do the ui with double-u
Tuesday 11 April 2006 @ 11:31 am
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It’s framework time. Again. We’ll probably never learn. And on one hand it’s good we do not learn, creativity is partly based on exploring the unlearned. But on the other hand building solutions for already solved problems seems a waste of time. What I’m talking about? New frameworks for solving the UI problem of our world wide web. The list is evergrowing and when looking at the latest additions your homebrew’s name must at least start with a capitol ‘W‘. I’m talking about Waffle’ and Wedge’ Is this the Wicket-effect??

I’m not in the mood, nor in the position, to dive deeply into these two new kids on the block but a quick look through their respective tutorials gave me the impression we’re not dealing with new and fresh approaches. Waffle seems nothing more than an action handling request based view dispatching framework. And Wedge is following the component oriented paradigm and utilizes ANT to generate java code (how about the write-deploy-test cycle??) for binding (indeed, no reflection needed anymore).

But, If you want to give it a try, go ahead! And Feel free to convince me whenever you’re findings do not match my quick look-without-touching way of review. Oh, and for those with too much spare time, I do not care you’re using it to build UI- framework XYZ, but I strongly suggest not to start its name with a trendy double-U :-) .

— By Okke van 't Verlaat     PermaLink

7 Responses to “do the ui with double-u”

  1. Rob de Jong Says:

    What’s with all the web GUI frameworks…aren’t there enough already?

  2. Ralph Ridder Says:

    Another new kid on the block: Stripes.

    I’ve been fooling around with this framework, and I can actually recommend anyone
    to have a look at it.

    It is a modern framework, which means it uses some of the Java 5 features (mainly annotations).
    The core of this framework is an ActionBean which van be bound to a URL using an annotations.
    In this ActionBean you can provide setter and getters for form / url parameters, which will automatically be bound by the framework.
    You can bind your homebrew methods to any event from the web (e.g. clicking a button, following a link etc.). I think it’s pretty elegant.

    It’s probably not the answer to world starvation, but I think as a web framework, it beats Spring MVC, because of it’s simplicity. Definetly worth a look.

  3. Leo de Blaauw Says:

    Well,

    I havent looked at stripes yet, but if it is dependent upon java 1.5 I immediately dismiss it
    in most production situations i have to deal with today. There simply is no (not much) support
    for java 1.5 in production app servers today unfortunately. The upgrade cycle is just very slow
    in most situations let alone app server vendors taking their time to support a new version of java….

    That said my team is currently also investigating front-end development tools and frameworks
    on top of a JAVA based middle tier. That said we are not tying ourselves to JAVA at the front-end
    at this time. This is primarily caused by demands from the clients we work for…

    So intersting stuff for sure

    Greetz
    Leo

  4. Ralph Ridder Says:

    Good point, and a very realistic situation offcourse.
    On the project I’m working, we won’t be moving to java 5 anytime soon.

    Actually, the fact that Stripes uses the new java technology (5.0), is what got me
    interested. At first, i wasn’t a big fan of annotations (because it can make your code
    less indepedent). But now I think, if used in a good balance and for applicable situations only, it can be good addition.

    The interesting point is that people start adopting the features of java 5 and use it
    to improve frameworks. Tomcat 5.5 has Java 5 support, and Stripes works very well with it.

    greetz,
    Ralph

  5. Marco Pas Says:

    We all have to face forward and look at new interesting functionality. It seems that JDK 1.5 is the way to go… At least if you look at the numbers 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and 1.5.. So 1.5 seems a natural succesor to the most commonly used JDK. :)

    It is nice to see that frameworks are adopting new functionalities and making our lives as a programmer less complicated.

  6. Leo de Blaauw Says:

    I am sure you mean jdk 5.0 Marco ;-) And yes it is the way forward. The bigger question is if app server vendors cannot(or will not..) keep up with jdk releases anymore what will be their value in the near future …

    Leo

  7. Okke van 't Verlaat Says:

    Isn’t it the problem of the app-vendors instead of our own problem? jdk5.0 has some major productivity improvements. For example coding using generics and enhanced for loops really feels like a breeze. From a pure software development point of view, jdk5 is the way to go. And when an app-vendor is not following this path, the app vendor is disqualifying himself.

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