Re: RubyOnRails and Intraweb

jim sirikolkarn wrote:
I find it's really helpful from your post.

Thanks.

Have you ever try Tibco General Interface? How does it compare with YUI.

I haven't tried Tibco GI. I currently use dojo, but I am leaning
towards using YUI + YUI-ext in a new project I'm working on since the
documentation for those libraries is much, much better.

Another library to look at that doesn't get much attention is
http://qooxdoo.org/

I just found Tibco GI. It seem interesting, since it has IDE for building
javascript.

Yes, I remember seeing that in a screen cast. I think one of the things
that doesn't interest me about Tibco GI is that it looks more like a
java swing application than a web-style ui. :) But Tibco GI certainly
seems to be powerful stuff.

I wonder whether building web-app this way would be better using server-side
asp.net+ajax

Again, I'm not sure if "better" is the right way to describe the
different choices. I think for most Delphi developers they will feel
most comfortable with IntraWeb first, and ASP.NET second. This is
because both offer rich UI designers and component based development.

But for web development, I believe there is a good deal of appeal for
minimalistic toolkits that don't do much on the client side. They
enable straightforward use of all the great javascript frameworks that
are coming out like: dojo, yui/yui-ext, qooxdoo, tibco gi. And the more
lightweight guys like: script.aculo.us, moofx, mochikit, etc, etc.
Also, depending on how well the libraries are written, once can use more
than one library at the same time.

These frameworks, like rails, django and possibly forthcoming
concoctions like http://cometd.com/, keep the server-side stuff focused
around core http methods which enable flexibility on the client side.
They don't emphasize visual tools/ide's at all and this is what I
believe is alien to most Delphi developers. But with a bit of
perseverance I believe the Delphi developer might see the beauty in
"pure code" and lightweight approaches.

My personal perspective is that all this stuff is moving really quickly
and I'm not sure who is going to "win" marketshare/mindshare; I doubt
there will be a winner at all. But what I have seen is that those
emphasizing tools/ides are behind the tech curve because of the effort
required for full client/server/tool integration.

In my experience, hacking together HTML templates and a bit of
Javascript to consume these client libraries isn't that hard, so it's
not so horrible to sacrifice a UI designer for increased flexibility and
choice of javascript libraries. The latest Javascript libraries are
quite easy to use even for javascript novices and the results are quite
nice. IOW, the difference tools make on the web isn't as great as the
gains that VB/Delphi made compared to MFC/Win32.

--
Brian Moelk
Brain Endeavor LLC
bmoelk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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