[NEWS] SproutCore used by Apple (Cocoa for the web?)

[jay@moduscreate.com]

Slow, but interesting.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/16/apples_open_secret_sproutcore_is_cocoa_for_the_web.html

http://www.sproutcore.com/about/

[jay@moduscreate.com]

I've gotten notices that some folks cannot access the site. While the *limited* demos look nice, it's very sloooooooow.

http://tdg-i.com/img/screencasts/2008-06-17_1059.png

[Lobos]

What license does SproutCore use?

SproutCore is under the uber-liberal MIT license. We just want you to use it.


I think Jack and co should start to take notice of the fact that ext may have the lead now, but in a short time something else can come along and offer something with a similar feature set yet a more liberal license. I love ext, but i would be lying if i said my love would stop me jumping on the bandwagon and supporting a similar framework with a more liberal license.

In regards to the speed, it was ok for me, it should also be noted that this news is currently posted on slashdot so the site would be getting a heep of traffic.

I like it and i will be keeping a close eye on it in the future.

[dantheman]

Nothing personal to the SproutCore folks, and
who knows what one can do w/the resources
of Apple backing, but ...

by the time they mature what I see there to the
level of Ext, we will be using other technology ... :D

--dan

[Lobos]

Nothing personal to the SproutCore folks, and
who knows what one can do w/the resources
of Apple backing, but ...

by the time they mature what I see there to the
level of Ext, we will be using other technology ... :D

--dan

While this is of course true in some ways, one must remember that ext is founded on the innovation of jack and co and the innovation is done and available for the world to see - a dedicated team with the resources of apple is not so far behind when you think of it like that... the time it took ext to mature is different, Ext had to break new ground and the ground is now broken.

SproutCore has a blueprint to follow, one that is proven to work and is popular, one that also has a restrictive license.. me sees an opportunity ;)

[dantheman]

While this is of course true in some ways, one must remember that ext is founded on the innovation of jack and co and the innovation is done and available for the world to see - a dedicated team with the resources of apple is not so far behind when you think of it like that... the time it took ext to mature is different, Ext had to break new ground and the ground is now broken.

SproutCore has a blueprint to follow, one that is proven to work and is popular, one that also has a restrictive license.. me sees an opportunity ;)I certainly agree that Jack, et al have made this path much easier to walk,

BUT

it's not just a question of resources. More cooks and all that.
Design coherence (something Ext is exceptionally good at) is
not a function of more resources, but rather of the right resources.

Think how many times M$ has bungled basic stuff . . .

And that junk about a restrictive license is just ignorant noise dude.

Folks who consider the GPL "restrictive" mean that it restricts them from
restricting others . . . a childish point of view, in that it is very self-centered.

If someone doesn't like the GPL, fine, but engaging in newspeak
makes them look stupid (or malignant).

--dan

[jay@moduscreate.com]

Think how M$ continues to bungle basic stuff . . .


fixed ;)

[Animal]

With respect to the guy (And his stuff obviously looks nice), it has a long way to go to reach Ext's level of integration. The only real widget I see is a DataView. There's an east/west split in the DataView example, but I don't know if that implies full cascading layout capabilities.

[mystix]

shhhh... don't give away too many details about Ext's architecture... Job's watching ~o)

[mystix]

now that i've finally managed to view the demos, i must say the thing loads pretty fast (on FF2.x).

SproutCore's look isn't one bit polished, but they've got potential to do much more. it'll be interesting to see what they can come up with in the weeks to come, considering how close it is to the nextgen 3g iphone's worldwide launch.

[edit]
at least it beats the pants off dojo. :>

[Lobos]

shhhh... don't give away too many details about Ext's architecture... Job's watching ~o)

lol

In regards to looks, we all know you just need to grab the UI design from m$ office ;)

[mystix]

lol

In regards to looks, we all know you just need to grab the UI design from m$ office ;)

or osx :>

[Lobos]

I have always wondered about this, like ext is obviously VERY similar to the design of microsoft office (the ui elements) - could this be thought of as copyright infringement? Has the ext lawyers looked into this? Would be pretty nasty if m$ sued everyone using the Ext gui...

?

