[Seaside] Seaside, AJAX, and Iliad

[Tony Fleig]

Hi,

I'm relatively new to Seaside and I am re-entering the Smalltalk world after
many years.

I have reached the following conclusions regarding the Iliad and Seaside
frameworks -- admittedly without a truly thorough investigation.

Seaside is robust and mature and well-documented but was originally
developed without AJAX features in mind. The AJAX features in Seaside, while
viable, feel like an afterthought compared to the built-in AJAXification in
Iliad. Per-widget in-place update using markDirty is dirt-simple in Iliad
and is assumed to be the default method of updating. The corresponding
functionality in Seaside is comparatively complex to use and to me,
confusing.

Seaside's wonderful back-button management with continuations breaks when
AJAX is used. Iliad has a "different" back-button approach (which is not
clearly defined anywhere that I could find).

Is there any chance that Seaside could acquire markDirty functionality and
"automatic" AJAX callbacks like Iliad? I really like Seaside's completeness
and well-documented features, but I find myself drawn to Iliad instead
because for Web-2.0-style apps the out-of-the-box (default) user experience
is so much better.

Am I off-base here? Have I missed something important in my analysis?
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