Has anyone looked at xajax (http://xajax.sourceforge.net/)? I don't know much about RoundCube's AJAX framework, but I know there was some talk about restructuring it a bit, so thought I'd throw this out and see if it's any use. It looks pretty interesting from a cursory examination.
-j
If I were to suggest an Ajax framework, then it'd definetly be the Dojo Toolkit (http://www.dojotoolkit.org). It has an extremely healthy base of developers, and all of them are well respected in the DHTML community. It has the backing of multiple companies, so it's not dependent purely on volunteer development.
It's also quite easy to use, and it's ajax operations are a snap. Check out how active their source tree is. it's by far the most comprehensive, yet easy to use of the frameworks out there:
http://dojotoolkit.org/trac/timeline
Basically, I think it covers all the things Roundcube needs it to do:
- AJAX operations (no page reload) are very simple, and have a lot of features,
including back/forward-button handling ala Gmail.
- Visual Effects. In case we need to make things dissapear, or appear, wipe in,
out, etc, it has everything we need.
- Autocomplete. It's very easy to do an autocomplete. They have predefined
functions to do this, all we have to do is adapt it to roundcube's source (very easy)
- Widget system, which are basically predefined javascript things, like
file-trees, sortable tables, etc, and are hugely customizable. Heck, they even have a fish-eye widget ala OS X. A couple of cool examples:
- Date/Time Picker:
http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/tests/widget/test_CiviCrmDateTimePick...
- Fisheye widget (like OS X)
http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/demos/widget/Fisheye.html
Etc. Also, their mailing lists are pretty active, and developers are happy to provide support.
What do you guys think?
On 10/19/05, Jeremy Jongsma jeremy@jongsma.org wrote:
Has anyone looked at xajax (http://xajax.sourceforge.net/)? I don't know much about RoundCube's AJAX framework, but I know there was some talk about restructuring it a bit, so thought I'd throw this out and see if it's any use. It looks pretty interesting from a cursory examination.
-j
-- Jeremy Jongsma jeremy@jongsma.org http://jeremy.jongsma.org
--
Praneet Kandula pkmlistTAKEMEOUT@gmail.com (remove TAKEMEOUT from email]
I also just ran across these, which might have some use, either now or down the road:
http://prototype.conio.net/ (nice AJAX/DOM manipulation library) http://script.aculo.us/ (very good DOM behavior/effect library) http://bennolan.com/behaviour/ (content / behavior separation)
If any of them would fit with RoundCube, they look like great reusable components.
-j
On Wed, 2005-10-19 at 14:29 -0500, Jeremy Jongsma wrote:
Has anyone looked at xajax (http://xajax.sourceforge.net/)? I don't know much about RoundCube's AJAX framework, but I know there was some talk about restructuring it a bit, so thought I'd throw this out and see if it's any use. It looks pretty interesting from a cursory examination.
-j
On 10/19/05, Praneet Kandula pkmlist@gmail.com wrote:
If I were to suggest an Ajax framework, then it'd definetly be the Dojo Toolkit (http://www.dojotoolkit.org). It has an extremely healthy base of developers, and all of them are well respected in the DHTML community. It has the backing of multiple companies, so it's not dependent purely on volunteer development.
--
Praneet Kandula pkmlistTAKEMEOUT@gmail.com (remove TAKEMEOUT from email]
Dojo is clean, intuitive, and heavily developed. I highly suggest using it.
-- Christopher A. Watford christopher.watford@gmail.com
On Thursday 20 October 2005 11:19, Christopher A. Watford wrote:
On 10/19/05, Praneet Kandula pkmlist@gmail.com wrote:
If I were to suggest an Ajax framework, then it'd definetly be the Dojo Toolkit (http://www.dojotoolkit.org). It has an extremely healthy base of developers, and all of them are well respected in the DHTML community. It has the backing of multiple companies, so it's not dependent purely on volunteer development.
Dojo is clean, intuitive, and heavily developed. I highly suggest using it.
Most of the Dojo examples do not work with Konqueror, which may also mean Safari does not work(?)
xajax may be simpler but it does work with Konqueror and does not require a massive development effort because it "just works".
--markc
Can you check if the script.aculo.us stuff works in Konqueror? I don't have access to Konqueror or Safari.
