Which is better for UI development. Are there any differences between the two UI toolkits?
I currently use Prototype/Scriptaculous, but I'm looking to migrate to jQuery. My main reason is that the developers and community behind Prototype/Scriptaculous seem to have disappeared; there haven't been any new releases in a long time, and several features are still a little buggy. The jQuery & jQuery UI teams seem to be very engaged, more open (see this, for example), and have a larger and more active community.
jQuery is better,
it has noConflict method that allows you to easy migrate, having both prototype/scriptaculous and jquery library included
jQuery is light weight especially in compare with scriptaculous
jQuery produce very simple code that easy to test/review
jQuery support CSS 2/3 selectors even browser doesn't
For ROR there is a plugin jRails
Regards,
Pavel
JQuery will be supported in Visual Studio 2010 making it a good choice for .NET developers.
Check this link - jQuery and Microsoft
See comparison of features: http://wiki.freaks-unidos.net/javascript-libraries
jQuery is very popular and well integrated in many frameworks, while the only framework in which scriptaculous is integrated is Ruby on Rails.
I just migrated all my client side scripting from Prototype / Scriptaculous to jQuery. The result is better performance (less coding + smaller footprint) and the application as a whole seems much richer. There is something really satisfying about jQuery development.
Prototype is a great library, but I got a little frustrated that, as DNS pointed out, the developers & community seem to have gone to sleep.
hmmm I find that scriptaculous is easier to use then JQ because it looks more like javascript and it has more core effects...I like that about it however yes it is a bit buggy and the comunity has started to move to JQuery...However I realy don't like JQ because it is like learning a new lanuage from scratch...it looks nothing like javascript
I've been using jQuery whenever I can. When using scriptaculous, I've found it hard to find suitable plugins that just work. Most of them have bugs or lack good documentation. For example, I went through 3 slideshows including writing my own in Scriptaculous before settling in and modifying one to suit my needs. With jQuery, I just had to go through 1 slideshow plugin because there are so many of them that one was bound to suit my needs.
Related
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?
I am starting out a new project that involves the use of JSF 2.0.
From my initial reading, the Mojarra and Apache Implementation of the
project covers the basic components that you will need.
But I know that user's would seek gui with better presentation such as
panel tab, accordion, slider etc... Currently, there are other implementation that I am seeing, the Primefaces, RichFaces and Icefaces.
But I cant find a good article that discusses which among the three are the best.
I have used Spring MVC before but I use JqueryUI for those widget.
Now that I am into component based framework, I would like to use the best JSF Implementation.
I would like to know metrics such as performance/interoperability/ease of use/support.
Sorry if my question might be vague but I would like to hear comments before I select my JSF Vendor Implementation.
Thanks.
I happily use Primefaces as it is by far the most rich set of open source JSF2 controls out there, but they can be infuriatingly buggy at times. It is best to operate under the assumption that component X will not work correctly in a dialog without heavy tinkering.
I would avoid Primefaces if you operate in a development environment with strict UI design requirements as getting everything exactly the way you would like it to look and operate may not be a possibility.
Further I would avoid Primefaces if you are not comfortable with JSF, HTML, JQuery, JavaScript and CSS as you will need a good bit of JQuery trickery to work around the bugs that crop up.
But on that note, I haven't run into a problem yet that a couple lines of custom Javascript haven't fixed for me, and I have one of the most feature rich applications I have ever wrote in the shortest amount of time.
The speed of development is very fast in this area, and any article gets outdated quickly. I used Primefaces for a new project almost a year ago, because at that time it was the only one that was fully compatible with JSF 2 (both Icefacves and Richfaces have had JSF 2 compatible releases in the meantime).
Primefaces has a lot of powerful components that automatically use AJAX, and even more were added in version 3. Unfortunately this focus on new features led to a lot of bugs, but the developers said they would focus on bugfixing after release 3; I can't say anything about the current status since I left the project after 3 months.
There is one thing against Icefaces: a lot of components and functionality are only available in the Enterprise version, which is commercial, not free (but that might as well be a good thing since you get support etc. if your project can afford it).
Why not play with all three libs for a short time, build a simple project and see how you are getting along with either of them. My personal taste prefers Primefaces, but I haven't tried Richfaces since it turned JSF 2 ready.
I have successfully used JBoss RichFaces on a large online B2B store. RichFaces is a quite good framework for building webapps Web 2.0 style, and have easy to use tags that help you develop features faster.
I do not have any metrics regarding performance between RichFaces and IceFaces/Primefaces, but the ease of development should be approximately the same. All three frameworks have similar components, and they are all working towards more and more logic on the client via JavaScript.
At the current state of the JSF libraries, I am fairly sure that you will be happy with whichever framework your choose. IMO RichFaces and IceFaces are the two frameworks that have been around the longest, and i would put my bet on one of these two. IIRC both frameworks have key developers in the JSF design group as well.
As a general rule of thumb, these framework should work interoperably, but I wouldn't mix and match between them. The frameworks are really ment to be used on their own.
I waste a lot development time on UI related tasks. General things like navigation and forms layout really bog me down.
I have been researching various JavaScript Frameworks that can be used to UI design. I've looked at jQuery UI, MochaUI, Sencha (formerly Ext JS) and few others but they all seem to be lacking.
I would love to find something that really simplifies UI development.
Any recommendations?
ExtJS,Dojotoolkit, jQuery UI really makes UI coding easier..
ExtJS even have their designer application to make UI development easy. What do you feel they are lacking?
I need to write a sophisticated website that does AJax, drag and drop, component re-sizing, with a tree view of all components.
If this is controversial, please just close it, but could someone please recommend a good JavaScript Application Framework to use?
I know YUI3 is still under development so I'd have to use the tree view from YUI2.
I'm torn because it appears that YUI3 looks up and coming, jQuery is most popular, and GWT looks to be the fastest... and afterall, Google uses it for some amazing things.
Any input?
If you want a very visual interface, WireIt might be of interest. It is YUI 2 based.
Pete --
I'm a member of the YUI team, so my advice would be impartial on this -- I do think YUI 3 has unique strengths that are worth considering.
I wanted to point out, though, that there is a port of YUI TreeView for YUI 3 in the Gallery. That might be a good way to build on YUI 3's strengths while still falling back to the TreeView behavior from the 2.x codeline.
-Eric
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.