6 ms·

GWT, Cappuccino, Sproutcore: AJAX-Framework-Shootout

31 points by cubix 17y ago

sarvesh 17y ago
Cappuccino also has nib2cib now which allows you use inetrface builder which is great if you are coming from a mac background. Also there is Script# for people .net. Personally I prefer cappuccino.
michaelneale 17y ago
On the note of cappuccino looking awesome (which it totally does) this kind of shows how GWT could look: http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler/#Components/Forms/FormBasic http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler/#Components/Forms/FormBasic (haven't used it myself though).
- trapper 17y ago
  GWT is just html. There are plenty of frameworks out there to make designer->programmer workflow work well. It's like saying that rails doesn't look good. Taking cappaccinos style and porting it to gwt would only be a couple of days work, if that.
  - boucher 17y ago
    I think its more complicated than you make it sound. Though, Cappuccino is, as far as I know, the only open source web framework that has professionally designed graphics which are also open source in their PSD format for anyone to use and learn from.
    - trapper 17y ago
      I didn't realise styling a website is difficult? Are you saying you couldn't style a website to look like cappacinnos given firebug and a few hours?
      - midnightmonster 17y ago
        Quite possibly not. We're not talking about styling the marketing website, but the UI of a web app. There probably won't be the right HTML hooks generated for starters, and then making it look like a cappuccino app in one state is well and good, but there are highlights, slides, toggles, and likely a subtly different style of interaction as well.
        trapper 17y ago
        Well, I've at least styled a gwt app to be very similar in a short period of time. Usability was left to the developers. I think I might have to post a tutorial.
        trapper 17y ago
        Proof: http://tinypic.com/r/2uym3is/5 http://tinypic.com/r/2uym3is/5 Of the two hours it took to create that, most was spent making a video, learning gwt 1.6 and downloading images from 280north (they make it hard).
        midnightmonster 17y ago
        Wrote this before you posted your demo: -------------- 280slides has such a polished theme that I think it would take some significant time to duplicate. It's not one thing--it's every thing. You might be able to get something close quicker, but I suspect it would look like I-wish-I-was-280slides. Still, from what I know of GWT (no direct experience) and cappuccino (tried it out, seemed to make lower-level DOM wrangling very hard, which was absolutely essential to the project), you're working at a higher level of UI abstraction than I yet have. With jQuery UI, I'd have to add tons of markup to my dialogs (e.g.) to implement the 280slides look, and there's no one place to do it. So, post a link to your 280slides-like GWT app and/or write that tutorial, and I may well have to admit that you are faster than I and/or have more powerful tools (likely both). And now I have to say: ----------------------------- Well no kidding it doesn't take long to borrow someone's images and arrange a few in a way that more or less looks like the original. But (not to put too fine a point on it) your demo looks very, very rough, and 280slides looks like the best-looking app you've ever used. Your buttons aren't spaced right; they look wrong in hover state; they look wrong in active state. The dialog doesn't really look anything like a 280slides one apart from having a shadow (nor does it look very good on its own merits). And that's just what I can see in a tiny, compressed video of the little bit that you built. You might still be faster than me and have better tools, but you didn't prove it here. OTOH, if you could produce something with the polish 280slides in two hours you'd be more than fast--you'd be able to rewrite the matrix from within.
    - fcr 17y ago
