Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI. • Hacker News Board

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#11

Post by slig » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 4:24 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #9

hello_moto wrote: post #7

Be aware that the paradigm of Vaadin (known as IT Mill Toolkit) is leaning toward server-side. GWT is 100% client-side (plus RPC). My guess is that Vaadin did a bit of UI rendering (prep-ing the HTML) on server-side then send it to client.

That was my impressin too. Are they trying to erase the boundary between the server and the client? If that's the case it's a terribly misguided thing to do...

Indeed. I'd love to use my Java knowledge to write pretty interfaces, but on the server side I'm better off using Python.

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#12

Post by michaelneale » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 6:17 AM UTC

DenisM wrote: post #9

hello_moto wrote: post #7

Be aware that the paradigm of Vaadin (known as IT Mill Toolkit) is leaning toward server-side. GWT is 100% client-side (plus RPC). My guess is that Vaadin did a bit of UI rendering (prep-ing the HTML) on server-side then send it to client.

That was my impressin too. Are they trying to erase the boundary between the server and the client? If that's the case it's a terribly misguided thing to do...

Yeah I am trying to find out. They are here at javaone - doing too much UI on the server side does seem like a real mistake for a tool like this. One of the nice things of things like this (and cappaccino) is that the server side becomes freed from worrying about what the client is doing/has open etc...

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#13

Post by huyng » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 6:20 AM UTC

slig wrote: post #11

DenisM wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my impressin too. Are they trying to erase the boundary between the server and the client? If that's the case it's a terribly misguided thing to do...

Indeed. I'd love to use my Java knowledge to write pretty interfaces, but on the server side I'm better off using Python.

Agreed, I definitely feel most comfortable with my Python on server-side, but the UI ability on this thing is beautiful. Too bad... I wish I was at JavaOne so I could ask these guys some questions regarding how easy it is to separate the two components.

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#14

Post by huyng » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 6:24 AM UTC

goodkarma wrote: post #10

Between this and GWT (and the Google Wave app they are going to open source), I'm getting pretty interested in Java and using tools like GWT to just generate all of the javascript etc. It almost sounds like it will be /easier/ than Ruby on Rails. Is that crazy?

No I don't think so ... I actually found this library as I was watching the GoogleIO Wave Keynote. When I saw what the wave team did with GWT, compiling Java => Javascript became a viable option in my mind. Before the demo, it had always been a mystery to me as to why anyone would want to use such an absurd amount of abstraction.

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#15

Post by janilaakso » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 7:04 AM UTC

Guys, please check out the server-side features too, Vaadin is not just client-side GWT on stereoids. Having server-side framework too means that building applications is easier than with plain GWT.

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#16

Post by cptobvious » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 7:19 AM UTC

huyng wrote: post #13

slig wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I'd love to use my Java knowledge to write pretty interfaces, but on the server side I'm better off using Python.

Agreed, I definitely feel most comfortable with my Python on server-side, but the UI ability on this thing is beautiful. Too bad... I wish I was at JavaOne so I could ask these guys some questions regarding how easy it is to separate the two components.

Vaadin keeps the application state on the server, but the presentation (HTML) is 100% generated on the client side. Changes in server-side state are serialized and sent to client in compact User Interface Definition Language (UIDL). This is obviously a more secure approach to writing web apps, since the state is safe on the server. So no pre-rendering of UI on the server..

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#17

Post by peppe » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 7:23 AM UTC

huyng wrote: post #13

slig wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I'd love to use my Java knowledge to write pretty interfaces, but on the server side I'm better off using Python.

Agreed, I definitely feel most comfortable with my Python on server-side, but the UI ability on this thing is beautiful. Too bad... I wish I was at JavaOne so I could ask these guys some questions regarding how easy it is to separate the two components.

Yeah. Every component has a server side and a client side. Client side has all the rendering stuff in it while the server side has the business logic. That way the functionality can't be hacked as the client side is just responsible of sending input to the server, where all the hard work is done.

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#18

Post by jonatan » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 7:26 AM UTC

hello_moto wrote: post #7

Be aware that the paradigm of Vaadin (known as IT Mill Toolkit) is leaning toward server-side. GWT is 100% client-side (plus RPC). My guess is that Vaadin did a bit of UI rendering (prep-ing the HTML) on server-side then send it to client.

Greetings from the company developing Vaadin :)

Yes, Vaadin is a server-side framework. Server-side is not for everyone, but there surely is a place for Vaadin. For example issues with trusting the code that's executed on the client are greatly relieved this way.

You could think of Vaadin as the Swing / SWT for web applications. Sitting in between JavaFX (plugin required) and Java Server Faces (html required). Vaadin is great for desktop-like applications in the webbrowser, but doesn't really fit the RESTful type of applications.

If you have questions, just visit our forums at http://vaadin.com/forum and ask away! There are plenty of experts waiting for challenging questions ;)

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#19

Post by jonatan » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 7:28 AM UTC

huyng wrote: post #13

slig wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I'd love to use my Java knowledge to write pretty interfaces, but on the server side I'm better off using Python.

Agreed, I definitely feel most comfortable with my Python on server-side, but the UI ability on this thing is beautiful. Too bad... I wish I was at JavaOne so I could ask these guys some questions regarding how easy it is to separate the two components.

You can ask all the questions on your mind on our forums (http://vaadin.com/forum/). You don't need to attend JavaOne to get the hard questions answered.

Re: Vaadin - GWT with a skinnable UI.

#20

Post by janilaakso » Wed, Jun 03, 2009, 8:31 AM UTC

bravura wrote: post #5

It looks good, but I don't see any demos that involve graphics. How usable is Vaadin for graphics?

You might try these demos:

Graphical editor and bunch of other graphical stuff: http://john.virtuallypreinstalled.com/ToolkitDraw

iTunes demo made with Vaadin http://demo.vaadin.com/VaadinTunesLayout/