Eugene Lazutkin wrote: > A lot of people who use list boxes, radio buttons, and other widgets > don't know X11/Win32 graphics APIs and event systems. My point is there > are many ways to minimize exposure to js.
Agreed, I have yet to see anyone come up with clear cases for widgets within web programming. Zope has some, and they're pretty decent I believe, but there's a bit of a learning curve as usual. AJAX web widgets is a bit different than just putting list boxes and radio buttons up, its a whole infrastructure thing with backend responses, etc. Minor deviations in customization of the web widget can easily involve modifying server-side code to handle the interaction, etc. It seems like AJAX web widgets is very different from X11/Win32 graphic API's as far as I can tell. The real question is, are Django people happy to wait while some new, super-neat, powerful, widget system is developed using AJAX; or would Django coders like to use something as soon as possible? I'd suggest taking both approaches, RailsHelpers and something like RJS now; new thing when its ready. The amount of effort required for something like RJS is pretty minimal, for an AJAX widget system there will likely be extensive planning, meetings, etc. As I plan on doing something like the RJS stuff anyways, Django need only have a single person who implements it for Django (like Louis did for the RailsHelpers) > Of course it is debatable that the absence of knowledge is The Good > Thing (tm). ;-) In many cases it is used to dumb down the programming > tools for dumb down programmers to create dumb down applications. > Personally I prefer to learn the proper way using proper tools. :-) Sure, it goes both ways. In the case of RJS and RailsHelpers, I think the philosophy is, if you just want to use AJAX to swap some elements or something, that in itself is not enough reason to invest hours into being a Javascript programmer. There's a lot of tools up and down the toolchain of web programming, I seriously doubt any of us are completely proficient at each and every level of it. > "If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will look like nails." > This is what I call "a low-level approach" --- using a crutch instead of > building a proper web application. Alternatively, I think RailsHelpers is meant purely for hitting nails. You can get creative and smash in some screws without much harm, but obviously you'll need a better tool if your needs are larger. Anyways, the RailsHelpers are mostly done. The RJS/Javascript Generator won't take me more than an hour or two to port, then its a matter of figuring out good practices for using it since our setup is rather different than Rails. Anyone interested in taking a look at this, and figuring out how to slot it into Django, feel free to contact me. Cheers, Ben
