SproutCore?

[Colin Clark]

Hi Michael,

SproutCore is definitely on my radar, but I haven't yet found the time  
to look closely at it. Every time I try to check out their reference  
documentation, the site is pretty sluggish. Hopefully they'll recover  
from the Slashdot effect soon enough.

As a long time Cocoa and WebObjects programmer (since the OPENSTEP  
days), aspects of SproutCore's design are appealingly familiar to me.  
In terms of interoperability, Fluid's component-based approach is  
pretty flexible. Our stuff should generally cooperate well with nearly  
any JavaScript toolkit out there.

I don't particularly agree with the comments from SproutCore's creator  
about most JavaScript toolkits being limited to "static pages with a  
widget here and there." He may, however, be getting at a more  
interesting point about some gaps in the way a lot of JavaScript is  
currently written. There's certainly room for more appication or  
binding infrastructure on the client-side. I imagine the ideal is a  
structure that takes into account the fact that the application is  
actually a product of careful blending of client and server-side  
concerns. I'll suspend judgement on SproutCore's particular approach  
until I've had some time to learn more about it.

Colin

On 17-Jun-08, at 9:48 AM, Michael Feldstein wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> I just ran across SproutCore (http://www.sproutcore.com/), Apple's  
> Open Source AJAX framework, released under the MIT license. From the  
> web site:
> SproutCore is for applications that want to adopt this new “thick”  
> client model for building apps on the web.  If you are creating  
> static pages with a widget here and there, then SproutCore is  
> probably too much for you and another framework such as YUI, Dojo,  
> or Mootools will do the trick.
>
> If you have built desktop applications in the past and you would  
> like to bring that same experience to the web, however, then you  
> will feel right at home with SproutCore.
>
> If you are building web applications today and you are finding the  
> constant pressure to deliver more “app-like” features is not only  
> difficult but less fun to write, then SproutCore can help you find  
> your joy again.
> Just curious: Is this something that the Fluid team has looked at?  
> Any thoughts about where it fits in (if at all) to your agenda?

---
Colin Clark
Technical Lead, Fluid Project
Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
http://fluidproject.org