Having More Fun with AJAX
Today I spent quite a bit of time putting together a new page in my web app. I had a model to work off of, but there were enough new things I needed to work in that I got to stretch a little artistic muscle - thankfully, I didn't pull anything. But it got me thinking how much I'd like to have a layout editor that is sort of like the WebKit Inspector panel - in reverse.
I spent the majority of the time messing with the HTML to get the layout looking the way I wanted. I had to make it look nice in FireFox and WebKit (Google Chrome), which wasn't horrible, but it did take a lot more time than glueing it all together with JavaScript and the servlet backend. So it's got me to thinking a few thoughts.
First, I'm very interested in hitting Coda again and seeing how they handle the CSS. That could make it a lot faster right there. There's no way to do web design on multiple platforms without CSS. I can't imagine it. So... faster CSS means faster development. I'd like to hit Coda harder and see how it handles more complex pages.
Second, I'm interested in the idea that there might be a more accurate preview system. Maybe this is Coda, I'm not exactly sure, but I'm thinking that spending 15 sec. editing JavaScript followed by a minute of redeploying it, refreshing the web browser, checking it, going to the other box, repeating the process, all adds up. If the preview was more like the Interface Builder preview, then I'd know it was wired up and working exactly as I expected.
Third, I can see the great value in the JavaScript Frameworks like DoJo, etc. and now the buzz coming out about Apple's private framework for making iPhone web apps. These all make things nicer, but I'm looking for one to emerge as the standard - at least for the Mac community. There's too much to handle on a low-level to be doing this all over from scratch each time. Cross-browser compatibility among the biggies here. I just haven't taken the plunge - yet.
I guess that's about it for today. It's been a lot of fun because in general, once you get the HTML hammered out (the view), the controller (JavaScript) and model (servlets) are not too bad. Not a bad way to develop an app, really.