World: r3wp

It's HTML5/CSS3 support looks good.

If you are on OSX take a look at Rapidweaver. Really good.

Ashley didn't you have some web dialect you were doing?

Yes, I'm using it to generate web sites for clients ... but I want 
to add support for mobile devices (via jQuery Mobile) and solve the 
"one website for desktops, another for mobiles" problem (via "Responsive 
Web Design" techniques - see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design

That's scary if true .. mobile browsing expected to outpace desktop 
access in 3-5 years.

Steve Jobs made a good point in an interview not long ago: "PC's 
are going to be like trucks. Less people will need them. And this 
is going to make some people uneasy."

why do you find it scary, Graham?

it means we will have to recode all our websites!

Exactly, and there's the opportunity as most people (and tools) are 
still stuck with a "mywebsite.com for desktops and mywebsite.com/m 
for mobiles" model.

I'm hoping that whatever framework I use will automatically adapt 
:)

Or that mobile browsers will just cope

designing for a small browser still requires re-designing the layout. 
 no way round that.

I'm not sure that there will be a distinction between mobile browsing 
and desktop browsing for too much longer (no longer than a decade, 
IMO). Just a few more tech advances in battery life will allow for 
practical pico projectors to be included into any mobile device. 
An alternative that increases viewable area is foldable displays 
- they exist already in prototype form - just need to be commercialized. 
HUDs and retinal displays are others. These are not sci-fi anymore. 
But if you're just talking about the next couple of years or so, 
I agree.

Between prototype and cheap commercialization, it can be decades.

I remember having seen large flat screen TV proto in the early 80's 
(plasma).
We had to wait until 2005+ to be able to buy them at low prices.

yeah the first not crappy plasma screens where 60000$  and they didn't 
come down for a long time.

It is a long time I last looked into ajax libraries.  I know I tend 
not to use mainstream stuff, but often based upon coolness of the 
technology :-) Many ppl talk jquery, even MS is adopting it for SharePoint, 
but what about e.g.:

Mootools
YUI - http://yuilibrary.com/
Dojo Toolkit - http://dojotoolkit.org/
Sencha Touch - http://www.sencha.com/
DHTMLx - http://dhtmlx.com/
Prototype - http://www.prototypejs.org/

SmartGWT (successor to GWT) - http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwt/showcase/#main
http://dojotoolkit.org/

Any experience, preference? What are YOU using?

I'm still using JQuery .. but it's a hard slog.  But I might switch 
to using Enyo if it's as good as it looks

and of course it has to be released

I'm using jQuery, becuase I'm lazy to write own stuff (which I consider 
better in most cases, because I usually need only minimal functionality 
provided by the jQuery) and want to spend as less time working on 
web as possible so I do not examine other frameworks.

AFAIK, everyone here is using JQuery, or, have written their own 
frameworks

I still also maintain another site in YUI

but checking your links, I quite like Dojo

I can imagine REBOL dialect to build code for many such a toolkits, 
but as I say.. I don't want to spend time on it at this moment.

I think dockimbel is also JQuery

user

I used dojo a litle a whwile ago, I found the event handling very 
clean. I've read that dojo is stronger for single page apps that 
many of the other frameworks.

We use Quilt for Qtask, custom written of course.

I've also heard good comments about dojo.  it looks better architectured 
overall, but that is just an impression.

I recently used Kompozer to build a quick site to fix a friend's 
site that was so bad I figured I could at least spend a few hours 
and take it from a 1 to a 6 (scale one to ten).

There are a few variations of Kompozer.  But Kompozer is the best 
of them.


It still sucks though.  When you do view source it does not put your 
cursor where you expect it to.  It is nightmarish to figure out how 
to edit tables. 
But, over all, if you keep things simple, it works well enough.

mobile browsing expected to outpace desktop access in 3-5 years.

Most of the world lives on their cell phones.


As to JavaScript Frameworks to fix the biggest human fail in computer 
history (that being that we use HTML+JavaScript to build UserInterface), 
having headed the creation of a complete UI system that is delivered 
through the web, I will say the following:


- Find something that handles Tables (grids, lists) well.  Make sure 
it does verything you need.

