Kendo UI - a framework for modern HTML UI • Hacker News Board

Re: Kendo UI - a framework for modern HTML UI

#91

Post by rch » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 12:41 PM UTC

AndyNemmity wrote: post #71

goodside wrote: post #25

Note: You cannnot use this library on your web site . The licensing agreement forbids you from redistributing the library, whether or not it's minified. It further states, "You are not allowed to integrate the Software into end products or use it for any commercial or productive purpose." So private deployment is out too. It's strictly for your own evaluation and amusement. http://www.kendoui.com/download/licenseagre…

Is there something like this that is usable? What would be a reasonable competitor to this?

extjs is pretty far along - I am using it extensively, but my interest in this article stems from a constant search for credible alternatives.

The first thing I look for is a lazy-loading tree grid control (i.e. child nodes fetched on demand, reliably limited to visible row counts).

Re: Kendo UI - a framework for modern HTML UI

#92

Post by ootachi » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 2:42 PM UTC

nadam wrote: post #45

WayneDB wrote: post #14

I apologize in advance if this opinion offends anyone, but every HTML UI kit that I've seen simply can't hold a candle to native kits such as WinForms, WPF or even Cocoa. I would really love a write-once browser based solution, but I just can't see that type of solution ever catching up to native tech. How long do we have to wait before the browser can catch up? Do you think it will ever happen? The closest thing tha…

I am working on a UI lib which is written in Javascript and completely painted on HTML5 canvas. I know, crazy idea... I got rid of the incompatibilities of the browsers, I got rid of DOM: I defined my own event system, component graph, etc... This will be someting like a traditional desktop component based UI, just in javascript, in the browser. Styling will be far more advanced than CSS: you can even inject a custom…

In my experience it's going to be very hard to make moving elements around performant, unless you're using multiple canvases (which is basically just using the DOM) or you use WebGL. How are you going to solve this problem?

Re: Kendo UI - a framework for modern HTML UI

#93

Post by Me1000 » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 3:20 PM UTC

toni wrote: post #82

pbreit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that Silverlight is a download, I would not place it in this category. Someone mentioned Sencha already. The other strong offering is Cappuccino.

280 Atlas[1] is another option. [1] http://280atlas.com/

Atlas is no longer pinko ally available, and on top of that... It is Cappuccino.

Re: Kendo UI - a framework for modern HTML UI

#94

Post by nadam » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 3:37 PM UTC

ootachi wrote: post #92

nadam wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am working on a UI lib which is written in Javascript and completely painted on HTML5 canvas. I know, crazy idea... I got rid of the incompatibilities of the browsers, I got rid of DOM: I defined my own event system, component graph, etc... This will be someting like a traditional desktop component based UI, just in javascript, in the browser. Styling will be far more advanced than CSS: you can even inject a custom…

In my experience it's going to be very hard to make moving elements around performant, unless you're using multiple canvases (which is basically just using the DOM) or you use WebGL. How are you going to solve this problem?

My main loop is something like this:

10 STYLING

20 LAYOUT

30 PAINTING

40 GOTO 10

At styling and layout I use dirty flag managment, so that branches of the component tree is restyled or layed out only if needed. This kind of dirty-management makes stuff a bit more complicated than otherwise, but this is a tradeoff. At painting I did not implement caching (painting to a memory buffer) and dirty flag management yet, but here I will also do optimizations in the future. This is a bit tricky, as painted components can have alpha/trasparency.

The most serious bottleneck will be probably painting (everything else can be addressed with algorithmic optimizations). At the beginning of the project I've looked at canvas painting benchmarks, and I decided canvas performance is already quite good. The slowest is drawing texts, but even that is not that terribly slow. I expect that canvas performance will improve in the browsers in the future so time works for me. Currently my samples' performance feels acceptable, although I did not do serious performance tests yet (and as I mentioned I did not implement the most agressive optimizations regarding painting yet.)

TL;DR: Making this fast is quite challenging, but not undoable I think.

Re: Kendo UI - a framework for modern HTML UI

#95

Post by kls » Tue, Sep 13, 2011, 10:58 PM UTC

fbnt wrote: post #78

kls wrote: post #49

The question I am asking myself right now is how did this project make it to the top slot of HN. It seems to be a re-hash of some standard frameworks, some bad documentation, some buggy widgets and be backed by a largish vendor. I hate to say it, but it reeks of a voting ring.

Hey, don't shoot the messenger! I am no related whatsoever with Kendo UI, I read about it on twitter and thought to submit it here to see what you guys think of it. I'm pretty sure there's no voting rings involved. -the OP.

It just seemed kind of strange to me to have a pretty uneventful project hit the top slot. I appreciate your reply and it probably just generated a lot of conversation it just seemed unusual for HN.