First impressions, I'm more impressed by the code in Prototype and Scriptaculous than the DOJO toolkit. They just seem more lightweight and elegant to me. Can't say I've used any of them heavily yet though, so those are just first impressions...
Of course as far as "just get data from point a to b", you can't really beat xAjax's simplicity. Not sure how configurable it is though (i.e. can you make an AJAX request back to a different page).
Thomas, since you built the interface, any of this look interesting to you?
-j
On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 14:46 +1000, Mark Constable wrote:
On Thursday 20 October 2005 11:19, Christopher A. Watford wrote:
On 10/19/05, Praneet Kandula pkmlist@gmail.com wrote:
If I were to suggest an Ajax framework, then it'd definetly be the Dojo Toolkit (http://www.dojotoolkit.org). It has an extremely healthy base of developers, and all of them are well respected in the DHTML community. It has the backing of multiple companies, so it's not dependent purely on volunteer development.
Dojo is clean, intuitive, and heavily developed. I highly suggest using it.
Most of the Dojo examples do not work with Konqueror, which may also mean Safari does not work(?)
xajax may be simpler but it does work with Konqueror and does not require a massive development effort because it "just works".
--markc
Dojo works with Safari. What exactly doesn't work with Konqueror?
Dojo is a one stop shop, which we need. Xajax is only for the server requests, scriptaculous is mostly for the visual effects (we really don't need that many). Dojo has both, and an awesome javascript model. The only thing they're missing is docs, and pretty demos (ala scriptaculous), and they are about to turn out 0.2, which should take care of both of those.
As far as code bloat, dojo has a mature packaging system taht only gives us the files that the project uses, and not a single file more. it's actually a unified toolkit, meaning it's code consists of many different code toolkits from prior to 2003. Basically the code is mature, and the developers (note the S, as scriptaculous has only 1 developer who does it as a hobby) know their stuff, having worked on javascript for over 5 years. Again, they have 2 programmers workign fulltime on the toolkit.
To answer the "massive code rewrite" question, i think it'd be xajax that would. Since dojo isn't tied to any one language, all we need to do is modify the javascript. I think no matter what toolkit we go with, we'll have to do that anyway, so I'm not sure i see your point.
On 10/20/05, Mark Constable markc@renta.net wrote:
On Thursday 20 October 2005 11:19, Christopher A. Watford wrote:
On 10/19/05, Praneet Kandula pkmlist@gmail.com wrote:
If I were to suggest an Ajax framework, then it'd definetly be the Dojo Toolkit (http://www.dojotoolkit.org). It has an extremely healthy base of developers, and all of them are well respected in the DHTML community. It has the backing of multiple companies, so it's not dependent purely on volunteer development.
Dojo is clean, intuitive, and heavily developed. I highly suggest using it.
Most of the Dojo examples do not work with Konqueror, which may also mean Safari does not work(?)
xajax may be simpler but it does work with Konqueror and does not require a massive development effort because it "just works".
--markc
--
Praneet Kandula pkmlistTAKEMEOUT@gmail.com (remove TAKEMEOUT from email]
I would concur that script.aculo.us http://script.aculo.us is geared towards visual effects, moreso, but it does have some good controls for data entry. More important would be the Prototype library that backs the package. There are a number of pieces that fit well together with that group -- Prototype (base), Behaviour (nice code), script.aculo.ushttp://script.aculo.us(clean visuals), and Rico (more sophisticated Ajax controls).
Judging a package by the number of developers on the project seems a bit silly to me. Although, if you consider that, by extension, the entire Ruby on Rails movement uses the aforementioned libraries, I s'pose the numbers game could be played.
Technically, I like the shortcut notations provided by Prototype. I like the cleanliness of the code. I like that it barely needs documentation to permit users to take advantage of how it works.
I won't make a pass against Dojo -- I haven't given it a fair go and can't say that I like it more or less.
So far, my only complaint lies in the reasoning -- the quality of the technical solution takes greater priority, and this discussion should focus on that.
-- DMK
On 10/20/05, Praneet Kandula pkmlist@gmail.com wrote:
Dojo is a one stop shop, which we need. Xajax is only for the server requests, scriptaculous is mostly for the visual effects (we really don't need that many). Dojo has both, and an awesome javascript model. The only thing they're missing is docs, and pretty demos (ala scriptaculous), and they are about to turn out 0.2, which should take care of both of those.
