MoDE: a UIMS for Smalltalk

Abstract

While the Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework has contributed to many aspects of user interface development in Smalltalk, interfaces produced with MVC often have highly coupled model, view, and controller classes. This coupling and the effort required to use MVC make user interface creation a less effective aspect of Smalltalk. The Mode Development Environment (MoDE) is a user interface management system (UIMS) which addresses the above issues. MoDE is composed of two major components: the Mode framework and the Mode Composer. The Mode framework accommodates an orthogonal design which decouples the user interface components and increases their reusability. The Mode Composer reduces the effort of using MoDE by providing a direct-manipulation user interface to its users. This paper discusses the importance of orthogonality and illustrates its incorporation into the design of MoDE. A comparison of the Mode framework and the MVC framework is included.