Are there any other web developement / design environments available, that are similar to Dashcode? - dashcode

Are there any other web developement / design environments available, that are similar to Dashcode?
Some that provide similar HTML + CSS part based development with Javascript as glue using the same model-view-controller paradigm?

extjs
phonegap
iui
The fist two are similar iui is more just a framework. However it will get you started to look at options. They all have good and bad elements.
See here for more frameworks

Related

Exciting examples showcasing how Dart can play nicely with others?

I am havin a look at Dart and I am wondering if there are examples showcasing how to create a nice looking webapp (think Bootstrap, Foundation etc) that relies on thirdparty libraries like (e.g jquery-ui, bootstrap addons, flot etc) with some dynamic sample data (mongodb, ...)?
I did browse around a little but I was looking for something a bit more convincing than http://dart-lang.github.com/js-interop/example or the ToDo apps.
The most important URLs for this are http://www.dartlang.org/samples/ and https://code.google.com/p/dart/source/browse/branches/bleeding_edge/dart/samples/. Our hope is to have more full-stack demos in the coming months such as the book store example in "Agile Web Development with Rails". However, right now, we're really focused on rich client-side web application development (such as our Web UI framework and its version of the TodoMVC sample).

Create CRUD web app with Dreamweaver or other framework?

Background: I have created a CRUD web app using a java based RAD tool called Wavemaker. I am considering developing the app again in a framework that has greater support. Even though I have some experience in development I still get confused by all of the terms. My understanding is that there are languages (C#, PHP, Javascript, Java, etc), frameworks (Wavemaker, Ruby on Rails, Yii, Symfony, Code Igniter, Zend, etc) and editors (Dreamweaver?)?
I outsourced the development of a mobile version of my web app and this was created using jquery mobile, php and ajax. I started using Dreamweaver because I read it had integration for development with jquery mobile and hence I could perform modifications on my mobile app.
I was wondering whether Dreamweaver was a viable choice for the development of a CRUD web app? I used dreamweaver many years ago for the create of html pages and it would automatically create a lot of "unclean" code that made it hard to maintain. I fear that I would put myself in a similar situation here with server-side code.
If Dreamweaver is not appropriate could you kindly suggest a framework that may meet my requirements?
The main things I liked about Wavemaker:
Drag and drop widgets
A lot of the database functions were automatically handled
The main things I don't like about developing with Wavemaker (not Wavemaker itself):
Support: The support generally involves posting to the forums and hoping for a reply that may never come. I would rather paid support over this option which to be fair is offered by vmware but I found it too confusing.
Small number of freelance contractors: Much of the functionality within my app required coding or workarounds outside of the standard features of wavemaker and it is very hard to find a freelance wavemaker developer for help
Ongoing bugs that cause a headache during development
With that being said my priorities are:
Support: great documentation with rapid response to problems (even if this requires a paid subscription)
A large number of freelance contractors available (I guess this means a popular framework using a popular language).
Simple and easy to use (I understand there would be an initial learning curve)
Stable: I won't be running into bugs that hold up my development and need me to wait for the next release for a fix
The ability to incorporate reporting like BIRT reports or Jasper.
Possibly steer clear of Java as I have found Tomcat to be an extra level of complication that it would be great to do without.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
Dreamweaver was a viable choice for the development of a CRUD web app?
Yes, but with caveats. It still does not produce code that advanced users would consider "clean" but the integration of JQuery Mobile in CS5.5 makes it a good choice for non-coders or beginning coders who need to spin up rapidly and will worry about elegance later.
That being said, if you are outsourcing the design it is likely that the code you get back will be editable in Dreamweaver but not written in such a way as to take advantage of Dreamweaver's built-in behaviors (automatic code writing). Dreamweaver expects to see code written to its specs in order to take over for the user. If not, it is still a great wysiwyg editor and above-average code editor.
But it's not a framework. In your sitution, JQuery Mobile is the framework and any JQuery Mobile developer should be able to step in and run with the project. But if you write big chunks of the CRUD using Dreamweaver, developers may tell you that they will want to rewrite those sections. Some won't care.

