does anyone have experience with something like this (or SproutCore, GWT) versus a heavier javascript solutions that uses the backend purely to get data? i'm thinking extjs on the frontend with an api on the backend (probably django for the admin). any feedback?
ps: i expect to write js most of the time as opposed to (in this case) python. extjs is rich enough that i don't have to muck with html/css either and i can throw google gears for good measure.
I was under the impression that this was more like ExtJS (i.e. the heavier end of the scale) rather than something like jQuery that pretty much just works on top of standard HTML markup.
I spent several months attempting to hack our applications to work within the ExtJS way, but found it pretty hostile to working with a traditional web application (e.g. POST/GET rather than AJAX everything). This bad experience led me to dismiss Cappuccino as being inappropriate for our needs, though it might be useful for writing apps from scratch. jQuery has proven far more amenable to a baby-steps conversion from a traditional CGI app to an AJAX application. There's also the accessibility and downgrade path question with all-JavaScript generated pages (like ExtJS, and, I thought, Cappuccino).
i think in cappuccino you do everything in the "backend". there's no need to write javascript/html/css ... which is good in a lot of ways (you can output source for different devices, and i'm even guessing you could generate different backends - php, .NET) - but i'm more interested in the js/AJAX everything model, lighter on the backend.
i've never worked in objectiveC/J but js seems nicer at first glance. but i may just be saying that so that i don't feel like i would miss something should we choose etxjs.
Actually it's the opposite, Cappuccino applications are mostly client-side, running on JavaScript. Objective-J is an extension to JavaScript, which gets compiled to JavaScript (either at runtime or ahead of time).
ok. ok. i misunderstood.
interesting. so why wouldn't i just write javascript? what is the value added? aside from the fact that i'm not coding in javascript (which i don't consider a negative)
JavaScript lacks several features useful in programming complex applications, namely classical inheritance, code importing, dynamic message dispatching. Objective-J adds these to JavaScript, but of course you still get all the features of JavaScript, since it's a superset of the language.
Any HTTP server. The runtime compilation takes place in the browser (the compiler is written in JavaScript). The pre-compilation uses a command line version of the compiler running in Rhino)
Cappuccino is a completely client side framework. It requires nothing on the server. It is written in JavaScript and Objective-J (a small set of extensions to JavaScript). It uses no python.
sorry, too long.
appreciate any comments.