      However I am wondering how much time is gained when one needs to custom design is website/web app. As anyone had success on customizing cappuccino's design in a small time frame? How does it compare to the other frameworks?
  - michaelneale 17y ago
    I have worked with GWT quite a bit, and yes, its all CSS for style. But I still haven't found it easy. If you do, and are interested, I would love to hear from you in terms of making something "cappaccino style" in a few days !
    - trapper 17y ago
      I've got far too much work on at the moment but if I get a chance I'll post a tutorial. What in particular have you found hard?
      - trapper 17y ago
        Heres one I just built to show how easy it is. http://tinypic.com/r/2uym3is/5 http://tinypic.com/r/2uym3is/5
        michaelneale 17y ago
        Great work ! Well if you do get time to tutorial it up - please do ! Well I hear that people claim CSS + GWT can do most of what people want, but I never quite believe it, but glad you found it easy (even learning a little of GWT1.6).
- jojule 17y ago
  You might also want to take a look of this Vaadin theme example that demonstrates that DOM of the Vaadin widgets is optimized for easy CSS: http://demo.vaadin.com/VaadinTunesLayout/ http://demo.vaadin.com/VaadinTunesLayout/
johnyzee 17y ago
For a look at what we have done with GWT, check out TeamPostgreSQL (http://www.teampostgresql.com http://www.teampostgresql.com). It is a fairly complex web application both in terms of UI and functionality, developed and maintained by essentially one guy, which IMHO speaks volumes about the power of GWT to produce and manage AJAX application code. All of the code base contains zero lines of Javascript - it is all regular Java classes.
- simonw 17y ago
  It would be great if there was an online demo of your product - I clicked around for a bit looking for one before realising I would have to /download and install it/ in order to try it out! Just running an instance against a PostgreSQL database that gets wiped and reset once an hour by a cron job would be enough to give people a taster.
cubix 17y ago
Another one worth mentioning is qooxdoo, which I'm currently evaluating. I would probably go with Cappuccino if I had more experience with Cocoa/Objective-C. However, qooxdoo seems more approachable if you don't have the Cocoa background -- it's surprisingly well documented. Although it doesn't look as visually appealing out of the box, you can create a custom theme.
bonaldi 17y ago
Apple has one due to come out this year called Gianduia ... and that's about all I know about it. People I trust who know more are absolutely raving about it, but, typically, details are scarce on the ground. Am very interested to see what arrives, though.
- lsb 17y ago
  First, Apple regularly spreads disinformation to its employees to find out leaks. Most of the company was shocked that the iPod came out. Second, that's the most American-unfriendly name I've ever seen for a product. Sure, gianduia is the name of a chocolate with hazelnut paste, but I'd be interested to see what the public name of such a product would be.
  - bonaldi 17y ago
    It's not disinformation: it was announced at WOWODC in a demo given by Apple staff. It's just under NDA, so public details are very thin on the ground. Wolf Rentzsch tweeted about it after a demo, though: Blown away by gianduia. Cappuccino, SproutCore and JavascriptMVC have serious competition. Serious. http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060613851 http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060613851 Gianduia essestially is browser-side Cocoa (including CoreData) + WebObjects, written in JavaScript by non-js-haters. Jaw dropped http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060717454 http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060717454 As for the name: yeh, I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be a codename.
    - boucher 17y ago
      I can tell you its not anything new, and it's been around at Apple for a while now. It's in use right now on several live Apple properties. When and if it will be released in any usable form has yet to be made clear though.

