I had a (very) brief look into some Ajax/DHTML JavaScript frameworks flying around. There are so many and to really compare them in detail would require time that I don’t have right now. So I can only come up with some first impressions:
- Backbase appears to be a commercial but extremely clean and well designed framework with impressive examples (look in “Demos”) and documentation. But it is not compatible to Safari and Opera yet (which is bad for a 3.1 release I’d say, but they claim to be working on it). If a framework doesn’t take the burden of browser dependency away from the developer (or the user if the developer doesn’t care) then the nicest framework is worth almost nothing. It might be something to play with. Backbase works by applying styles and behavior to either simple HTML elements or custom Tags within an own XML namespace (a look at their Backbase explorer inside “Demos” shows what that means). There is a free community edition, but commercial licenses seem to be somewhat pricy.
- Dojo does not look as clean as Backbase and their “examples” area is kind of lame compared to Backbase. But it is open source and so it is the choice above Backbase if you developing in a non-commercial context. The JavaScript methods of Dojo are a little more exposed – you need to write some more code to get the desired behaviors. It does not use own Tags in the source code, so Dojo might be useful to “enhance” a ordninary web page. Some people may prefer this approach over using own tags in the source code like Backbase does. I didn’t look at all their examples, but it seems while most of them are compatible with Safari some are not (e.g. the “nested drop target” example).
- Script.aculo.us has also some good demos – not as complete as Backbase, but much better than Dojo (see for instance the effects demos). It is distributed with some kind of MIT license (free to be used for anything but the copyright information must be kept). Script.aculo.us has also some connection to Ruby: Ruby on Rails uses the framework and they run their site with a Ruby-based Wiki called Instiki. This framework has also some prominent examples to show: 37signals.com obviously created their much-talked-about-lately applications with it. From the examples I have seen up until now Script.aculo.us seems to be fully compatible with Safari which would be a big plus compared to the other frameworks.
- MochiKit seems to be very compatible as well. It is also distributed either the MIT license or the Academic Free Licence. This framework is more related to the Python community since TurboGears uses it to provide something like Script.aculo.us does for Ruby on Rails. The demos are better than the ones by Dojo but not as slick as the ones of Script.aculo.us or Backbase.
I imagine a future where a developer of a web application could say something like “take this dataset and provide it as shoppable items in a sortable table to the user with a live recording of all selections to the shopping cart” in few lines of code. The visual look of the resulting web page should be 100% CSS based. Developers happy. Designers happy. But I suppose it’ll take another 1-3 years to achieve that level of integration.
This is really great:
While others are still resisting the idea to webcast course content online Stanford moves along by integrating (at least some of) their educational content with the iTunes Music Store. Can you see the iTunes Educational Shop coming up? One-click shopping for lectures and files that use the same DRM protection like the songs you buy at Apples Music Store? Right now the audio clips stream for $0.00 and you can download the pieces with a single click. Now nobody needs to stretch the imagination anymore. It is actually a no brainer – same technology, different application.
If you have iTunes installed you can directly open the site with a simple click.
Hmm. 
There are certain topics I never covered much in this weblog. Human Rights is one of them. Today news tells us that Rosa Parks died and she will probably remain in history forever reminding us that one moment of courage can change so much.
I think the next 6-12 month we will see an incredible buzz about web application frameworks – some on the server side and some on the side of the client:
OpenLazlo is competing with Macromedia Flex. for the so called “Rich” Internet Application market. I am somewhat sceptical about thie RIA-approaches. If you can establish a channel to deliver anything useful – fine. But these systems – while cutting development time – are extremely monolithic and they sort of hijack the user experience for you. And caring for the user experience is a differentiator in the market. I admit that Flex/Lazlo would provide a better experience often compared to using no interface toolkit at all – but generally I feel these systems are bloated and heavy trying to solve so many things at once. But maybe I am just not getting it right. Many internet applications would be “rich” if only they would be designed better and provide some sort of solution to a problem.
For the development of the backends on the server we see frameworks like Ruby on Rails, TurboGears, Twisted, Zope and so on. These can also really cut development cost by providing abstraction layers to common problems. These frameworks do a hell lot of things for a developer, but they usually have a steep learning curve and they also may have issues with reliability, performance and scalability. But from what I see, there are little options to avoid frameworks unless you are ready to invest the time in working around so many different gotchas yourself.
On the client side we see frameworks popping up like mushrooms that try to help developers turn the Web Browser in some sort of HTML-driven application delivery device. There is some comparison already available, but I wonder if some frameworks will recieve wider adoption. Script.aculo.us and Dojo seem to be good candidates. Script.aculo.us is even teaming up with Rails to create nifty little applications in very short time. In other words: these JavaScript framworks provide a quick way to implement certain interaction patterns in web pages (like sorting a list with the mouse pointer).
People were critizising AJAX to break the URL schema. I don’t think that is the case as long as you keep URLs as pointers to resources functional and constrain AJAX to improve the usability of a web application. I don’t want to have to reload a full HTML page or submit a complex form just because I unchecked an option.
Mark Bernstein about the ignorance of US mainstream media to world events:
The CNN front page headlines include, among the top 6 stories:
“Jennifer Aniston photographed kissing Vince Vaughn”
I don’t follow the news much. Is there some reason Jennifer Aniston shouldn’t be kissing Mr. Vaughn?
