allows fast iteration are limited to absolute positioning, while those that are responsive are generally not very intuitive to use because the widgets cannot be easily dragged around.
- speedgoose 6y agoActual source code is always the best despite the inconvenience.
- hypermachine 6y agoFair enough and I agree, but I am looking for examples of UI builders with great UX and flexibility because I am currently building one.
- thedevindevops 6y agoCan you tell us a little bit more about what your building? Is it web or native?
- hypermachine 6y agoCloud native VBA. See the earlier comments under my account for context.
- anotheryou 6y agohttps://www.concrete5.org/ https://www.concrete5.org/ was way ahead at least when I tried it years ago. It allows for in-place editing and as a dev I could easily add more custom elements/blocks to be dropped and configured. --- Elementor for wordpress is decent regarding the responsive thing. But load times in the end suck...
- karmakaze 6y agoNeXTSTEP Interface Builder. It found it's way into XCode, but the constraint system with autolayout just got tedious.
- karmakaze 6y agoI wrote a UI builder for OS/2 PM that targeted PM or Windows. It also had supporting libraries and code generators that let you pick many standard formatting and validation functions as well as hook in your own. That was around 1990. Why are we still only specifying the layout in this day and age? We should be able to spec most of an application 'in the UI builder' and only add the data processing parts, even the network access or persistence should be wired for us.
- taf2 6y agoIn 2000s I really liked Glade for Gtk+
- simonblack 6y agoSo what did you replace Glade with?
- taf2 6y agoLong story but sort of XULRunner . After many days hacking the win32 event loop with assembly to inject a function to fix an event loop bug with gtk gecko.. I realized a bunch of c++ developers already solve most of the UI issues with HTML and CSS... so in about 4 months I reworked a year of work we put into Gtk+ On a custom build of Mozilla for our application... we later sold the company and I wish I still had that code but have really only worked on web apps since
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andrecp11 6y agoWhat kind of UI are you building? What platform are you targeting?
- hypermachine 6y agoI am building a UI builder. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26532316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26532316
- _448 6y agohttps://storybook.js.org https://storybook.js.org It spromotes atomic design system
- hypermachine 6y agoThat's more of a demo and showcase tool rather than a GUI builder. I am specifically looking for the drag and drop type.
- _448 6y ago> That's more of a demo and showcase tool rather than a GUI builder. It is a UI component builder using the principles of atomic design.
- miguelrochefort 6y agoXAML (WPF, Silverlight, UWP, WinUI) is the best I’ve used.
- dmz73 6y agoLazarus and Delphi have the most intuitive UI builders of all the tools I have every tried. Lazarus components can be anchored relative to the parent and to each other. Latest Delphi has various layout panels - stack, relative, grid. Both tools feel fast and responsive (even on older hardware) which is something that I haven't experienced with any .NET or Java tool I had to use. Both tools have been around for a long time and haven't changed or abandoned underlying technology every few years so projects built 10 years ago can still be used with latest versions, sometimes just recompiling is enough.
- yesenadam 6y agoI really loved using Borland C++ Builder 4 (on Windows), around 2000-2010. I've haven't found anything so easy to use since.
- bsldld 6y agoTurboVision, yay!
- hypermachine 6y agoAre you referring to this https://winworldpc.com/product/borland-c/40 https://winworldpc.com/product/borland-c/40 or the later versions?
- yesenadam 6y agoThanks, I didn't know the history. That's pre-Builder.. Mine looked like this: https://winworldpc.com/product/borland-c-builder/1x https://winworldpc.com/product/borland-c-builder/1x Here's the kind of thing I did with it: http://www.adamponting.com/ifs-art/ http://www.adamponting.com/ifs-art/
- dalu 6y agoQuasar.dev