Web Developpement frameworks…
Thomas Menguy | October 16, 2006In this blog we talk a lot about developpement frameworks in the mobile space, which are close to “traditional” framework (like GNOME, Qt, Windows, MacOS, even Java in less extent), but newcomers are popping … from the web space.
I’ve played recently with a great CMS (hum : a blog engine on steroid) Drupal to developp as quickly as possible an in-house test cases/release quality report system for our test teams, a weekly tracking tool for my team and some other stuffs: I’m NOT a php/javascript/XML/HTML junky, I’m a C/C++/algorithmics dev, and … doing that was EASY and FAST, and I must say efficient.
The biggest positive points that have popped out:
- Documentation of PHP/Drupal : amazing, clear, dense, …neat
- Data formalization (RSS feeds and XML)
- Powerfull presentation framework that let me concentrate on the job
If we compare those point to exisitng frameworks, some are really missing : Documentation of course is not only many time missing, but when it is present, it has been written by code monkeys, certainly good at coding and architecture, but not for teaching and giving fun (I’ll quote here one of my Kathy Sierra favorite post never underestimate the power of fun). Data formalization: it is a joke today in the C/C++ world, where is easy serialization? Database?. Presentation framework : ok you have some exisitng but you still have to fight with widget mechanics…boring and bug prone.
It is where new web frameworks may bring something new, I’ve spotted 2 at this time:
- Ruby on Rails
- OpenLaszlo (found again via TomSoft)
Ruby on Rails is really pushing the MVC (Model View Controller see my post here and here) paradigm to its limits, with a clean high level language….I’ll try to use it as soon as possible.
OpenLaszlo claims to bring the desktop power to web applications … and the approach seems greats (look at the examples) : the UI is described in clean XML, then everything is compiled in Flash or DHTML, AJAX stuff/javascript are hidden.
So it will be time to bring this kind of technologies to mobile developement … and constraints… Flash today is perhaps too RAM and CPU consuming (but I’m sure it will change). Making things too easy has also its drawbacks, especially in an area where customization is a key differenciator, see also this Kathy’s post about ease of use.
At Open-Plug we already have a clean, all recoded GTK that is running on Ultra Low Cost phones with no issues, for me the next step would be to add some more formal and high level UI descriptions, and some better data modeling to come close…We have begun, and it is exciting!
[...] And this is precisely where I really see things
Everything and the Mobile Software Universe… » Back to the futur…mainframe, centralized computing anyone? | October 22, 2006[...] And this is precisely where I really see things evolving, see my post about those new “modern” frameworks. Some key elements are still missing, like micro formats, data standardization, behaviour abstraction for easy application deployment and mashup, but once reached the Holly Grail of complete uncorrelation between representation, control and data (hey MVC again), it could be possible to have applications written “in pieces”: I’m not an advocate of the “write once run everywhere”, in the Mobile space applications have to be so much taylored, adapted to the hardware, customizable and so on, that being able to have a common part, “written once, run on a server” and a customized one for each kind of device/Operator may be of high value…and those new frameworks may be the key (hum the beginning of the key to be exact ). So next generation Mobile frameworks may have a very clean MVC abstraction, based on a standard that still doesn’t exist: [...]
[...] Web Developments frameworks (like Adobe Flex, MS Silverlight)
The Mobile OS of the future is a service platform! | Everything and the Mobile Software Universe... | November 23, 2007[...] Web Developments frameworks (like Adobe Flex, MS Silverlight) are already migrating little by little to the mobility space, especially through the crop of On Device Portals that are, more or less services delivery platforms, with a “rich client” on the device, running some kind of Ajax/flash/svg/xml/javascript (put your favorite widget/UI/web2.0 technology here) framework to deliver “content”, content being here the service. [...]