UIML is short for User Interface Markup Language. As the name already says it is a
Markup Language like
HTML. It is used to describe
User Interfaces for
applications (especially web applications). It is based on
XML and has been developed at
Virginia Tech University in December
1997.
The main advantage of UIML is that the
UI is described independently form the program itself. This makes
multi platform,
multi toolkit applications easier to handle.
UIML documents are layered. There is a presentation
layer, which describes the visible, static interface. The dialog management layer describes the
event handling and connects the presentation layer with the application. Finally the application layer, which is the application. The UIML
document is rendered to the
programming language used.