FWD » Core Development » User Interface

The current approach of having a parallel set of Config classes for each widget type is overcomplicated. In particular, it has a great deal of logic implemented there instead of in the widgets themselves.

The basic design is this:

Server Widget <-----> Config instance <-----> Client Widget

The config instances should be simple containers that hold common data for bidirectional transport between the server and client widgets. We don't even need to implement the bean interfaces or any other methods except what is needed for Externalizable. All server-specific logic can be put in the server widgets and client logic in the client widgets. The whole apply() processing needs to be eliminated.

The problem is that today, with substantial logic being implemented in the config classes, it is hard to know where to find logic (server logic can be in 2 places and client logic can be in 2 places). In addition there is alot of useless methods there that can save effort in maintenance and reduce future effort in implementing new attributes. We want the config classes to be dumb containers with public data.