ACE: building interactive graphical applications

make computers more useful, the development of interactive, graphical applications must be made cheaper, faster, and more effective. Making application development cheaper requires broadening the base of application developers so that people with few computer skills can develop applications. Making application development faster means providing higher-level tools and components for building applications, as well as facilitating software reuse. Making application development more effective means application software should address users' tasks and problems better than such software typically has. In this article, we will discuss the limitations of application development technology to-date, and then describe how our prototype Application Construction Environment (ACE) can facilitate the development of interactive graphical applications. Current application development technology does not adequately facilitate the development of interactive graphical applications. BUilding applications with user interface management systems (UIMSs), UI toolkits, and interactive UI builders is easier than building without them, but it is still too difficult: demand for software applications still far exceeds the supply. UI development tools provide

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