Let’s take a moment to think about how we interact with interfaces. I am willing to bet that about half of you think “point and click” while the other half considers “point and move”. At our most recent Meetup, David Valdman covered the topic of Reactive Layout for User Interfaces.
Sounds cool, but what does that mean? David started by giving us a little background on the difference between Object Oriented Programming and Reactive Programming. Let’s start with a question:
If a tree falls in a forest but no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound? Has it even fallen?
We didn’t have any philosophy members to really help us dive into this conundrum. However, this is a great metaphor for Object Oriented and Functional programming. Still confused? It’s all revealed in the video above, including a more in-depth explanation of what the relationship is between reactive programming, layouts, and animation. David also dives into the JavaScript library, Samsara.js, which he recently published for animating layout.“It provides a language for positioning, orienting and sizing DOM elements and coordinating the animation of these properties over time. To do so, it borrows from the principles of reactive programming (samsarajs.org).
The talk was fascinating and we have full video coverage above for you to enjoy. We are excited to move into this new “point and move” territory together with you.
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