my concern is to find a well fitting framework for developing a cross mobile platform app via phonegap. I am using JQMobile for the User interface.
I want to build my Application well structured and modular. That means i want to keep it very well capsulated.
I know Backbone.js , Underscore.js , handlebar.js , Mustache.js.... and many more.
I am wondering what could be the best method of structuring my apps architecture?! Moreover: Are there big dependencies which result from using those frameworks?
Which framework is giving me the BEST expandability and performance Boosts?
Iam asking because i hope someone can give me a hint. That would save much time.
Greetings
Chris.
EDIT: USEFUL Information for readers.
My final decision is based on "http://coenraets.org/blog/phonegap-tutorial/". This is a Tutorial about developing a Phonegap Application. Christophe Coenraets is a Technical Evangelist from Adobe. He gives many advices how to develop Phonegap applications with good performance. The link directs you to a really nice Tutorial for Routing between Views, Css Scrolling with Phonegap and many architectural information more. There is also a 60 minute presentation about Performance / Architecture and more similiar stuff. I am using handlebars.js for HTML templating, fastclick.js to simulate "touch" for "click" for more performance and Twitter Bootstrap CSS Framework for the responsive Design.
Anyway thx for your answers!
First lets make something clear. Whatever you use, you will not gain performance boost. Even worse, there's a good chance your performances will be lower.
But what you will get is usability and readability + more functional code than it is the case with pure jQuery + jQuery Mobile.
The most commonly used combination is jQuery Mobile + Backbone + Require.js. From my experience, it is also the best one. Unfortunately, in the end, I think you will be disappointed. While this is an excellent combination, jQuery Mobile applications are usually slugish on Phonegap. So think about it.
I have several other articles discussing similar topic so take a look:
Switching from Jquery Mobile to AppFramework
Which mobile development open source Framework should I use?
Related
In many of the SO questions related to jQuery Mobile vs other frameworks like Sencha,the former does not get recommended for enterprise centric applications.What are the specific reasons why jQuery mobile is not recommended?
For several reasons, the first would be speed. Sencha is a highly optimized framework compared to jQuery and the resulting code base is more efficient. You can get jQuery to a decent speed but it requires much more optimisation on your part. JQuery you use a combination of HTML & JavaScript whereas With Sencha it is mostly just JavaScript hence the speed difference.
A second reason would be scalability, for large enterprise applications Sencha is much better and more modular, if your application is large and you need to extend it Sencha's MVC framework allows you to build add-on parts easily by adding new views, models and stores. JQuery does not have a decent MVC framework.
The Sencha framework also provides a modern and simple way of connecting to data services...such as the new Windows Azure connection tools etc. jQuery this is possible but not as fully featured.
Hope that helps,
:-)
I have been reading the abstracts on the website http://www.rikulo.org but all those cryptic vague statements do not help me. The examples are all about visuals.
I do not understand what this framework is capeable of doing. The big picture is missing.
What kind of apps can i build with rikulo?
Is there any access to the hardware?
Can is use the smartphones sensordata and send e.g. coordinates from my smartphone to a web service?
What are the limitations?
As described in this blog, Rikulo is aimed to provide a structured UI model for Web and mobile programming. We are the same team who developed ZK. With Rikulo, we'd like to take a step further since many things have been changed since we developed ZK in 2005. Also, both Dart and HTML 5 are young. It is an excellent moment to explore the best possible UI architecture for both Web and mobile programming.
For example, we use absolute positioning to give programmers 100% control the layout of UI rather than spending hours to figure out why it fails in certain combination. Another example is "recursive layered structure", such as layout manager and visual effect handling -- rather than ad hoc features targeting specific problems individually.
On the other hand, we don't have many widgets yet. It might be the reason that confused you. As a Apache licensed project, we hope we can have an active community for building widgets and addons, as long as we can really provide a solid and elegant architecture -- it is what we focus now and keep refining.
To access the hardware, you can use Rikulo Gap which is based on Cordova/PhoneGap. To communicate back the server, you can use Web socket or HttpRequest. We will have more advanced support for jsonizing, caching and communicating Dart objects between client and server, but it is not ready yet.