[jay@moduscreate.com]

I have always wondered about this, like ext is obviously VERY similar to the design of microsoft office (the ui elements) - could this be thought of as copyright infringement? Has the ext lawyers looked into this? Would be pretty nasty if m$ sued everyone using the Ext gui...

?

Meh,

I don't see copyright infringement:
http://www.prof-uis.com/img/tour_img/Office2003.gif

Ext..
http://michaelsync.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/extjs.gif

[jay@moduscreate.com]

FYI: The UI elements that Microsoft uses are common UI Patterns that have been published.

[Lobos]

ah thats cool then, i didn't think of it like that...

[tim.sporcic]

Apple has been a thought-leader on using JavaScript for RIAs instead of going the plug-in route. They also have a lot of money. Apple was obviously shopping for a good JavaScript UI library. They could have picked DOJO or ExtJS, both of which are much more advanced than SproutCore.

So for conspiracy fans: did Apple approach Ext LLC, and if so, what kept them from choosing it?

Apple had to have done their homework, so they must know about ExtJS. I'm curious what stopped them from pursuing it. Apple could have bought out Ext LLC for a (to them) trivial amount of money and re-licensed the toolkit any way they wanted. What stopped them?

-Tim

[jay@moduscreate.com]

Eh, you serious? Why are they using prototype + scriptaculous in their store? They are used as 'plugins'.
from their home page http://apple.com.
http://tdg-i.com/img/screencasts/2008-06-18_1440.png

And regarding RIA's, 'thought-leaders' are certainly google and yahoo.

[jay@moduscreate.com]

For the record, I use a mac every day for major development but am no Apple Fanboy. I have disdain for them actually.

[Animal]

At a quick browse through their source repository, I can't help but have the impression that the design is just not as robust as Jack's plan for Ext 2+.

The inheritance plan of Ext 2, with the template method pattern is very powerful. The package plan of Ext 2 is logical.

Their core classes just don't seem as powerful and comprehensive as Ext's.

[JeffHowden]

And regarding RIA's, 'thought-leaders' are certainly google and yahoo.

I'd have thrown Adobe's name in before I mentioned google or yahoo.

[tim.sporcic]

I didn't mention Adobe, because I was trying to be specific to RIAs with JavaScript, not plug-ins (Flash). And I would agree with Google, but Yahoo's glory days as a thought-leader are in the past. At the current rate, Yahoo will not exist in a year.

And I absolutely agree with Animal -- ExtJS is leaps and bounds beyond SproutCore, which brings us back to the question of why didn't Apple pick ExtJS to be their main JavaScript library. It doubt is was due to ignorance ("we didn't know about it").

-Tim

[jay@moduscreate.com]

Jeff, I'm in the same boat as Tim. Flash does != javascript as you know ;). When customers ask what Ext's competetors are, I never include flex for that reason.

[JeffHowden]

I never said anything about flex or flash, did I? :p

Are you both so quick to forget about AIR? Additionally, I suppose neither of you have ever heard of an attempt in to the JS space by Adobe with something called Spry (which has been around a few years, but has never really gotten the traction of other libraries/frameworks)?

Anyway, I think AIR and it's contribution to the RIA space for JavaScript is *huge*, no make that *HUGE*.

[jay@moduscreate.com]

No. :P

I do think that flex, flash and even air are in their own leagues. Anything that requires a client download for that matter...

[scottpenrose]

Hi Guys. I have done a quick review of SproutCore. Tested out by creating a small example and I am going to put this here.

ExtJS

I think of ExtJS as a very good framework. It provides all the tools I need to build amazing interfaces. Those things I am often missing are often available by 3rd parties. From an interface perspective, Ext provides the low level widgets to build interfaces.

But I have a problems with Ext.