Using GWT in large scale enterprise applications

I'm evaluating to use GWT / GWT-Platform to develop a large scale enterprise application.
Can anybody speak properly about the use of this tools in high demanding environments?
I would thank any kind of contribution.
Have a look at this : GWT: Large scale application development and MVP
Google uses GWT for their adwords front ends. This includes the online front end, the tv front end, and numerous other high availability customer facing products. The tv product alone has several dozen screens, each of which has a whole passel of ajax widgets and editors.
It seem easier to maintain at scale than similar siEd products ibased on jsp that I had worked with in years past.
For that matter, wave was a quite demanding application in term of latency, and gwt kept up.
It's definitely scalable to use in large applications. It's used by Google in several places (previously mentioned).
I also know of at least one large company I worked at that also used GWT to build a large web based application.
I'd say GWT is as capable as any other tool that you're likely to use. We use GWT here for a medium-size application with various different modules and so on (built using different Maven module configurations) and it works well. Probably the best out of all the Java style UI solutions I've used.
In general I'd say GWT is definitely ready for a large-scale enterprise application - I'd say it's good to use unless you're doing a public-facing website where accessibility is a concern!

Java Web Framework Prototyping tools

At the moment Iam evaluating java web frameworks. More precisely Iam talking about GWT, JSF2 and apache wicket. One very importent criteria in this evaluation is prototyping.
The prototyping process in my company can be described by the folloing:
The customer can produce GUIs with an easy to use WYSIWYG editor, by drag&drop-ing web components on the corporate predefined website structur. There is also a need for some litte dynamic being like navigation from one frame to another.
So Iam looking for tools. These tools should not only provide nice GUIs but also deliver
some basic code, which can be forwarded to the development. The aim is to avoid missunderstandings between designers and developers as much as possible. More or less the
developers just have to implements the code, but not to implement the optical requirements.
In addition it would be desirable to customize the components thats been used in the WYSIWYG editor. Does anyone know any good tools for the mentioned frameworks (GWT, JSF2, wicket)?
One of the challenges with WYSIWYG tools for UI is that you generally have to pick between rapid prototyping and maintainable code. Even then, as soon as you want to do something that's not supported by the prototyping tool, you can implement it as you would without the prototyping tool, but your round-trip functionality (namely turning your app back into something that can be edited) is broken or crippled unless extra work is done to generate the metadata that the editor needs.
Upgrading between major releases is another issue. Vendors and groups who have developed these tools have a historically spotty record of when they stop supporting older versions, reasonably because of limited resources and sometimes difficult problems with how to track solid innovation happening in the framework itself.
My suggestion instead is to prototype with an RIA prototyping tool like Balsamiq Mockups or use a grid system like 960 Grid to generate rapid prototypes, then use a web development framework that allows your developers to run the code with or without the backend server. Wicket has a tag called that is great for this kind of thing -- web devs can fill a div with stuff that a component should generate, and Wicket devs can wrap the contents of that tag with after they implement it. Both parties can coexist for a long time that way.
Try GWT Designer for GWT.
Introduction
Quick Start Guide
Download
There's nothing like this for Wicket that I know of. The closest you would get to any kind of resource reuse from your customer would be to give them a drag and drop HTML editor - the resulting HTML could then form the basis of Wicket page/panel layout.
if you are planing to use a javascript library, you may use extjs,
http://www.sencha.com/products/js/
they have developed a nice designer
www.sencha.com/products/designer/
there is also a port of ext in GWT
www.sencha.com/products/gwt/
You have to pay for a commercial license if your application isn't open source!

GWT, Sproutcore or Cappuccino

I am about to start a new webapp that will be running on P/GAE and reagarding the front end we would like to use one of the mentioned frameworks (GWT, SC, Cap).
Which one do you think is the most developer friendly? It seems that Cappuccino looks stunning but you have to learn Obj-J. Sproutcore seems nicer (since there is only JS) but I could not say I am impressed with the docs plus some of the demos are broken.
GWT on the other hand is very mature but I have the feeling that using Java may slow you down as you cannot use some of the JS quirks on the other hand there is vibrant ecosystem around it.
I think the answer depends on what type of developer are you?
For me, I'm comfortable with Javascript and like the ability to manipulate the browser DOM so that I can implement features that may not be in the framework. That's why I prefer Sproutcore.
Checkout http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/09/sproutcore-1-0.
I have to agree with you that documentation is limited. However, I've found wiki useful and the community really helpful.
GWT is a very nice choice if you're using GAE-Java because then you can develop server-side and client-side in the same language. If you're using Python on the server-side, you won't be able to use GWT's simple RPC calls to serialize objects to/from the browser. It's still a nice framework though.
GWT does allow you to write JS-native code if needed, so you can "use some of the JS quirks" if you need to.
One warning: GWT apps are totally AJAX, so they can't really be seen by search engines (a general problem with AJAX, not with GWT specifically)