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List:       xml-cocoon-dev
Subject:    Re: Ajax libraries: let's wait a bit
From:       Jeremy Quinn <jeremy () apache ! org>
Date:       2005-10-17 10:16:06
Message-ID: 2C06C9CD-BFDF-4CDC-AFB5-E78698F53283 () apache ! org
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Hi Sylvain

I +1 your decision to roll back for the release of 2.1.8, and am very  
glad you found this problem in time.

I will start brushing up on Dojo !!

best regards

Jeremy

On 15 Oct 2005, at 13:40, Sylvain Wallez wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> A few days ago, I raised some concerns [1] about the Scriptaculous  
> JavaScript library which we started to use in the Ajax block,  
> because of modifications made to JavaScript base classes made by  
> the underlying Prototype library on which it is based.
>
> I had no satisfying answer on the Scriptaculous mailing-list, and  
> removing the base classes extensions in Prototype would mean  
> rewriting a lot of things in Scriptaculous and is thus very  
> unlikely to happen. Furthermore, I also wanted to use the Sortable  
> [2] class for CForms repeaters, but had to make important  
> modifications to the class itself for this to work with CForms  
> because the conventions used are different.
>
> Considering this, I decided that Scriptaculous was a wrong choice  
> and looked to other alternatives.
>
> The most promising so far is the Dojo Toolkit [3] :
> - it has a very cool "load on demand" feature that allows to have  
> only bootstrap <script> tags in the page, and then load other  
> scripts when they are needed using "require('foo.bar.baz')". A must  
> have in Cocoon where each block may bring its own client-side  
> scripts. Also in CForms where you do not want e.g. to have htmlarea  
> and calendar loaded in all pages if not used in these pages.
> - it is not only about cool effects: it provides a number of data  
> structures, can use iframes when xmlhttprequest is not present,  
> tackles the browser history problem in Ajax apps, etc.
> - its development is community-driven, even if the original creator  
> plays the "benevolent dictator"
> - it has an interesting test system that uses Rhino, and the  
> ability to assemble and compress a number of files in a single one  
> to speedup things in production.
>
> The current drawback of Dojo is that the all the spiffy effects are  
> there (and more [4]), but lack a close integration with background  
> page update. But that should be a couple of classes.
>
> All this to say that before making a choice for a client-side JS  
> library that more and more blocks are likely to use with the  
> progression of Ajax needs, we need to take a bit of time to find  
> the pros and cons of the various alternatives.
>
> As 2.1.8 will be released soon, I will rollback changes to the  
> CForms JS library so that is uses the little home-grown stuff I  
> wrote back in July. I will also remove the Ajax examples that rely  
> on Scriptaculous (sorry Jeremy!), which will be reinstalled once  
> we've taken the time to make a choice.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Sylvain
>
> [1] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon- 
> dev&m=112921787207346&w=2
> [2] http://script.aculo.us/demos/ajax/sortable_elements
> [3] http://dojotoolkit.org/
> [4] http://dojotoolkit.org/~alex/dojo/trunk/tests/widget/ 
> test_FisheyeList.html
>
> -- 
> Sylvain Wallez                        Anyware Technologies
> http://people.apache.org/~sylvain     http://www.anyware-tech.com
> Apache Software Foundation Member     Research & Technology Director
>
>


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