UI Frameworks saves a lot of time. Cooked UI patterns and libraries simplify the User Interface design process to an extent that the UI designer will little knowledge of coding can create a working prototype, which is readily embeddable to the back-end code. I was evaluating some Web UI frameworks and other stuffs. My search was not restricted to Frameworks alone. I included Javascript based widget/controllers too. Scriptaculous is one such critically acclaimed library which is used in vtiger CRM 5. As of now, scriptaculous was not used to its fullest potential . Gradually we will utilize the library to its fullest potential.
I looked upon Yahoo UI Toolkit which has excellent and standards based UI design patterns and controls. Yahoo’s slider control is better than scriptaculous (compared their online demos). Yahoo UI kit is cool and has very good documentation to support integration and development.
Next came the TIBCO’s General Interface 3.2 Professional Edition. TIBCO’s pack is offered in two licenses. One is a BSD style OS license and another is a paid-license for support. One of TIBCO GI’s online demo, when invoked reported that it requiers IE 6 or above. (I used Firefox 2). Anyway I didn’t go through much inside the pages. Will give a shot later.
Third on my list was Jitsu – another free OS UI toolkit for web. Their licensing model says it follows the similar pattern of MONO license model. Anyway.. here is a copy-paste from their page.
“Free as in…
- The Jitsu Runtime is licensed under the MIT License (also known as the X11 License). This is a permissive license, allowing you use of the Jitsu Runtime in commercial software.
- The Jitsu Compiler (needed only to build Jitsu applications) is licensed under the GNU General Public License. This is a “copyleft” license that promotes open source contributions to the compiler technology.”
Jitsu is more focused on data handling in client side,rather than animation or special fx. They have good array of sortable lists, tables, tabs etc.. Jitsu sounds promising.
And last but not least… QooxDoo (pronounced “cooks do”) a brilliant library. I haven’t checked the library fully yet. But from the quick demo links.. I am amazed! Next to Yahoo Ui kit. Demo link is here
Will update more .. when I get some more time.
