caston wrote:
<snip>
Well, I might have been not clear with the topic. I considered "Ajax
Frameworks" as libraries that deliver:
- set of enhanced user interaction controls (to enable "better" user
experience)
Future: controls implemented on XBL with XHTML/SVG/CSS
- api for cross-browser manipulation on browser DOM (in order to make
application logic not dependable on browser but on api)
Future: DOM-Level-3 (Core, Events. XPath)
- set of effects/transitions
Future: SMIL
- wrapper around XMLHttpRequest object
Present: native XMLHttpRequest object
So, conclusion: once everything marked as "Future" is implemented in
major browsers, Ajax Frameworks/Toolkits are useless!
Well, at one time ( almost a decade ago ) I might
have agreed with you more, however even when the *future* becomes
a *now*, the goal posts will just beat a hasty retreat
into the future once more.
We will always be faced with innovations and differing
implementations of same and various frameworks for
addressing the larger goals of applications and infrastructure
development.
Since the w3 and related specifications is what almost
all browsers claim to pursue, that is where I
look first for solutions and design ideas.
Over the years the w3 standards/recommendations have
continuously improved in their ability to provide
standards based options , but alas there is still *future*
evolution required to eliminate the need for frameworks
while of course we are still waiting for browsers to fully
support what we have even *now*.
Frameworks of one form or another are going to be with us
for many years more.
These days though , one does not need to have a giant
monolithic framework as the distances from day to day
development needs and an applicable w3 spec are getting
smaller all the time, thus the new breed of frameworks
starts as a really thin background transactions
managers for loading libraries and performing
transactions in a reliable DOM friendly way.
For example in the (LAMPjack) framework , one
loads a libraries via simple CSS entries like these
below. The libraries loaded then have a reliable
( with retries) method of making
queries to databases, WSDL,RSS,XML-RPC,REST etc
with the results being easily formatted with standards
based XSL files in memory and piped to the target div.
<div class="wPoint_login" />
A sign up / login with email verification, email password,
change password etc.
<div class="wPoint_search" />
In that instance the framework injects a tiny
little library that creates a WSDL based google
search and results display in the page.
<div class="wPoint_mysqlbrowse" />
select from foo where somefield='bar'
</div>
browses my database.
As I said , frameworks of one form or another
will be around for some time.
