i want my websit ui of flash or silverlight quality, but want it to work on any browser by default, i.e not asking for installing flash plugin. is it possible ? what technology should i look at ?
Well, it depends on what kind of "UI quality" you have in mind.
If you want something static, pure HTML will do the job.
If you want dynamic UI, HTML + Javascript is probably your best option right now (AJAX if you need to deal with the server without refreshing the whole page).
HTML 5 will also offer you more UI possibilities if you don't mind waiting for it.
However, some plugins features (like 3D acceleration) will be difficult to "emulate" even with HTML 5, so before choosing which technology is suitable for you, defines whats your real UI needs are (for now and futur development).
you could use javascript with a library such as jQuery to help. But there are things the both Flash and SilverLight can do that html+javascript just cannot do.
HTML5 is around the corner...Which to some extent can do a lot more...
Related
I'm really enjoying learning to use AngularJS. Now I'm looking for components I can use with it. I've been looking at Angular-UI components but I'd like to know if it's possible to use the nice, supercharged components in ExtJS. Does anyone have experience with this? Any hints or tips or Angular directive libraries?
The company I work for is making a similar move. We currently rely heavily on an older version (3.x) of ExtJS, and the effort to upgrade to the current (5.0) version is at least equal to the effort required to move to angular.
To answer the question (to the best of my limited knowledge):
They can exist together in the same JS application.
Can you use UI elements of ExtJs with Angular?
You can put angular in control of markup via HTML templates in Ext.
Is this a wise idea?
Probably not.
Why would I consider doing this?
I need absolute control over the markup and don't care about possible page load issues
I need to serialize or de-serialize in some special way that Ext doesn't innately provide
I need to do something special like pub/sub (still totally possible with Ext)
In our case, it is a proof of concept for a few modals. If I am biased, I am biased in the direction of ExtJs (which is a huge statement given my background). The more exposure I have to ExtJS, the more I personally like it. I've used several frameworks in the past like Ember, Backbone, KnockoutJs and AngularJs and they are excellent tools that are reaching a level of maturity that makes them excellent choices. That said, they don't follow the same development model/pattern that ExtJs does, and I don't think a direct compare is fair to either side.
It would be almost like comparing Ext to Node (silly, I know).
If your project requires some special functionality that you don't believe is possible in Ext, you are probably like me and have limited experience with it. If you have a lot of experience with Ext, and want to try what we are trying, I say go for it. The single downfall of Ext is the size of the built package that is delivered. Another small framework isn't going to help that, but it also isn't going to cause more pain.
In the end, for me, I just love JS and expanding my knowledge of how things work now and in the future.
For the post above asking about the lack of traction for Ext: the answer is simple... it's not free, and thus not an option for many of us who aren't writing commercial software that fits well with the license.
In our AngularJS app at work, we have integrated a 3rd party ExtJS app with it, not for its UI components though. We open certain popups of that app based on user input and when the user commits data in the popup, we respond to ExtJs events to refresh our app. AngularJS is flexible enough to integrate with any other Javascript code/libraries as long as the library has public events to respond to. I would recommend going through the Directive and scope documentation on how to effectively create directives and respond to scope events.
Personally I do not feel ExtJS and AngularJS would be needed together, unless you are forced to use it like me. There is http://angular-ui.github.io/ that brings in a lot to the table. Again any given JQuery plugin can be integrated using directives, filters etc in AngularJS. So you may want to investigate into that before trying to bother with ExtJS.
Why do you need AngularJS anyway if you have ExtJS? I agree learning Ext can be somewhat difficult though once you've bitten through it there is nothing better at the moment. The only disadvantage is the heavier footprint but who cares? It's not like it's causing any problems... We use nothing but ExtJS at work and the progress in our apps is amazing. It integrates seamlessly with Spring MVC. We don't need to hack in HTML directly which I consider more of an advantage than a disadvantage: no more writing tags, no more open/close tag issues, you can still use css and Ext handles any browser incompatibilities so what else do you need more?? Angular is just the new kid on the block but in total it can not (yet) compete with ExtJS. It doesn't even com close. Just my 2$.
Sencha is planning to add support in the framework. Please find the link at the bottom for reference:
At SenchaCon in Las Vegas on November 7-9 2016, Sencha will be introducing the ability to use Ext JS components, layouts, and themes within an Angular 2 application, which we are currently calling the Ext JS Bridge to Angular 2 (also known as ‘The Bridge’).
https://www.sencha.com/blog/first-look-ext-js-bridge-to-angular-2/
Don't get me wrong, I like iGoogle and use it.
But for intranet site, why anyone would use iGoogle or Apache-Shindig which is foss implementation of iGoogle platform.
OK, boss likes look of iGoogle widgets/gadgets and fact that he can drag them around the page. But you can do this with say ExtJS library.
So are there any benefits of iGoogle platform in case you would use only for yourself and your own gadgets. I see only complicatins and unneccesary stuff if I compere iGoogle(apache-shindig) with extJs, which also provides somekind of draggable widgets.
