[Seaside] Design of WAComponent(s)

Thu Mar 6 16:58:52 UTC 2008

Ah, but widgets are different from components. Widget may be a date picker and component may be a login prompt. I'm all for having widgets so long as their markup is well designed not to interfere outright with peoples work, but I can't see components being general enough to be useful, those you build up yourself as pieces of your application.

Cheers!

-Boris (via BlackBerry)

----- Original Message -----
From: seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org <seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
To: Seaside - general discussion <seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Thu Mar 06 08:52:52 2008
Subject: Re: [Seaside] Design of WAComponent(s)

Stephane,

thank you for getting my point. ;-)

All,

I found the various objectives for Seaside hiding behind the answers very
interesting.

No offense please but some answers show a lack of appreciation for the users
of Seaside. If you want to grow the users base of Seaside, you need to
answer the question of Microsoft. If you dont, it will remain a great tool
from specialists for specialists. And fade in oblivion eventually.

Let me get some points about my objectives straight (because some jumped to
conclusions). 

1. I do not look at a "one-framework-fits-it-all" approach. I know the
limitations of a pluggable design for components. It is extremely hard!
(designing Smalltalk applications for 21 years should qualify me to say
that) Particularly the mixing of structure, presentation and interactivity
in one XHTML structure limits the configuration choices for a general
framework alot. (but I see a value in getting there half way)
2. I agree that the core should be small and needs some cleanup (and
commenting please).

Having said that, please think about this statement of Stephane for a
minute:

> I do not have the skills and time of lukas to create widgets from scratch.
> But I imagine that I should be able to reuse them.

Chapeau! That *IS* the main point. Those non-specialist that might be
attracted to Seaside and Smalltalk are very likely not fluent in the details
of XHTML, Java-script and AJAX. Asking them to create new components from
the given examples will end in bad copy&paste programming.

One interesting point is the size or specialization of predefined
components. A login component is indeed not very interesting for a
predefined component. Individual widgets that need to be pieced together
from primitive HTML and AJAX elements are much more promising. These
*expected* elements for UI design are pretty much standard and hence open
for a standard implementation. I shoot for 80:20. I like to catch 80% of the
standard widgets and components and let 20% be custom implementations.

Andreas

Am 06.03.2008 17:21 Uhr schrieb "stephane ducasse" unter
<stephane.ducasse at free.fr>:

> Hi sebastian
> 
> I still see the point of andreas.
> I would love to have a usable report widget in which I can plug other
> components.
> I already sent that a while back but once I show Seaside to a guy at
> microsoft.
> He was impressed then after 3 min he asked me how many widgets are
> ready to use.
> And he was right.
> 
> There are no incompatibilities between seaside as it is now and a cool
> widgets set.
> Having a cool widgets set with basic but fully working widgets would
> be a big plus: we could
> prototype even faster our applications. I do not have the skills and
> time of lukas
> to create widgets from scratch. But I imagine that I should be able to
> reuse them.
> 
> Stef
> 
> 
> On Mar 6, 2008, at 5:10 PM, Sebastian Sastre wrote:
> 
>>> -----Mensaje original-----
>>> De: seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>>> [mailto:seaside-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] En nombre
>>> de Philippe Marschall
>>> Enviado el: Miércoles, 05 de Marzo de 2008 17:25
>>> Para: Seaside - general discussion
>>> Asunto: Re: [Seaside] Design of WAComponent(s)
>>> 
>>> 2008/3/5, Andreas Tönne <atoenne at cincom.com>:
>>>> ....
>>> 
>>> I think the main point to understand here is that the components that
>>> come with Seaside are not a component library or even a component
>>> framework. They are simple stand alone components. They are not made
>>> with reusabilty, configurabitlity or customyzability in mind. They
>>> are
>>> focused on KISS and "getting the job done" and mostly for use Seaside
>>> itself. They will get you started fast but at one point sooner rather
>>> than later you will hit their limits. That's ok, they're not supposed
>>> to be the "be all, end all".
>>> 
>>> The points you made IMHO apply only if you want to build a component
>>> library or even component framework. That should be an addon protect
>>> and has no place in Seaside-Core. Honestly I have my doubts if such a
>>> such thing could ever work given the very special needs of users
>>> concerning not only functionality but also mark up.
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> Philippe
>>> 
>> 
>> Quoting you:
>> "...They are not made with reusabilty, configurabitlity or
>> customyzability in mind..."
>> 
>> Quoting Seaside site:
>> "About
>> Seaside provides a layered set of abstractions over HTTP and HTML
>> that let you build highly interactive web applications quickly,
>> reusably and maintainably.
>> ..."
>> 
>> Note that *reusably* is the second *bold* word after quickly.
>> 
>> And also (from same source):
>> "...Embedded components. Stop thinking a whole page at a time;
>> Seaside lets you build your UI as a tree of individual, stateful
>> component objects, each encapsulating a small part of a page. Often,
>> these can be used over and over again, within and between
>> applications - nearly every application, for example, needs a way to
>> present a batched list of search results, or a table with sortable
>> columns, and Seaside includes components for these out the box..."
>> 
>> So?
>> 
>> Sebastian
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> seaside mailing list
>> seaside at lists.squeakfoundation.org
>> http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/seaside
>> 
> 
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-- 
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