3rd Party libraries have to be downloaded from the forum. This is just awful ! You end up with out of date versions, or what would be in the old C programming terms - statically linked. Sure statically linked means nothing changes unexpectedly. But even managing just 3 or 4 add ons is hard. What if I wanted to manage 100 add ons. It would be easy to have an Ext library manager for 3rd party libraraies. Think CPAN for Ext.
Ext interfaces look like desktop applications. This is a plus, sometimes. Now nothing stopping you using even lower level interfaces to avoid these. This is both a plus and a minus. My feeling on this one is that mostly it is the demos, which everyone copies that look like this. Many instances of web sites (yes sites, not applications here) that integrate a component of Ext often have a very mismatched style where the component looks like Ext standard, while the rest of the site is more like a web site.
Documentation is very complete as reference material but very sparse for beginners. This is compensated greatly by the forum, but that is a very poor interface for finding information. Many people have tried to fix this with the community manual and other attempts, but they are not there yet.SproutCore

SproutCore is almost not comparable with Ext. Ext is far more complete, it is a complete full and large framework. The simple ability to add a new xtype and vtype to Ext for forms is such a powerful concept. SproutCore (in my limited time working with it) does not apporach this level.

However, in the one good demo - http://www.sproutcore.com/static/photos - we see represented a slicker, faster and easier to use interface than any of the Ext demos. This may be partialy my preference of clean, simpler interface (Mac vs Windows) - do one thing well. Now it is clear to me that the library is faster loading probably because it is much smaller than Ext, so as it grows that may change.

Could we do the same interface in Ext. Yes of course, and I am tempted to put it together as a basis of comparison. Would it be as easy - no way.

The curse of Ext is its flexability. A bonus for most of us, but not always.

Conclusion

I would not be switching any time soon between either. But I am interested in better Ext interfaces. I would like to keep the API but change the feel. Simplify the interfaces. Present more Widgets.

My Ext Goals


Far more demos. Where are the demos for animation. I animated a simple clouds behind a building the other day, that was hard to find the code to do, yet in the end it was 3 lines. What about an example of animating along a curve - common one for the libraries that do lots of animation. There are so many demos on Ext, but maybe they are not the right ones. We can create a demo server where people like myself and others can submit their Ext work to be hosted. Cool idea.
Synopsis - Very few of the classes have a good synopsis at the top. Some of them have it in the instance method, e.g. scroll down to public methods, open up the first one - even knowing to do that took me a while. The help is hierarchy by the classes, which is a good reference manual, but a bad user manual. The classes you mainly use (which are identified by icons) should be grouped together, not spread out where you have to know to look in form etc. And then every one should have a synopsis - a working bit of code that says - do this to try it. And a link to the Example.
A CPAN for Ext components. Bring it on. Another simple addition. Anyone can register and put code up on the forum, so why not let anyone register and put code up on a more convenient system.
A demo server - same as above.
Demonstrations matching the SproutCore demos. These should be fairly simple. The end results may be a new class to produce something similar.Sorry long rant. But I love Ext, but it is hard to get started in, has a license which causes me some pain (mild), definitely has documentation issue - but is worth fixing.

Scott

[jay@moduscreate.com]

'However, in the one good demo - http://www.sproutcore.com/static/photos - we see represented a slicker, faster and easier to use interface than any of the Ext demos. This may be partialy my preference of clean, simpler interface (Mac vs Windows) - do one thing well. Now it is clear to me that the library is faster loading probably because it is much smaller than Ext, so as it grows that may change.'



What are you talking about Faster? This thing is slow. I have a dual core 2.33 Ghz processor. http://tdg-i.com/img/screencasts/2008-07-09_2256.swf

That said, i'm a dedicate mac user and am very happy with the Ext UI.

Also, it's simple because there are very few components on the screen.

[mystix]

@scottpenrose,

re: (perceived? / actual?) doc issues, please feel free to contribute/rant in @animal's new thread ;)
"Example code in API docs. Your chance to contribute. (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40317)"

[scottpenrose]

@scottpenrose,

re: (perceived? / actual?) doc issues, please feel free to contribute/rant in @animal's new thread ;)
"Example code in API docs. Your chance to contribute. (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40317)"


Brilliant thanks. I have a couple, I will format them up and contribute them.

Re perceived vs actual - if someone perceives lack of documentation that = lack of documentation. That is kind of the whole point. But I will put my money where my mouth is and produce some :-)

Ta

Scott

[mystix]

Re perceived vs actual - if someone perceives lack of documentation that = lack of documentation. That is kind of the whole point.

well... i'll definitely have to disagree, but that's just me. :)


But I will put my money where my mouth is and produce some :-)

looking forward to it! ;)