I was checking out the TIBCO GI the other day and I was impressed.
Has anyone used it extensively?
What are your thoughts?
What drawbacks did you encounter?
Is it suitable for Internet or only Intranet apps?
I appreciate any input you can shed on this.
Yes, I have used it pretty extensively, here are some of my thoughts. Will add to them as the occur.
I don't rate the approach of implementing the IDE in the framework itself (it runs in a browser window). There are many, many quirks and it can lead to a very frustrating experience. I normally develop all of the JS, XML etc in Intellij Idea using the Javascript debug window to run the IDE itself. After working on a file, it has to be reloaded in the IDE, but its still much more efficient.
Using the IDE, an entire application can be layed out relatively quickly.
There is a pretty steep learning curve. The API is extensive and the community forums aren't great when you do run into problems.
Much of the GUI painting is done using inline style attributes, making them difficult to skin and get the overall application looking exactly how you might want. If is for this reason that I think GI is more suited to intranet apps than publicly available ones.
GI uses a 'dual DOM' approach, holding it's own internal representation of each on-screen element. This can make it difficult to fully integrate other frameworks such as JQuery etc.
As RIAD environments go, I think it is awesome. I find that doing things the GI way is an order of two faster than going down the request/response route.
I really like the enforced separation of presentation and business logic.
The JS extensions they put in, like introspective package, interface and class definitions are quite clever and very useful.
I completely agree with mysomic, but:
Unfortunately Tibco GI has a huge disadvantage of it's weight and how slow it runs.
jQuery is much much faster.
Also I run into issues of different behavior of developed UI under IE and firefox.
Lack of documentation.
I agree with u on some point:
Compare JQuery with GI, I think they are not the same level:
Jquery which implement the CSS searchengine , provide the plugin structure
and some util tools, but it is still like component.
GI , which is the enterprise RIA solution, provide the mapping utility , class interface,extends, implement structure, AMP plugin structure, I10N, I18N etc. it is like the composite level. and also it has the GI IDE, that is every cool.
Related
I have the source code from a plugin for second life to play in a browser but the problem is it's been created for Firefox 3.5, so what I'm trying to do is to bring it up to speed and upgrade it to the current Firefox.
Unfortunately I'm not sure how to go about this as I am literally just looking into this now, any help is greatly appreciated
What's your main aim here? Are you interested in simply making the extension work somehow in the latest firefox or are you more interested in optimizing performance?
Optimization of an application is a very general topic. You can look into the upgrades Gecko has gone through in the recent versions. If there seems to be any specific module for which Gecko is now offering a better interface/compatibility, you might try adapting the same. Again, this is really the programmer's judgment and skill which lets him draw the boundary between feasible and non-feasible development. For a module which is extensively linked with many other modules, it might be a good idea to leave it as it is to avoid sleepless nights (of course that's just my opinion. For some, that is the real kick :D).
If you are interested in creating high-performance plugins, you might like to give Google Web Toolkit a try. It is a Java library which compiles java into optimized javascript introducing various performance oriented quirks. I understand that it is not possible to switch an entire application to GWT easily and wouldn't help you just now, but I think it is worth mentioning for future use.
On the other hand, if you are just interested in making the extension work, you may look into Nightly Tester Tools, which is an extension used to override add on compatibility.
I need to create a custom GUI framework for a project. I actually created a very primitive GUI framework which has buttons, images, text etc. But it is pretty simple and I don't have any prior knowledge of designing a GUI framework. The project we are working on got a little serious and I need to do a better job. So, what books or any kind of documentation can you recommend for me?
Note: I want to create the framework probably in an object-oriented way and I will probably use C# but the documentation does not need to be in C#.
Ok, I'm far from an expert but I'll try to write some useful stuff. I don't know much about your experience, so sorry if it seems silly.
I have been working with several GUI frameworks in the past, in various languages (wxpython, gtk+, swing, . . .).
Never as an expert, but here is what I can say :
Keep it simple. If you want to design from scratch, I guess there is no need for crazy complex stuff. Try to keep it as straightforward as possible by reducing the number of inputs and options in your elements.
b. A major common point of all the successful frameworks I know is the abstraction. Each single element can be easily handled, but it still has the power of all its parents.
This allows your objects to be really versatile while simple.
Read lots of other frameworks documentation. I like spending time reading the doc of GUI framework because it helps you understand the abstraction levels. I find the pygtk doc easy to read.
Use other frameworks. Most frameworks do things more or less in the same way. This is especially true for GUI frameworks. Frame containing layouts; menubars and statusbars; I bet 95% of the concepts you want to use can be found in the other frameworks.
In this way, the best way to know how to develop it is to know what you need and how to do it.
Whenever I work on a GUI, I start reading the corresponding series of articles here .
The writer does a great job explaining everything in a simple way, so that you can get along fast with the concepts.
Keep it open. Something I see more and more often is the use of high level syntax for describing GUIS. GTk for example can take XML files in input and create a whole interface out of it. I find it very nice for abstraction, and reuse. And I also greatly reduce the amount of code needed.
I couldn't really find books on the precise subject you want. I think you already searched on the web also.
I hope those small ideas will help you.
I'm going to develop a web application using SmartGWT. I've heard about Vaadin framework. I wonder what is the best to use?
