I'm off to Smalltalk Solutions in the next few days. It'll be a long flight from Canberra to Sydney to San Francisco to Orlando. Once there, James Robertson will be meeting me at the airport and we're off to Melbourne for a few days.

I'll be at the hotel two days before the conference starts. As James has stated in his blog, we'll be going to a few theme parks - you're more than welcome to join us.

I'll be presenting at Smalltalk Solutions on the third day. Come along, it's going to be a great talk - I promise!:

Transcend the UI divide WithStyle!

Abstract: Web application, desktop executable, or both? Unfortunately, whichever choice you make there is either compromise - in the productivity or 'reach' of the outcome - or a costly duplication of effort under fundamentally different models. WithStyle solves this dilemma by bringing a single, consolidated model to developers that bridges today's great 'UI divide'.

In WithStyle4, the WithStyle UI platform comes-of-age as a realization of the 'best-of-both-worlds' vision. This sees rich Pollock widgets combined with the latest in Web and XML technologies. Whether you are building Web apps or desktop executables, WithStyle provides ways of 'adding style' to your application as well as paths toward Web-Desktop convergence.

This presentation will provide an overview of the innovations in the WithStyle4 layout engine and introduce the WithStyle declarative XML UI. Demonstrations will illustrate how Seaside and other server platforms can now leverage forms-based data entry though Pollock with 'skinnable' UI layout using CSS2+3 and WYSIWYG XML content editing against an XML schema!

The flexibility of WithStyle opens many new UI possibilities including 'runtime-morphable' WithStyle clients that can alternate between scriptable thin client and powerful fat client - even during use! Combined with Pollock, the WithStyle technology provides the Smalltalk community with an exciting opportunity to innovate on the client side and combine the best from both sides of the UI divide.