[Seaside] Seaside, AJAX, and Iliad

[Lukas Renggli]

> 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?

Well, Seaside 3.0 has the JQAjaxifierLibrary built in, see

   http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/blog/ajaxification
   http://www.lukas-renggli.ch/blog/ajaxification-faq

I have been using successfully using this approach in various
industrial applications since 2007 with PrototypeJS and later with
JQuery. Albeit it has not gained much popularity in the wider Seaside
community, I personally find it very elegant for the following
reasons:

1. You develop a normal application, you get an AJAX application for free.

2. You do not need to mark components as dirty.

3. You keep the full flexibility of how you structure your HTML.

4. You keep the full flexibility of doing custom AJAX actions if
necessary (e.g. to optimize certain updates).

Lukas

-- 
Lukas Renggli
www.lukas-renggli.ch