As far as code bloat, dojo has a mature packaging system taht only gives us the files that the project uses, and not a single file more. it's actually a unified toolkit, meaning it's code consists of many different code toolkits from prior to 2003. Basically the code is mature, and the developers (note the S, as scriptaculous has only 1 developer who does it as a hobby) know their stuff, having worked on javascript for over 5 years. Again, they have 2 programmers workign fulltime on the toolkit.
To answer the "massive code rewrite" question, i think it'd be xajax that would. Since dojo isn't tied to any one language, all we need to do is modify the javascript. I think no matter what toolkit we go with, we'll have to do that anyway, so I'm not sure i see your point.
On 10/20/05, Mark Constable markc@renta.net wrote:
On Thursday 20 October 2005 11:19, Christopher A. Watford wrote:
On 10/19/05, Praneet Kandula pkmlist@gmail.com wrote:
If I were to suggest an Ajax framework, then it'd definetly be the
Dojo Toolkit
(http://www.dojotoolkit.org). It has an extremely healthy base of
developers,
and all of them are well respected in the DHTML community. It has
the backing of
multiple companies, so it's not dependent purely on volunteer
development.
Dojo is clean, intuitive, and heavily developed. I highly suggest
using it.
Most of the Dojo examples do not work with Konqueror, which may also mean Safari does not work(?)
xajax may be simpler but it does work with Konqueror and does not require a massive development effort because it "just works".
--markc
--
Praneet Kandula pkmlistTAKEMEOUT@gmail.com (remove TAKEMEOUT from email]
You're right in that a package shouldn't be judged by the number of developers, and that's not what I was saying - forgive me for not being more clear.
What I was saying is that Dojo development occurs a lot faster because of the number of developers. Regarding the quality of the code, if you look at the developers behind dojo, you'll find that every single one of these guys has been working with DHTML for over 5 years, and most of them have a lot of experience developing a javascript framework. Because of this, I, and I'm sure others, believe that Dojo maintains a well rounded featureset, and a high quality of code.
As far as comparisons go, I think this page summarizes the javascript frameworks out there pretty well:
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Projects/AjaxLibraries
As you can see, Scriptaculous, or Prototype doesn't support IE 5.x, which could lead to a few problems. Dojo on the other hand, supports IE 5.5 onwards, and includes safari & opera support. Also, another good thing is that it's ajax support automatically includes iframe backup, which means if a browser doesn't support xmlhttprequest, it still works through iframes. Scriptaculous/prototype don't have this as far as I can tell.
On 10/20/05, Daniel Klein bildzeitung@gmail.com wrote:
I would concur that script.aculo.us is geared towards visual effects, moreso, but it does have some good controls for data entry. More important would be the Prototype library that backs the package. There are a number of pieces that fit well together with that group -- Prototype (base), Behaviour (nice code), script.aculo.us (clean visuals), and Rico (more sophisticated Ajax controls).
Judging a package by the number of developers on the project seems a bit silly to me. Although, if you consider that, by extension, the entire Ruby on Rails movement uses the aforementioned libraries, I s'pose the numbers game could be played.
Technically, I like the shortcut notations provided by Prototype. I like the cleanliness of the code. I like that it barely needs documentation to permit users to take advantage of how it works.
I won't make a pass against Dojo -- I haven't given it a fair go and can't say that I like it more or less.
So far, my only complaint lies in the reasoning -- the quality of the technical solution takes greater priority, and this discussion should focus on that.
-- DMK
On 10/20/05, Praneet Kandula pkmlist@gmail.com wrote:
Dojo is a one stop shop, which we need. Xajax is only for the server requests, scriptaculous is mostly for the visual effects (we really don't need that many). Dojo has both, and an awesome javascript model. The only thing they're missing is docs, and pretty demos (ala scriptaculous), and they are about to turn out 0.2, which should take care of both of those.
As far as code bloat, dojo has a mature packaging system taht only gives us the files that the project uses, and not a single file more. it's actually a unified toolkit, meaning it's code consists of many different code toolkits from prior to 2003. Basically the code is mature, and the developers (note the S, as scriptaculous has only 1 developer who does it as a hobby) know their stuff, having worked on javascript for over 5 years. Again, they have 2 programmers workign fulltime on the toolkit.
