Closed source software hurts GUI development

“Two bright young men from the University of Washington recently
presented Prefab, a technology which they say will facilitate the
implementation of “advanced behaviours in graphical interfaces”.
That in itself isn’t particularly new but the route Prefab takes to
implement well documented graphical user interface (GUI) techniques
are a clear example of the lengths engineers have to go to
circumnavigate the limitations posed by closed source software.

“Given that Prefab, the system coined by Morgan Dixon and James
Fogarty, has no access to the pre-compiled source code, the system
effectively reverse engineers the GUI. That reverse engineering is
merely the first of a three step process, allowing the system to
overlay enhancements irrespective of the program or operating
system and relay inputs back to the original ‘source’ GUI.”

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