- Make a list for yourself of widgets you care about, and confirm 
(assume nothing) about the level of detail with which they operate. 
 For example, Imagine 3 radio buttons, on the web they have no default 
state, and some interfaces allow them to operate like checkboxes, 
not radio buttons.  Again, assume nothing!

- Confirm, for yourself, they work on the platforms you care about. 
 Nothing works on everything, even when they claim it.


I did not want to build Quilt, but we still don't know anything that 
comes close other than Tibco's crap, and I'm not sure they even sell 
it anymore. (I recall it was like $100K).

I must correct myself.. I don't want to write my own JS stuff anymore... 
I just found that one old script (simple menu running on the site 
many years) stopped working in IE8. I don't want to deal with browser's 
(un)compatibilities anymore.. better to use an obscure framework 
or don't use JS at all.

a good resource I found to start using HTML 5 and help make those 
pages work somewhat backwards compatible on non html5 browsers.

http://diveintohtml5.org/

I haven't finished reading, but so far I like it.   I like the writing 
style.

it has a nice retrospect of HTML and tackles a single question... 
"why do we have an <IMG> tag in html?"... the answer is surprisingly 
simple and evocative:
The ones that win are the ones that ship.

funny... the leading OS is called WINdows   ;-)

about JS libs:

I don't use jQuery .. it's oweblown for what I want (I don't need 
it to reinvent javascript). If I need any complex components like 
datepicker (which I don't want to reinvent) I use mootools usually 
(because you can use just needed parts of it). jQuery UI modules 
(which has this) are very very slow and CSS is so complex I don't 
even start to get it how to customize it.


Dojo always seemed this mega lib that I don't want either. If I go 
to their demos (at least last time I looked) everything is slow and 
unresponsive. I want my things to be slim on code and snappy.


Prototype (mootools does this also, but I think a little less) is 
first generation JS lib (that started it all). I think it heavily 
monkey patches the core JS/DOM objects.. thats why I don't like it.


I also neve use css3 selectors in my JS code (that is a major part 
why people use jquery and likes). I always move relative to an element 
with seekFwd, seekIn, seekOut, seekBack fuctions I have or just use 
ID of element (and then seek if needed).

UsrJoy and InvoiceFox generate 90% of html on client side. I have 
few weird (functional-ish (as in functional programming)) ideas how 
to do this: I use http://code.google.com/p/jsgoo/http://refaktor.si/demos/jsgoo/
 for this

Janko: we tried http://angularjs.orgrecently. it also does client 
side html templating BUT in 2 ways. the merged data can update itself 
inside the template and also if some input fields change, the corresponding 
model variables reflect this change automatically.

the best framework i've seen so far & u can mix it easily with jquery 
or mootools

jQuery is imo typical example of another so called standard the world 
has choosen, and yet again the wrong one :-) Even MS suggests it 
to use with SharePoint ....

The ones that win are the ones that ship.
   ;-)

Maxim - then I don't support those that win, nor am I interested 
to win :-) I thought that' why we are here in the first place :-) 
Or we could all be using php, Ruby, or any new trend which appears 
:-)

Janko - what do you think about -  http://gwt-ext.com/?

Pekr: what else then if not jquery?

onetom, do you have a site using this angularisjs ?

http://misko.hevery.com/2010/07/29/a-radically-different-way-of-building-ajax-apps/

here is a video about angular. it's one hour but it worth very much 
to watch.

and yes, i have a site using angular, but it's a work in progress, 
so i can't show it publicly. privmsg me if u r interested

So, angular is a DSL that is compiled into JS client side to handle 
all the dom manipulation and other stuff that you would normally 
have to write JS to do ...or use Jquery functions.

Sounds like a neat idea .. less is better !

angular is a js library which interprets special tags, attributes 
and element values in the dom and sets up an event handler system 
behind the scenes which keeps model objects in sync w the dom content 
(back and forth)

wow, the new FF really is annoying  :-)


what is it with browser makers... they just keep making their stuff 
more and more aggravating to use.

ah, I just put back some toolbars which are off by default... making 
a bit more sense.

u seem to be a prisoner of your habits. toolbars? in a browser? what 
is the good for? :)