To answer the "massive code rewrite" question, i think it'd be xajax that would. Since dojo isn't tied to any one language, all we need to do is modify the javascript. I think no matter what toolkit we go with, we'll have to do that anyway, so I'm not sure i see your point.
On 10/20/05, Mark Constable <markc@renta.net > wrote:
On Thursday 20 October 2005 11:19, Christopher A. Watford wrote:
On 10/19/05, Praneet Kandula pkmlist@gmail.com wrote:
If I were to suggest an Ajax framework, then it'd definetly be the
Dojo Toolkit
(http://www.dojotoolkit.org). It has an extremely healthy base of
developers,
and all of them are well respected in the DHTML community. It has
the backing of
multiple companies, so it's not dependent purely on volunteer
development.
Dojo is clean, intuitive, and heavily developed. I highly suggest
using it.
Most of the Dojo examples do not work with Konqueror, which may also mean Safari does not work(?)
xajax may be simpler but it does work with Konqueror and does not require a massive development effort because it "just works".
--markc
--
Praneet Kandula pkmlistTAKEMEOUT@gmail.com (remove TAKEMEOUT from email]
--
Praneet Kandula pkmlistTAKEMEOUT@gmail.com (remove TAKEMEOUT from email]
As you can see, Scriptaculous, or Prototype doesn't support IE 5.x, which could lead to a few problems. Dojo on the other hand, supports IE 5.5 onwards, and includes safari & opera support.
Can somebody verify this? The wiki says it's a Prototype limitation rather than a Scriptaculous limitation, but Rico is built on Prototype and claims IE 5.5+ compatibility.
Speaking of Rico, did anyone check out the dynamically updating scrolling list example? That could be a pretty cool feature for the message list / address book widgets rather than using paging. Could add shortcut links to jump to specific points in the list as well (by last name, date, etc).
Also, another good thing is that it's ajax support automatically includes iframe backup, which means if a browser doesn't support xmlhttprequest, it still works through iframes. Scriptaculous/prototype don't have this as far as I can tell.
Are there any browsers out there that don't support the XMLHttpRequest object, yet still support the necessary DOM functionality for a rich client interface? i.e., it's a good marketing point, but does it have any import in the real world?
-j
It might not have the real world implications, but sometimes xhr doesn't cut it. Think file uploading for example. In this case, we can upload an attachment to an email without having to change the screen. Something which is not possible with scriptaculous. Besides, having an extra layer of compatibility for someone stuck on IE 5.0 or somesuch is not really a bad thing.
The main point I'm trying to make is that Dojo is much more evolved compraed to the other frameworks, but the only reason they're not popular yet is the lack of docs, and pretty demos ala scriptaculous. Docs will be part of the next release though, which is fairly soon. I personally do not see a "feature" in scriptaculous/prototype that one can't achieve right now with dojo (but perhaps I'm not looking hard enough).
By the way, the famed prototype/scriptaculous $() shortcut for getElementById() can be achieved with 3 lines of extremely simple code.
-- Praneet Kandula
On 10/20/05, Jeremy Jongsma jeremy@jongsma.org wrote:
As you can see, Scriptaculous, or Prototype doesn't support IE 5.x, which could lead to a few problems. Dojo on the other hand, supports IE 5.5 onwards, and includes safari & opera support.
Can somebody verify this? The wiki says it's a Prototype limitation rather than a Scriptaculous limitation, but Rico is built on Prototype and claims IE 5.5+ compatibility.
Speaking of Rico, did anyone check out the dynamically updating scrolling list example? That could be a pretty cool feature for the message list / address book widgets rather than using paging. Could add shortcut links to jump to specific points in the list as well (by last name, date, etc).
Also, another good thing is that it's ajax support automatically includes iframe backup, which means if a browser doesn't support xmlhttprequest, it still works through iframes. Scriptaculous/prototype don't have this as far as I can tell.
Are there any browsers out there that don't support the XMLHttpRequest object, yet still support the necessary DOM functionality for a rich client interface? i.e., it's a good marketing point, but does it have any import in the real world?
-j
-- Jeremy Jongsma jeremy@jongsma.org http://jeremy.jongsma.org
--
Praneet Kandula pkmlistTAKEMEOUT@gmail.com (remove TAKEMEOUT from email]
-
Christopher A. Watford -
Daniel Klein -
Jeremy Jongsma -
Mark Constable -
Praneet Kandula