The AOL APIs: Boxely

More than a callable API, Boxely is actually a full-blown application development language which uses XML and Javascript as the interface to a rendering engine that performs the tasks denoted by the Boxely code. Boxely is similar in ways to Mozilla's XML User Interface Language (XUL).

While Boxely is still relatively new, it is already operational on millions of Windows PCs, since the standard AIM 6.x clients are built using Boxely. Customization of the AIM client's look and feel, or invention of an entirely new AIM client user interface, can be accomplished by applying the Boxely toolkit and the functions and features it provides.

When you review Boxely documentation or articles about Boxely, you'll see the term "gadget" frequently. Boxely gadgets are akin to "widgets" created using other toolkits.

Figure 1. The Boxely demo race car

When you download Boxely, you get a set of demo applications that illustrate what Boxely is capable of accomplishing for you. One of the demos is the little race car in Figure 1. This vehicle races around your screen, controlled by the arrow keys. It's great fun! More interesting, though, is to consider how it was possible to construct such an interactive toy using a bunch of XML and Javascript code.

Boxely is a powerful desktop application development tool that has already proven highly successful for AOL's own recent development of AIM and other products. If developing powerful, fast user interfaces is what you need to do, Boxely is a tool to consider.

Resources

If you're seeking hands-on guides for applying Boxely, several tutorial articles are available on dev.aol.com to get you started:

• "Thinking Inside the Boxely" by Kurt Cagle
• "The Font of Wisdom: A Basic Boxely App, Part 1" by Kurt Cagle
• "The Font of Wisdom: A Basic Boxely App, Part 2" by Kurt Cagle

A search for "Boxely" on dev.aol.com brings up a large number of pages, including various blog posts I wrote during my first investigations of Boxely.

When you're ready to seriously dig into Boxely, take a look at Warren Hamerman's recent blog post "Boxely Releases New Developer Resources". This post provides an overview of the newly created Boxely Reference Library. The reference library is "a handy to a full doc set of guides and references" about Boxely.

-- Kevin Farnham
O'Reilly Media