My application will be used by ~500 users at the same time. And I need high response performance and high security control. I won't need dozen of pretty widget just enough to be able to use pretty tabbed pane and table. So what is the best choice regarding my needs?
Edit :
I'll also need a tool to export table content to Excel format (like in Google Doc SpreadSheet).
ps : already check this one Should I use Vaadin Framework
I looked into both these frameworks, and others, and decided to go with the core GWT widgets. You desire to have high response performance will be difficult with Vaadin since it sends almost everything back to the server. And if you don't need super fancy widgets then the core widgets (plus some incubator/3rd party ones as needed) should be fine. I didn't get deep into testing SmartGWT, but it seemed to really tie you into their framework (making it difficult to use core widgets as well) and I read about difficulties when starting to do things different than the showcase examples.
Good luck!
If you write your Vaadin application properly, it will be performing perfectly well (check this one: https://vaadin.com/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Optimizing%20Sluggish%20UI).
If you know SmartGWT, use it. Also, if you have no experience with Vaadin, use SmartGWT. It might take you a lot of time to learn Vaadin (it requires some practice after one is able to create well performing application). The biggest problem of Vaadin that it is very easy to write slow application - because everything seems to be so easy and one tends to use many components and so on...
I have been using Dojo and Dijit for more than a year to develop a browser-based IDE. Dojo is a great framework. But creating an IDE-like interface using Dojo is cumbersome and wastes a lot of time unless you are a CSS superman. I have a good understanding of HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. Building the UI I needed required several CSS hacking that I found by trial and error. There was no systematic way to get from the UI design to the implementation and I am afraid to change the UI layout because any simple change can break the UI, mostly by adding irrelevant scroll-bars to Dijit panes where I do not need them. (the complex UI has 4-5 levels of nested panes including mostly border containers and content panes)
Recently I have come across SproutCore and Cappuccino, which have great demoes and their look and feel is more desktop-based. There has been several discussions comparing these two with each other. But none of them talk about how systematic and quick is it to get from UI design to implementation? Ideally, I should be able to implement the UI I want not more than a couple of days (Assuming that I know the framework), and changing them in the future should be easy.
The other difficulty with Dojo is that I have to work directly with DOM, to append and remove dijit widgets. While I do like to keep this flexibility, I wish I could use a higher level of abstraction to define the application UI. I have read about MVC in SproutCore and Cappuccino, but I am wondering if in practice the provided abstraction layer speeds up the UI development? or the provided layer is a fancy architecture that only increases the readability of the code? Will I lose the direct access to DOM if I build my UI using these abstractions?
Cheers,
Navid
Cappuccino is much higher-level. You write in Objective-J, not HTML/CSS/JavaScript. I personally do not recommend it as Objective-J is a niche language and you'd be stuck with something not widely-understood by everybody. You'll find it more difficult to look for answers to problems, and other people will have more difficulty in maintaining your code.
However, due to it being high level, it does shield you from the drudgery of programming in "standards" (i.e. HTML/CSS/JavaScript). Therefore, you should be able to develop UI's faster and easier, but you'll have to instead learn the ins-and-outs of Objective-J. All-in-all, not much to gain here, I suppose.
SproutCore, on the other hand, is HTML/CSS/JavaScript based, so you don't really have to relearn the basics. It follows the MVC model of separating UI and data concerns, so programming UI's should be easier.
My personal recommendation is to stick with Dojo -- 1.6 has come out, which has change-tracking, state-tracking and bining support. 1.7 is around the corner. The MVC module is improving fast. The next version, 2.0, will be quite awesome. It is being actively developed on, and so you won't be left behind.
Dojo can also be used with the Closure Compiler's Advanced Mode to make highly-compact, highly-optimized, fully-obfuscated builds for deployment. Other JavaScript-based frameworks are not as adaptable.
Cappuccino most definitely goes beyond just improving readability. If you don't want something to have a scrollbar in Cappuccino, don't give it one. That's pretty much the end of the story and one of the great advantages of using such a framework. In my experience, HTML and CSS is just an endless troubleshooting session. With Cappuccino things go where you say they should and stay there. And this is true across browsers as well (most of the time).
Furthermore you can, if you choose to, build your user interface using Interface Builder and Cappuccino's nib2cib utility. This makes it trivial both to initially lay out and to then later shuffle buttons and controls around.
Have you considered jQuery and the jQuery UI?
I am planning on working on an interactive application that graphically animates the various sorting algorithms in action. Most of the examples of this kind on the web seems to be using java applets. I was wondering what other software/tools would be well suited to develop an application like this. It may or may not be web-based. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Dinesh
Do you mean like this? http://sorting-algorithms.com I guess flash would be an obvious candidate, but is bulky. That website uses gifs! I personally like it
Flash and Silverlight are well-suited for showing such showing animations. It's should be easier to create a nice animation than with Java.
With recent advancements in client-side web application development technologies, it's pretty easy to make something like that using Javascript and HTML5 features like <canvas>, that most of the browsers already implement. Even if they don't, there are fallback mechanisms, like explorercanvas aimed at Internet Explorer browsers.
And because it takes a simple option of "view source", the code behind the animations is much more accessible than Flash or Java, which would require to provide the source code separately.
Done.
2nd result for Google: sorting algorithms