Mike McCracken for a Views Framework

Another article Brent Simmons points to in his blog: Mike McCracken's UI Question. In it, Mike mentions how cool it would be to have a library of GUI classes that provide cool new features Apple introduces, so GUI improvements make it into mainstream apps faster. He also seems to be speaking out for a general open source class library of other useful objects that help improve application GUIs without needing Apple as a lead to release new stuff every 18 months.

He's realistic about it and suggests that it could be free for open source projects but would cost for commercial ones, which could also help finance such a project. When, back at ADHOC 2004, Daryl Hawes mentioned his CocoaObjects.com project, I thought it would be something like that with a wider focus, and with more self-contained objects instead of a huge monolithic framework like OmniFoundation etc. But it looks like he's moved to more of a tutorial site.

I'll try to get in touch with Daryl. Maybe we can get something working, or if not, maybe I can usurp some of my site's infrastructure and cobble together something of my own (GeSHi syntax coloring, archive browsing...). It'd just be a library of objects, kind of like Cocoadev.com's ObjectLibrary, but with more structure: searchable, and with icons indicating features, licenses etc. Maybe a script to build a framework of some core classes that can be replaced more easily, and installer code for your app.

But although I could set up such a site and keep it running, I'm not sure I'd have enough time on my hands to screen all submissions and verify the links are still working on a regular basis. So, would anybody be interested in helping me split the workload? You can click my name below to contact me.

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