GUIs - ruby on rails, rico

[Gaspar Chilingarov]

Hm. You have pointed good link to investigate and think about.
At current moment I'm thinking about dynamically feeding XUL scripts
with data generated on server. It have pluses - you can build and use
complex user interfaces - which can have some logic on client. In other
hand it works only in mozilla.


Idea of making some standard calls from user interface to server is very
amaizng in means that you can almost automate functoinal testing of
applications. In case if your client is `thin` and have no logic at all
in it -- you can have mistakes only in data rendering on page, which is
easy to track (you should have test server, which will provide correct
predefined responses to UI).



Joe Armstrong (AL/EAB) wrote:
> It seems like my quest for a GUI is almost over.
> 
> Klacke had pointed me at XMLHTTP but I just didn't get it (dumbo) -
> 
> Then I hacked a bit and - WOW. Firstly XMLHTTP is nothing about XML - it's just allows
> a light weight RPC to made from within a web page. So you connect a bit
> of JavaScript to an event - this JavaScript RPCs a server, the server replies with
> a string that the JavaScript interprets (any old string - not necessarily XML)
> and the JavaScript modifies the web page.
> 
> The last bit (the JavaScript modifies the web page) is the tricky bit - to
> do this you need to use the DOM - which is (uuugh) painful.
> 
> Fortunately there are libraries to do this - ruby on rails uses prototype.js to do this
> http://prototype.conio.net/ And Tobbe has written a library (jungerl/lib/js) to take to prototype.js
> 
> Also of interest is rico http://openrico.org/rico/home.page (especially their innerHTML
> demo) (see http://openrico.org/rico/demos.page?demo=ricoAjaxInnerHTML.html)
> 
> As far as I can see one could make a pretty snazzy GUI in a web brower with
> 
> 	- a local HTTP server (yaws)
> 	- XMLHTTP and
> 	- rico or prototype.js
> 
> Also in the pipeline is an HTML extension <canvas> which has made it to 
> safari and mozilla - this is looking good.
> 
> What would be even nicer would be a port of the konfabulator to linux
> http://www.konfabulator.com/ - since this (I think) would solve all my GUI problems.
> 
> This technology is about to explode - so yaws should be well placed - 
> this means that servers are going to be handling a lot of lightweight RPCs
> 
> So go hack
> 
> /Joe
> 


-- 
Gaspar Chilingarov
System Administrator

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