| Hello Frank and others,
It’s tough isn’t it? There’s a lot of stuff out there.
I didn’t know about Vaadin but I watched their video and thought… how is this different than Google Web Toolkit? You spend all of your time in pure java but the _javascript_ Ajax stuff is built for you… so you don’t have to really learn JS and have that context switch in your head. Sounds good, I guess… and Vaadin is built on top of GWT… but then what is it really doing above and beyond GWT? I don’t know, I didn’t look at it further.
I can’t help but think that anything based on GWT gives someone an initial bang for the buck just because if they know Java that’s all they have to worry about. But at some point you’ll hit a wall and not be able to do something cool in the browser that you want to do… not without learning JS and extra work. I also don’t think GWT was truly designed with Mobile in mind. Notice the word “truly.”
Frank, it’s really up to you. Spend some time to experiment, give yourself two weeks or so, and make your best guess. This is a religious decision, it always is.
Personally I’d suggest you communicate over REST with something like ERRest. Pick a good _javascript_ library that makes sense to you.
When I look at it all there are two main camps:
1) HTML based page-to-page _javascript_ frameworks a) Fast to learn b) Pretty and looks nice (at first) c) Unfortunately becomes hard to maintain over time and very brittle
2) Single page app non-HTML _javascript_ frameworks a) Large learning curve b) Pretty and performant c) Feels like writing a true application, easy to maintain and extend over time.
“Mojo” was the preliminary example of a JS framework that adhered to #1. Not many people know about it but it was the way to write apps for the WebOS phones like the Palm Pre. There are many other frameworks that work in almost the same way, the most famous is JQuery-Mobile. It has been proven that this is *not* the way to long term sanity. It is a short term *win* or a cool way to make a mobile app in a weekend but it will bite you over time. Because of this Palm completely dropped “Mojo.”
“JO” was the first real example that resonated with me of a JS framework that adhered to #2. It is so nice to write an “app” in _javascript_. It generates the HTML for you, all you have to think about is your business logic. No surprise, JO was made by a WebOS guy because those guys believed in _javascript_ like no other. Smart developers took note, and so did Palm. They then went on to create “Enyo” as the replacement for Mojo. I don’t see any real advantage of it over JO except that they also created “Ares” as a nice GUI development environment that runs in the web browser but feels just like Interface Builder. Both Enyo and Ares are open source and can run on your hardware.
Here’s a video of Ares / Enyo in action:
My advice to you, as someone who has played with a bunch of solutions, is to take Enyo / Ares for a serious spin because they are completely open and very polished. I really don’t care what is “hot.” If I did, I wouldn’t have chosen WO. I always look for the best, the truth. Use REST via ERRest to communicate with your app. Use something like “lawn chair” JS for persistence when Internet is not available.
Give Benoit’s Mantage framework / IDE some more consideration too. He does have a WO background after all. The IDE part seems rather closed to me but if that doesn’t bother you, check it out. He gave a comparison of it to Enyo but it was very high level… I cannot tell you which is better and for what, I haven’t really tried Montage.
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| References: | |
| | >Which RIA (From: Frank Stock <email@hidden>) |
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