Technically, there is no limitation. Of course, the current number of widgets is definitely not enough, but it will get more in the near future. Furthermore, you always can create them with HTML 5 (and contribute back). However, for mobile applications, one thing you have to keep in mind: the performance won't be as good as the apps written in Objective C. The good is Rikulo is cross platform and your app can be accessed with Web browsers and as a native app.
I am an iOS developer with decent experience, After a lot of decsion making, we have coome to a conclusion of using phoneGap for our next project which is suppose to be a multi platform app.
Now the question is what to use with PhoneGap, Sencha and jQuery Mobile?
I visited old posts at SO,Quora and a lot of blogs and came to a conclusion that, jQuery Mobile is good to start and learn but Sencha is much more powerful in terms of controls,MVC on client and extensibility.
I have used jquery,jquery plugins and ExtJS in the past and I am fine with either of their mobile counterparts .
So coming to the point, Our application will be designed by a designer who will not know what we will be using to make the app.
he will give us wireframes of the application and slices for images to put on buttons,tab bars etc.
This is how our standard iOS design process works.
So which of the two frameworks will suit this kind of development style where I will be able to replicate the UI given by the designer.
Coming from iOS, Sencha Touch might be a little closer to what you're used to. Having had a little iOS experience, I feel like ST has a much closer layout system. jQuery Mobile would be best if the implementor is used to building things for the browser.
I think both are equally customizable. Having that said ST provides more built in components and hooks whereas jqm wants you to do more on your own. Both frameworks differ extremely in their approach. Jqm uses a declarative designer friendly approach whereas ST uses an OOP programmer friendly approach.
Vaadin and Apache Click seem to be equally good, which one should I choose for developing my web application. Or rather, what are the Pros and Cons of each framework.
I'm a committer of Apache Click but hopefully you will find my opinion objective.
I don't know Vaadin at all, just had a cursory look at their website and examples and mission statement.
Apache Click and Vaadin are meant for different problem spaces. Apache Click is targeted at traditional enterprise web applications while Vaadin targets the Rich Internet Application (RIA) space.
Apache Click is a traditional share nothing, stateless framework. Unlike traditional action based web frameworks Click provides a slightly higher level of abstraction by using Pages and Components. At the of the day Click isn't a revolution. Its just one of many approaches of doing web application development. In my opinion its a very good approach, both from a developer and maintainer point of view. (In enterprise environments the developer and maintainer are often not the same individual, so I differentiate between the two roles).
However developers sometimes have requirements that cannot be satisfied by traditional web applications, which is where RIA comes in. They provide a richer user experience (think desktop) but this does not come for free. RIA comes at a cost in terms of complexity, productivity and time-to-market. It makes sense though, if the requirements are for a richer experience, you need to do more in order to deliver that experience.
My advice here is: think carefully about your requirements. Don't simply assume that RIA is better, there is a price to pay, so make sure you get return for your investment.
Lastly, if your requirement is for RIA, then you should compare Vaadin with Flex. If your requirement is for a more traditional web application then compare Click with Struts, Stripes, Wicket, Tapestry etc.
Kind regards
Bob
I use both ;-)
Click is the best for classic web applications (pure html with no/ small/ handmade javascript).
It is very lightweight (small size and stateless), less verbose (you can do your html in html with velocity/freemarker power ;-).
A real php-killer.
Vaadin is the best for desktop like enterprise applications.
It is statefull, heavyweight, verbose, but amazing.
Grails, Play!, Spring MVC is a real step back after Click/Vaadin.
So my advice: use both!
For most of your pages you will use Click, for complicated tasks - Vaadin.
I've been using Click since 2006. I've built various web applications with it in the last 4 years. All apps (B2B) are still going strong and continue to be maintained/added to now. The best things about Click IMO include:
Very little magic and almost no plumbing. It's all just plain java (and jsp/velocity/freemarker take your pick; or alternatively use all 3 if you so choose; I have for some scenarios because it's so easy to).
