[Seaside] Remote Development with Squeak/Seaside

[John Pierce]

> Do most of the Seaside developers have regular physical access to the machines
> they develop and deploy including after deployment?

I have physical access, but it is not convenient (behind several
firewalls, physically inaccessible).  A web way to connect and control
is a large motivation of what I am trying to accomplish with LiveWeb. 
I must say, I am quite impressed with what can be done in a browser
(natively).  So far I don't see any technical limits to what you
cannot reasonably do in a web browser. Thanks gmail for inspiring me!
 
> Is VNC the predominant means of developing remotely?

I have not used VNC in quite some time after some initial bad results
with my image crashing hard.  Maybe others could better relate their
experiences -- although I hear it is a bandwith hog.

> How well or much can you do with the Seaside browser (inside the web browser)?
> ie: how practical?  not fixing or minor development, but full development.

I don't think LiveWeb is ready for fulltime development yet.  I like
the technology, but I am using Seasides' WABrowser for now as I have
not implemented a live browser.  This would be necessary in my opinion
to get a better full-time development environment.  Also, a few other
things are needful like, resizable windows, popup menus, code
autocompletion, and implementers, senders, references to helpers.  You
know, the basic tools we all need to get our job done in Squeak.

These are on my radar, but will take much more energy than I can
devote to it in the near term.  You also start getting off in the
weeds before too long and I start to ask the "should I go this far"
question and "do I want to completely replicate a morphic like
environment in DHTML".  I think that is a tougher decision, but I like
Morphic quite well and don't have to always work in a web browser.

Today, LiveWeb is helpful in programming Seaside applications (you can
interact with the component in the web browser), for minor fixing of
code in a remote image, and for learning JavaScript.  (That's right,
if you highlight some code in a live workspace and press CTRL-O then
the code goes to the JavaScript interpreter instead).

Additionally, the current version on squeak.saltypickle.com has CTRL
key handlers showing up in many places now.  For instance, you can do
it, print it, inspect it in the live workspace (as well as JavaScript
do it (CTRL-E) and JavaScript print it (CTRL-O)).  I just added CTRL-K
to open a workspace and CTRL-B to open a code browser (these keys work
anywhere on the page).

The code browser that comes up on CTRL-B is Avi's WABrowser from the
Seaside distribution.  One of the interesting things about LiveWeb is
that any WAComponent works too.  Just sit in a live workspace and type
WACounter new openInBrowserWindow and you see what I mean.  Obviously,
I added a helper to Object called #openInBrowserWindow that will open
any object in the browser window.

Of course, most objects just show their print strings except for
WAComponents which do what you think they should (render themselves)
and the latest edition I checked in today, Morphs show themselves as
an image.  e.g. try HeadMorph new openInBrowser (not
openInBrowserWindow).
 
> How close or ready is LiveWeb?

Lots to do still in my opinion -- but it is highly useful in the cases
I mentioned before.

As a side note, I'd be interested in paying a monthly fee for a squeak
system as a managed service.  I think Seaside is a great platform for
developing web apps and I'd like to push management of the hardware
and infrastructure off to a co-lo facility.

Regards,

John