Best regards
extJs is a javascript library for creating a UI. I assume the iGoogle and Shindig platforms are actual web server based applications (that happen to have a UI similar to what you could built with extJS)
After some googling I think a portlets are what I need.
If I understand corectly portlets are Java specific but you can do same thing in other languages and frameworks.
I see a lot of talk how HTML5 video tag will kill Flash. But while video is the most widely used part of Flash/SL, it's only a small part of their technical abilities. For instance you can write a game using full 3D graphics and socket connections in Flex, and serious business applications, etc.
Is the thinking that Javascript will kill those parts of Flash/Flex/SL? Because while that seems feasible now for even quite rich web-apps, what about any kind of high-performance app like real-time graphics?
You can do some pretty cool things with HTML5, Canvas and the like. Check out the Google-hosted http://www.chromeexperiments.com/ (which, really should be named HTML5 experiments, as most run fine on HTML5 browsers). You can get an idea of what is possible, including 3D rendering, complex games and some pretty amazing animations.
(source: chromeexperiments.com)
Sketchpad by Michael Deal
basically, this question has been around already.
The answer in short: no, HTML5 will not replace anything. HTML5 will however offer a standard for features currently only available through plugins. Once HTML5 is released, which is scheduled for 2022, it will be a great thing. Still, even by then, if IE survives, I doubt it's support will be outstanding.
There has been a very similar question to which I provided a rather lengthy but detailed answer: should web developers learn flash
My personal opinion about anyone who thinks HTML5 will replace 3rd party plugins is, that they lack basic understanding of HTML5's role or sufficient knowledge about any plugin and have little if any grasp of how the web evolves.
Yes, the day HTML5 is sufficiently spread for large companies to rely on it, many of them will be able to replace 3rd party plugins within their web applications. However, as pointed out in my other post, the web is constantly evolving. HTML5 does not provide new features, that weren't available using plugins. And HTML5 does not provide all features currently available using plugins. New types of apps, services and content distribution mechanisms will arise. Also, as long as JavaScript stays fully dynamic, JS runtimes will never be able to provide the same speed as runtimes designed to run bytecode generated from statically typed languages.
Personally, for the client side, I basically only target the Flash Player, because to me it is the most convenient platform. I am not afraid that HTML5 might kill flash, for a simple reason:
Until HTML5 is really usable and largely supported through sufficient user adaptation, it will take several years. In the same time, all major plugins will continue to evolve, as well as their eco-system, including developement tools, cross-compilers and compatibility layers.
Today, you already need no knowledge of HTML, CSS and sometimes even JavaScript to create webapps, using GWT, qooxdoo or other tools.
HTML+CSS+JS represents nothing more than a platform that more and more languages are able to target. Using reasonable amounts of abstraction, one will sooner or later be able to develop apps in a totally platform agnostic manner, causing virtually no overhead for the lion's share of all apps: GUI (including localization, validation etc.) and application logics.
In the end, there's no reason to get excited. Currently, both Flash and Silverlight exceed HTML+JavaScript implementations in speed and features exposed through the available API. That is, why people use it. Altough unlikely, some day they may become obsolete. In this bright, bright future, far, far away, I will be happy to compile my sources to run in a JavaScript interpreter rather than on AVM2.
On a vaguely related note: check out Haxe.
There are many high-performance apps with real-time data streaming and graphics in production today that have been built with Flex. You can see some examples of these in the flex.org showcase. As always, deciding on a technology comes down to what is being built, who it's being built for, and who is building it. Flash, Flex, Silverlight, HTML5, etc will all coexist.
The discussions I've been part of on this subject, pretty much always seem to come to the conclusion that, while the HTML 5 standard will be a a great thing, once it's in place. It will by definition be a standard, standards take a long time to change, therefore innovation will be driven largely by plugins like Flash and SL.
And yes you can do a lot of what Flash and SL can do with Javascript, however Flash/Flex has the strong point of being used for desktop installed Air applications, and Silverlight has the similar thing with their "Out Of Browser" functionality. These are things where they clearly have the upper hand over Javascript.
At the end of the day it's not a matter of who will kill who, but rather which tool is the right one for the job and what skills does you / your development team have.
That's my 2c anyway...
Did Flex replace HTML forms? Have HTML forms killed Flex? Has C++ replaced C? Has Ruby or Lua or Python killed Haskell or Scheme or assembly?
Seriously, what is the obsession lately over whether HTML5 will kill plugins? Is it so hard to imagine people using Flash for content that needs to stand out and maximize expressiveness, and using HTML5 for content that needs to utilize standard metaphors and maximize accessibility?
In other words, no - the thinking among thinking people is not that the HTML5 stack will kill Flash/Flex/SL. If things work as they should, the plugins will keep innovating what you can do with proprietary techniques, and HTML will keep taking the most successful of those innovations and standardizing them. And if things don't work well - if a plugin fails to innovate, or a new version of HTML is done badly, then they'll fade into obscurity as developers stick with whatever solves their problems.
I think it depends on the authoring tools and the efficiency of the browsers. It is reported that the upcoming Flash CS5 export content directly as a HTML5 canvas. So the canvas can be a quite reasonable flash substitution.