This simply made my day
The book »Getting Things Done« by David Allen is a bestseller. It offers a strategy of how to prioritize things you have to do. It is a combination of a tracking device (like a box of notes) and a routine of how to use that device. I am running my own Tinderbox tool to keep track of projects and actions in Tinderbox. But in principle you could use almost anything as long as you are able and willing to use it almost anytime you need to record a new task. Here is a page describing GTD. It also contains a link PDF with a diagram that shows the routine that needs to be learned.
The Kinkless GTD System is a freeware outliner, that probably does much of what I do with Tinderbox. I have also seen a wiki-style implementation of this with TiddlyWiki: GTD TiddlyWiki (and there is also a page that even includes a Dashboard version).
I am sure there are a lot more tools available to start a fine GTD system with.
Published on
October 20, 2005 in
Design.
I just want to raise the attention to these invaluable sites (some of which have been in my Blogroll for years):
I recommend theses sites to all students. And by the way: ALL of them have an RSS feed!
Interestingly there is a whole armada of things keeping us under pressure: you got to be more productive, faster, better organized, and so on. The computer has not only enhanced our productivity: ubiquitous computing also means there will be no excuse to be unproductive (except when you »deserved« a break)?
There are already many people working almost round the hour – from early morning when they wake up to late night when they fall asleep. For those there is now »aid« available:
Glen Rhodes explains how to reduce the daily amount of sleep needed to 4.5 hours:
Typically, I sleep 3 hours a night, and nap for 90 minutes in the evening. That’s a total of 4.5 hours, and I am always alert, always awake and always feel rested and refreshed.
Update: There is a Wikipedia page about »polyphasic sleep«.
Hooray! I’d like to quote Alex Albrecht from diggnation.com: »We live in desperate times, Dude!«.
Today I started the Continuity seminar weblog (RSS). There is also a special tag-pair on del.icio.us (RSS) for that seminar as well (unfortunatly the URLs will change soon).
The topic of that seminar is still evolving, but the task is to understand the psychological and cognitive aspects of flow and its relation to design (mainly interaction design).
So, you’d think that the job of an computer graphics animator would involve nothing but sitting in front of a screen and clicking little icons and buttons all day long? Well, looking at these folks I think the curricula may need some tweaking for the required skill sets…
Published on
October 8, 2005 in
Design.
Next week there’ll be another conference on Design Research in Rio De Janeiro. Unfortunatly the conference website is extremely lousy. I can’t even remember a conference website with so superficial and useless information. Obviously the organizers don’t want to get too international.
First of all I was suprised to read “3rd international conference” in the announcement, which suggests there have been just two other conferences on that topic. But if you look at the prior conferences listed you’ll notice that they just count national conferences and the attribute international may be a matter of wether or not there are speakers from other countries invited. From an organizing committee of an international design research conference I expect a) to list any design research conference in the history of the planet and b) to title their event »3rd Brazilian Conference on Design Research«.
Secondly the list of papers is not available in English (wasn’t that a conference with “international” in the title?). If that wouldn’t be lame enough, the accepted papers are listed without any author names and abstracts – which basically makes this list useless for any kind of research (Wasn’t “research” in the conference title as well??).
Thridly, even though the conference is happening next week, there is no program available so besides some preview remarks on the start page there is no information whatsoever who is actually speaking at this event. Even the past two events are not documented beyond a list of accepted papers (again without any author names or abstracts).
Maybe I should apply to the 4th international conference with a paper called »What does ’state of the art’ actually mean for Design (Research)?«.
Published on
October 8, 2005 in
Tools.
I am eager to test Flock. Someone posted some screenshots on Flickr.com. As far as I know it is based on Firefox and it is going to work with del.icio.us for Bookmarks and flickr.com for images. It will also a sepcial interface for bloggers where creating blog posts is a matter of drag & drop things within the Flock browser.
Ton Zijlstra suggests a portal concept for work groups to cllaborate and exchange. His idea utilizes two weblgs, a wiki with an internal area and a discussion board. Ton patches together several tools for this (a Wikka Wiki, two Wordpress blogs and a Simple Machines forum). That’s a way to go with almost no server administration involved: just using tools available on the net today. And it could be started right away by anyone.
I think that Plone just is the almost perfect tool for this. It allows to insert several blog and wiki instances within a Plone instance. Also, read/write access permissions are extremely fine grained, so every imaginable constellation of access rights could be implemented.
The problem with Plone: ZWiki is not as powerful as some other Wiki engines out there yet (well, it is, but you’d need to dig deep into it), CMFboard is just not as bugfree as other examples around and finaly Quills is a blog tool that misses some features and the funtionality of tools like Wordpress. Last but not least: the skinning system of Plone is ultra-flexible but then very hard to control.
Published on
October 6, 2005 in
Tools.
I had a chance to briefly check out these collaborative editors based on AJAX: writely.com, backpackit.com & writeboard.com, jotspotlive.com. It is pretty amazing what developers are trying to achieve now.
Backpackit is aimed to be some kind of simple groupware. Writely.com and Jotspot Live are aimed at collaborative writing. I personally found the visual feedback and the interaction of Jotspot Live much better: it is far more synchronous when several people write on a document. But I guess neither one of these application could compete with SubEthaEdit, where you actually can see other people typing single characters (I haven’t heard of a feasible Windows counterpart to this BTW).
I didn’t have a chance by now to actually use this synchronous writing for any kind of productive work. I am just dreaming Tinderbox would support this! What a killer application this could be!
Update: Tim Bruysten pointed me to Gobby and Zoho Writer.