It's super fast (It doesn't mean your app won't be slow, it just means Click will never be the reason why your app is slow)
It is so easy to integrate your favourite java lib eg. Ibatis SQLMAP, Spring, displaytag, DWR etc.etc.
You don't need to buy a book to understand/use it (although you may need books for all the other 3rd part libs you plan to use).
Most of my code written 4 years ago still works with the current release. That is just awesome.
Click fits in your head. The whole framework that is. It is so simple you don't have too many questions even as a beginner.
The guys that maintain Click are super responsive and very noob friendly.
It's simplicity helps my apps adapt to new/old tech. i.e I can easily do AJAXy stuff if I want or not.
The form features make handling html forms very easy/fast.
The table features make displaying data super easy/fast
Click's features help me write apps very quickly. Makes the need for scaffolding unnecessary imo.
If you want a light weight, fast, easy to understand framework which helps you build applications as fast as you or your team are personally able to, check out click, it will be worth your while.
Before making your choice you should evaluate all options by taking them out on a test drive.
I'm not familiar with Click, and someone should correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand Click basically a technique to link your server side code to web pages. The UI is page-based and you define the UI with components corresponding to HTML elements. Ajax is not (yet) supported, I gather.
Vaadin operates at a higher level of abstraction. With Vaadin you get to concentrate on your business logic, and build your UI naturally with views, layouts and other components (check out the Sampler). You don't need to care about RPC, page transitions, HTML or templates. Vaadin gives you a fully cross-browser compliant Ajax UI that looks and works great out of the box. It's very easy to get started, and the forum is very active (>700 messages last month compared to 96 on the Click mailing list).
Disclaimer: I'm a member of the Vaadin team and have not used Click.
I would choose, and I already did in a few projects Click (over all other frameworks).
The main selling point for me was that I was able to learn Click and be quite productive in one week-end (Vaadin - but other frameworks too took me much more).
The free and available documentation for Click is much better - you can compare the sites yourself (even if the Vaadin site looks cooler, the Click site is simply more useful - at least it was for me).
The live examples are much better - I always look at them as a snippet repository, and just copy what I need from there (since I'm a lazy programmer :) ) - there's a "Page Java" and "Page HTML" link for every example that shows the source code for every available example.
Regarding the message traffic, I don't think that should be a criteria, since having so good free online docs, and the framework being so much simpler, the users simply don't need to ask that much.
Disclaimer: I'm just a simple user that have used both frameworks.
Is Apache wicket an option as well ?
My experience is with jboss/ejb/jquery, but looking at technologies for starting a new project. I've done a quick bit of research myself abd Vaadin seems to be very well regarded.
Surely Apache Wicket is something you can not ignore if you are comparing UI frameworks. ( I am doing same.) I dropped Vaadin because of poor documentation ( maybe I am not a good Googler.)
Currently comparing Wicket, Click, and ZK.
Click and Wicket are ahead so far for the following reasons:
Generates pure HTML instead of rendering UI using JavaScript which happens in GWT, Vaadin, and ZK. You can use HTML5 features then.
Even with native HTML, server-side binding of UI forms is possible.
You don't need to worry about communication with the server. ZK also does this but with their own language ZUML.
I have found server-side memory footprint higher in ZK in the case of components like the ZK Grid. (Memory footprint for Click is not known to me yet.)
I'm working on a application that requires a feature-rich media view, including images, videos, and smooth sequencing based on capture time. The backend is currently written in Rails.
What's currently the best, most mature option for implementing RIAs with Rails on the backend? I've looked at Flex, Laszlo, and ExtJS. ExtJS is interesting to me because I'm really not a fan of pure Flash UIs, but it seems highly targeted towards business apps, not entertainment applications like this.
Any suggestions or insights from others doing similar efforts will be very much appreciated.
Thanks!
I second zdmytriv for that book Flexible Rails, it's awesome. It's fairly outdated now though but lays out how simple it is to create a solid Project Management application with Flex and Rails. Everything in there has now become "RestfulX".