For "high-performance app like real-time graphics", see WebGL. Mozilla and WebKit already have experimental support for WebGL, which is based on the <canvas> element.
For sockets, there are WebSockets, which are also experimental in some browsers.
For background processing, which can improve the user experience, there are web workers (experimental again).
A lot of experimental stuff, but they are improving them constantly, so at some point, even without an HTML5 standard defining them, we might see games specifically targeted for a certain browser (actually, there is some proof of concept but I can't find the link right now).
I think JS already has killed Flash/SL/JavaFX. JS is the most used language on the web, so just add a few features, enhance some tidbits and voila. Flash is alive because of videos and games, no serious website uses Flash nor any other RIA. Just wait, it's going to be a hell of a ride the next few years.
I know virtually nothing about Silverlight. I'm considering creating a browser based app and really don't know if it should be built using Silverlight or ASP.NET (which I am familiar with). I'm curious as to the reasons why a developer chooses to use Silverlight.
Thanks very much.
ASP.NET and Silverlight aren't comparable.
Silverlight is a client-side framework, comparable (perhaps) only to Adobe's Flash while ASP.NET is a server-side framework.
You use those in conjuction, not one instead of the other and they're not connected in any way.
There are a few reasons you may want to consider using Silverlight:
You have a need for great looking and
interactive web applications (that
are not Ajax, jQuery, etc.).
You want to utilize your current
programming language (VB.NET, C#,
etc) skills.
You want your "web app" to be
available out-of-the browser.
There are other reasons - have a read: Top 10 Reasons to Use Silverlight. There can be a signifcant ramp you would need to make, but once made, you may prefer SL for certain things over ASP.NET and even in some cases, not really have option available to you in ASP.NET, like, for example, perspective transforms of images that can be animated from user interactively.
If you are building something that requires lots of UI interaction, and is reasonably non-static with its presentation then i would suggest Silverlight.
If you are doing (relatively) simple UI (i.e. tabular based presentation of data like clients and orders) with not too much UI trickery then i would suggest that you stick with ASP.NET.
Having done both, i find that Silverlight kicks butt when it comes to doing complex UI stuff, or you need to eliminate callbacks and postbacks to the server.
Reuse .NET code and skill on the client browser.
Achieve high performance.
Use Silverlight if you want a flash type site without using Flash. If you want to use the .NET stack Silverlight is the way to go to do what flash can do.
Silverlight was originally known as WPF/E. It is a light version of Windows Presentation Foundation, designed for the web and embedded devices.
But yes, you can think of it as Microsoft Flash.
You could also try using web standards also, sprinkled with some Jquery and Ajax, with maybe Modernizr to use html5. What do you need to do with this exactly?
Because it's the only option for third party software development on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform. (OK, also XNA, but that's for games)
Oh, and they also use it on the Web for some reason.
Ext JS is a nice framework for web UI, but I found that building and putting stuff together takes a long time and painfully slow.
This might be a general problem when working with JavaScript, but does anybody have any way to speed things up?
What can I use? Better IDE with good JavaScript suppport? GUI designers? Code generators?
I need some way to speed up common things like building grids and forms but yet let me do complex things like creating custom components easily.
I'm using ASP.NET MVC. Coolite seems nice at first, but I feel that I'll be having trouble when creating any custom components later on.
There's always Ext GWT, which lets you use Eclipse tooling (and all of the advantages that gives you, such as refactoring, swift code navigation, etc.) to create your Ext/JavaScript app.
When you download the ExtJs library, you find lot of sample applications for common requirements like Grid panel, forms, form elements etc.
Regarding IDEs, you dont find mature productive tools, but check the below link and wish it could be of help to you
http://www.extjs.com/blog/2008/02/01/ides-plugins-and-tools-for-ext-js-20/
But if you really wish to develop custom components, you need to get through knowledge,start approaching with ExtJs-provided sample apps.
If you want to get faster at anything, practice it until you fully understand how it works and how to make it do what you want. If you are just starting out, why would expect to be able to work as quickly as you do when you are working on something that you are very familiar with?
Things I use to make ExtJS less painful
Chrome, for it's developer tools, or Firefox with Firebug.
snipMate: snippets for Vim, so I can quickly produce boiler plate code for classes.
JSLint as a command line tool. Especially good for detecting rogue commas.
Sencha forums.
ExtJS IRC chat (Server: irc.freenode.net Room: #extjs).
API documentation.
Sencha and Saki's ExtJS examples.
Beer.
ExtJS is building a designer right know so you can look forward it, the only problem I think is not gonna be free.
you can see a video demo there, in term of release date I think this is due to the first quarter of this year.
I say learn the framework. But to develop apps, I use IntelliJ IDEA, which has partial code completion, etc. It costs money though.
Once you have some practice and understanding of how ExtJS works, you'll get faster at it. By using the examples for reference, and building up my application in small pieces, I've gotten much better (and faster) at developing stuff with ExtJS. A great way to get started is to find an example (or two) that kind of do what you need, and modify (or combine) them to see how they work together.