31 points by cubix 17y ago

Cappuccino also has nib2cib now which allows you use inetrface builder which is great if you are coming from a mac background. Also there is Script# for people .net. Personally I prefer cappuccino.

michaelneale 17y ago

On the note of cappuccino looking awesome (which it totally does) this kind of shows how GWT could look: http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler/#Components/Forms/FormBasic http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler/#Components/Forms/FormBasic (haven't used it myself though).

trapper 17y ago
GWT is just html. There are plenty of frameworks out there to make designer->programmer workflow work well. It's like saying that rails doesn't look good. Taking cappaccinos style and porting it to gwt would only be a couple of days work, if that.
- boucher 17y ago
  I think its more complicated than you make it sound. Though, Cappuccino is, as far as I know, the only open source web framework that has professionally designed graphics which are also open source in their PSD format for anyone to use and learn from.
  - trapper 17y ago
    I didn't realise styling a website is difficult? Are you saying you couldn't style a website to look like cappacinnos given firebug and a few hours?
    - midnightmonster 17y ago
      Quite possibly not. We're not talking about styling the marketing website, but the UI of a web app. There probably won't be the right HTML hooks generated for starters, and then making it look like a cappuccino app in one state is well and good, but there are highlights, slides, toggles, and likely a subtly different style of interaction as well.
      - trapper 17y ago
        Well, I've at least styled a gwt app to be very similar in a short period of time. Usability was left to the developers. I think I might have to post a tutorial.
        trapper 17y ago
        Proof: http://tinypic.com/r/2uym3is/5 http://tinypic.com/r/2uym3is/5 Of the two hours it took to create that, most was spent making a video, learning gwt 1.6 and downloading images from 280north (they make it hard).
        midnightmonster 17y ago
        Wrote this before you posted your demo: -------------- 280slides has such a polished theme that I think it would take some significant time to duplicate. It's not one thing--it's every thing. You might be able to get something close quicker, but I suspect it would look like I-wish-I-was-280slides. Still, from what I know of GWT (no direct experience) and cappuccino (tried it out, seemed to make lower-level DOM wrangling very hard, which was absolutely essential to the project), you're working at a higher level of UI abstraction than I yet have. With jQuery UI, I'd have to add tons of markup to my dialogs (e.g.) to implement the 280slides look, and there's no one place to do it. So, post a link to your 280slides-like GWT app and/or write that tutorial, and I may well have to admit that you are faster than I and/or have more powerful tools (likely both). And now I have to say: ----------------------------- Well no kidding it doesn't take long to borrow someone's images and arrange a few in a way that more or less looks like the original. But (not to put too fine a point on it) your demo looks very, very rough, and 280slides looks like the best-looking app you've ever used. Your buttons aren't spaced right; they look wrong in hover state; they look wrong in active state. The dialog doesn't really look anything like a 280slides one apart from having a shadow (nor does it look very good on its own merits). And that's just what I can see in a tiny, compressed video of the little bit that you built. You might still be faster than me and have better tools, but you didn't prove it here. OTOH, if you could produce something with the polish 280slides in two hours you'd be more than fast--you'd be able to rewrite the matrix from within.
  - fcr 17y ago
    However I am wondering how much time is gained when one needs to custom design is website/web app. As anyone had success on customizing cappuccino's design in a small time frame? How does it compare to the other frameworks?
- michaelneale 17y ago
  I have worked with GWT quite a bit, and yes, its all CSS for style. But I still haven't found it easy. If you do, and are interested, I would love to hear from you in terms of making something "cappaccino style" in a few days !
  - trapper 17y ago
    I've got far too much work on at the moment but if I get a chance I'll post a tutorial. What in particular have you found hard?
    - trapper 17y ago
      Heres one I just built to show how easy it is. http://tinypic.com/r/2uym3is/5 http://tinypic.com/r/2uym3is/5
      - michaelneale 17y ago
        Great work ! Well if you do get time to tutorial it up - please do ! Well I hear that people claim CSS + GWT can do most of what people want, but I never quite believe it, but glad you found it easy (even learning a little of GWT1.6).
jojule 17y ago
You might also want to take a look of this Vaadin theme example that demonstrates that DOM of the Vaadin widgets is optimized for easy CSS: http://demo.vaadin.com/VaadinTunesLayout/ http://demo.vaadin.com/VaadinTunesLayout/

johnyzee 17y ago

For a look at what we have done with GWT, check out TeamPostgreSQL (http://www.teampostgresql.com http://www.teampostgresql.com). It is a fairly complex web application both in terms of UI and functionality, developed and maintained by essentially one guy, which IMHO speaks volumes about the power of GWT to produce and manage AJAX application code. All of the code base contains zero lines of Javascript - it is all regular Java classes.

simonw 17y ago
It would be great if there was an online demo of your product - I clicked around for a bit looking for one before realising I would have to /download and install it/ in order to try it out! Just running an instance against a PostgreSQL database that gets wiped and reset once an hour by a cron job would be enough to give people a taster.

cubix 17y ago

Another one worth mentioning is qooxdoo, which I'm currently evaluating. I would probably go with Cappuccino if I had more experience with Cocoa/Objective-C. However, qooxdoo seems more approachable if you don't have the Cocoa background -- it's surprisingly well documented. Although it doesn't look as visually appealing out of the box, you can create a custom theme.

bonaldi 17y ago

Apple has one due to come out this year called Gianduia ... and that's about all I know about it. People I trust who know more are absolutely raving about it, but, typically, details are scarce on the ground. Am very interested to see what arrives, though.

lsb 17y ago
First, Apple regularly spreads disinformation to its employees to find out leaks. Most of the company was shocked that the iPod came out. Second, that's the most American-unfriendly name I've ever seen for a product. Sure, gianduia is the name of a chocolate with hazelnut paste, but I'd be interested to see what the public name of such a product would be.
- bonaldi 17y ago
  It's not disinformation: it was announced at WOWODC in a demo given by Apple staff. It's just under NDA, so public details are very thin on the ground. Wolf Rentzsch tweeted about it after a demo, though: Blown away by gianduia. Cappuccino, SproutCore and JavascriptMVC have serious competition. Serious. http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060613851 http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060613851 Gianduia essestially is browser-side Cocoa (including CoreData) + WebObjects, written in JavaScript by non-js-haters. Jaw dropped http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060717454 http://twitter.com/rentzsch/status/2060717454 As for the name: yeh, I wouldn't be surprised if that turned out to be a codename.
  - boucher 17y ago
    I can tell you its not anything new, and it's been around at Apple for a while now. It's in use right now on several live Apple properties. When and if it will be released in any usable form has yet to be made clear though.