Check out RestfulX, it's a must. The RestfulX Google Group is very active too and they've made a lot easy.
We built this website in Flex with RestfulX and it was very easy. That application uses the Rails Paperclip gem to do image processing in a Flex admin panel like ScrapBlog (Scrapblog was built in Flex), and we could use some cool layout effects built into Flex 4. RestfulX made that pretty easy, and the gems made it even easier :p. They have generators too like Rails so it's real easy to get up and running with a DataGrid/CMS-like interface in 5 minutes.
I don't know anything about the other things you've mentioned, but I do know that it's pretty fun and easy to integrate Flex with Rails now-a-days.
As a side note, you can do hardcore SEO with Flex and Rails too, thanks to SWFAddress. We're doing that with that site above.
Cheers
I can recommend Flex and also this book Flexible Rails, whole book dedicated Flex with Rail cooperation. List of sample applications from the book here
Flexible Rails http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51QysfVDlVL._SL500_AA240_.jpg
If you're serious about considering Ext as an option, you should really search and maybe post in their forums about others using Rails, I know there are quite a few doing so successfully. I just ran across this example that seems like a pretty fully-baked app doing just that, so it's definitely possible.
Without knowing exactly what you're trying to do, I think that saying Ext is "targeted towards business apps" is a fair general statement, in terms of the widgets that come with it out of the box. It's highly geared toward window/form-based Ajax apps. That said, Ext Core is very similar to jQuery and other core frameworks, and everything in Ext is built to be highly extensible (hence, "ext"). In terms of being able to build what you need off of it, it is very powerful and flexible. You can certainly implement a flash viewer easily, and there are existing plugins that will do exactly that.
Sounds like Toby had a bad experience with Ext, but many other people enjoy it and find it very natural to code in. The syntax definitely has a Java/C# flavor to it in some ways (although it's really hard to directly compare any JS framework to a static language), and it has roots in YUI (which is even more verbose). For someone coming from C-ish backgrounds, it will likely feel very comfortable. If you're more used to Python or Ruby or something else, then it might not be as enjoyable, I don't know. Something you'd have to try for yourself.
Take a look at WebOrb from themidnightcoders.com. Among many features, it allows for AMF protocol for serialization of data. It is smoking fast.
IMO, if you want a true RIA experience, you'll need to focus on either Flex or Silverlight. There are pros and cons to each.
I did a GWT project a while back and am working with Ext right now. I have some C# / Swing GUI experience, none in Flash.
I like Ext a lot. It looks great, and I found the programming model close enough to the C#'s and Swings of the world as to be familiar and fairly pleasant. The documentation is not excellent, but definitely good enough. For Java at least, there is a solid remoting mechanism (third party, called DJN... most likely there are others, too). A couple of minor bugs here and there.
The major negative is support. They have a forum but there are a distressingly large number of questions and problems that go unresolved. They have paid support in theory, but were sufficiently unresponsive to basic 'how does your paid support work' type questions that I was not encouraged to buy any. There is only one book that I know of, it looks promising but it is not out yet.
I found GWT impressive and had no real problems, but at the end of of the day I am much happier with Ext.
Have you taken a look at Google Web Toolkit yet? In my opinion it's a great way to build rich and performant web applications. The toolkit is quite mature (Google Wave is build with it) and has a lot of good tools to make development easy.
Here's a previous Stakoverflow post.
I don't know about best, but I did a project using ExtJS and hated every minute of it. Frustratingly verbose code, overly complicated programming model, confusing documentation, and difficult to make it do anything it didn't want to.
That said, it looks very awesome, has incredibly powerful widgets and the client and users loved it.
I haven't helped at all, have I?
I think if you requirements include doing anything with video and audio, you are going to need a Flash solution.
Take a look at netzke -- client-server components with Sencha Ext JS and Ruby on Rails.
Netzke is a framework that allows for a beautiful blend of client- and
server-side code (JavaScript and Ruby, respectively) into ready-to-use
GUI components. It's most useful for creating complex data-rich
backend applications with Ruby on Rails on the back end, and Sencha
Ext JS in the browser.