This is big news for web developers.

I’ve discussed why I absolutely love Cappuccino for web development.  It’s a modern, full featured language and API that makes writing interactive and complex web applications much simpler.  Up until this point, writing the UI for a Cappuccino application has entailed a lot of “stupid” code for layouts and positioning of controls.  This is acceptable for people coming from Windows programming, Linux, and even Java for the most part.  You have to write a good chunk of code for even the most basic button to be on the window.

Atlas changes that.

For developers familiar with Apple’s own Developer Tools, Atlas is Xcode and Interface Builder combined into a web application, itself built upon Cappuccino.  You edit your CIB file, which contains your menu bar, windows, models, views and controllers.  It acts very similar to Interface Builder, in that you can simply drag from a button to a controller to set an action, or drag from a model to a view to set an outlet.  The Inspector even has most of the normal Cocoa conveniences.

Atlas is not yet available, but has been demoed in Miami.  You can head on over to the Atlas website, from the 280 North team ( who brought us 280 Slides and Cappuccino) to register on the mailing list.