A Retrospective on User Interface Development Technology

The authors present a brief survey on the evolution of user interface (UI) development technology, especially over the past two decades, shaped by the desktop, Web, and mobile eras. From the technology mainstream, the authors describe form-oriented, template-based, object-oriented, hybrid, and declarative frameworks and address model-driven and generic approaches. The focus of this article is on a framework of UI development concerns and how these have been addressed in each analyzed technology or group of technologies. At the end, the authors summarize current issues and future directions of UI development in general.