Client development

From Casastristes

On client side we are going to develop a standards-compliant HTML website using a Content Management System as base system and an AJAX/Javascript library for UI development and server communication. As first step we have to decide which CMS and which Javascript libraries to use, additionally we should start to investigate Map development.

1 CMS
2 AJAX/Javascript libraries

CMS

Instead of setting up our own system there could be advantages of using a CMS for our site. Rolling our own system could have fit our needs more exactly than a CMS does, on the other hand a CMS offers a lot of tasks like user management which we have to reprogram on our own. To decide what way to go we should have in mind the following requirements:

flexibility
user management
compatibility with AJAX/Javascript libraries
compatibility with map development
compatibility with server development

see:

maybe Drupal: Rolling your own system vs. using Drupal
try out open source CMS before you install it

AJAX/Javascript libraries

comparison matrix

Nowadays AJAX stands for a lot of different things, the following points are connected to AJAX, Web2.0 and Rich Internet Applications:

Asynchronous communication between browser and server: the libraries make the handling of the XMLHttpRequest easier.
DHTML effects: known since many years some DHTML technics are now subsumed in this category.
Widgets: also known since years. widgets like textfields showing suitable words getting shorter and shorter are quite popular.
Javascript/DOM utilities: making Javascript coding easy offering a lot of functionality like DOM and CSS manipulation.

	script.aculo.us	rico	jQuery	mootools	dojo	MochiKit
based on	prototype	prototype
license	MIT	Apache	MIT	MIT	AFL	AFL
AJAX	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
widgets	yes	yes	yes	plugins	yes	no
DHTML effects	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
javascript/DOM utilities	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
data formats	XML, JSON	XML, JSON	XML, JSON	XML, JSON, others	XML, JSON, others	XML, JSON
projects used for	del.icio.us, feedburner.com, rubyonrails.org		digg.com, code.google.com	joomla.org, ubuntu.com	store.apple.com	mochibot.com
pros	famous for pros in interface development, good documentation on server side integration			fully object oriented		good API documentation
cons		poor documentation, no Safari support			API documentation is not complete

We haven’t included prototype because libraries based on it have more functionality to offer. We ether included Google Web Toolkit as a lot of documents speak about its slow learning curve.

see other comparisons:

decision finding

The main factors we have to keep in mind while making the choice are:

License: There is a lot of offer of AJAX libraries written in Javascript, which all come as open source to the browser so one additional criteria for our selection is that they are free software.
Compatibility: The generated code must be standards-compliant and common browsers as Firefox, IE, Safari, Opera and Konqueror.
Documentation: It shouldn’t take a long time to learn the toolkit itself. One of the important requirements of the project is rapid prototyping since the UI forms the core component of the project.
Stability & Support: It is important for the toolkit to be stable, and under active development; since the application may be used by hundreds of people.
Features: Of course, the stuff that the toolkit offers should match with what we require. It should offer AJAX functionality, widgets, DHTML effects and javascript/DOM utilities.