Apple's SproutCore, OSS Javascript-Based Web Apps

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "AppleInsider is running an article about Apple's new SproutCore Web application development framework, utilizing Javascript and some nifty HTML 5 to offer a 'Cocoa-inspired' way to create powerful Web applications. Apple built on the OSS SproutIt framework developed for an online e-mail manager called 'Mailroom.' Apple used this framework to build their new Web application suite (replacing .Mac) called MobileMe. Since SproutCore applications rely on JavaScript, it seems Apple had good reason to focus on Squirrelfish for faster JavaScript interpretation in Webkit. Apple hosted a session last Friday at WWDC introducing SproutCore to developers, but obviously NDAs prevent developers from revealing the details of that presentation. Apple has a chance here to keep the Web becoming even more proprietary as Silverlight and Flash battle it out to lock the Web application market into one proprietary format or another. Either way, this is a potential alternative, which should make the OSS crowd happy." TechDIrt's writeup on the browser evolving towards acting as an OS expands on the theme AppleInsider raises.

Comments

Another good article on this...

[Nicky G]

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/14/cocoa-for-windows-flash-killer-sproutcore/ This is from Roughly Drafted.

Shouldn't that be...

[Anonymous Coward]

"keep the Web from becoming even more proprietary"?

Re:Shouldn't that be...

[FF0000 Phoenix]

No, it's intentional. Think of it as a Rorschach test for your opinion on Apple. Putting in “from” means pro-Apple. Putting in “from not” is the opposite. As it is, I think we all know which category you fall in. No wonder you posted anonymously.

But what will the code look like?

[Denger256]

That's my question. I have seen too many apps that "help" you create websites but the code it generates is a mess. And if you want to integrate it with another app forget it.
For example where I work we were building a B2C app and instead of wasting coder time building the bla bla stuff around the real working site. They used go live and in the end we had to re-do it all.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[riceboy50]

I think you are misunderstanding the purpose of this. It's not an application that generates code for you. It's an application framework, like Cocoa is for the native OSX environment, which provides simple abstracted access to do certain tasks via APIs. This just allows application developers to spend less time worrying about "under the hood" code to make things cross-browser compatible and so forth.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[ahankinson]

SproutCore doesn't write the code for you. It simply abstracts the low-level stuff (like calling XHttpRequest directly) to a higher level so you can just call: drag_and_drop(Object) and it will do all the backend stuff for you.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[virgil_disgr4ce]

I'm pretty surprised no one has mentioned ExtJS, another VERY full-featured JS interface library. SproutCore is super young in comparison, it looks like, but it will be interesting to see how it advances. ExtJS has kind of a clinical look to it, and customizing the widgets looks like a pain, but the framework is definitely robust.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[IntlHarvester]

Actually it seems to generate all the HTML (not sure if that's what the grandparent meant by 'code'), including re-implementing standard browser widgets.

Just taking a glace at it, I agree that it would be difficult to integrate sproutcore with an exisitng web app, its really an entirely different approach.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm pretty surprised no one has mentioned ExtJS, another VERY full-featured JS interface library. SproutCore is super young in comparison, it looks like, but it will be interesting to see how it advances"

Looking at WebKit vs Mozilla, NeXTStEp vs Be, and, to a lesser extent, iPod vs the rest, for comparison, my money would be on SproutCore, no matter how far, if anything (I haven't looked at either framework), behind it is now. The two things Apple has been good at for the past few years are focus and looking through what things are at what they could become if that focus were directed at it.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty surprised no one has mentioned ExtJS, another VERY full-featured JS interface library. SproutCore is super young in comparison, it looks like, but it will be interesting to see how it advances. ExtJS has kind of a clinical look to it, and customizing the widgets looks like a pain, but the framework is definitely robust. Maybe the superyoungness is a perk, like khtml back when Apple adopted that - Apple wouldn't have to contend with layers of shit that has been built up from the day it was conceived. Young projects may require alot of work to get up to speed, but that work is considerably easier than trying to repair a monumentally broken implementation.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty surprised no one has mentioned ExtJS, another VERY full-featured JS interface library.

ExtJS is a ticking timebomb as far as the license goes. They keep playing games with the license. Until recently, they were "distributing under the terms of the LGPL", but when somebody tried forking, they were told they couldn't and that it wasn't LGPLed after all. The ExtJS team don't like open-source because people use it without paying them. When you use ExtJS, you don't know what weird license ideas they are going to get in their head next. It's a risk most people don't want to take, especially when you can get similar features elsewhere.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[JakeD409]

Similarly, The Dojo Toolkit is a very strong JS library/toolkit/framework/whatever. I'm interning at WebEx, and I've been doing almost all my work with it. It's been a joy to use, especially for someone like me who has otherwise struggled with more complicated JavaScript.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm ya, just like ext, dojo, prototype, yui, except suckier!

Re:But what will the code look like?

[Denger256]

You could be right and I did misunderstand In my experience as a web app developer this type of framework is not just as set of APIs but in fact a set of abstract classes that inevitably require some code generation to do what you want it to do. Granted I am not a Mac person and have not used Cocoa so it very possible that I missed the mark but I just wanted to explain where I was coming from.

Re:But what will the code look like?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, the SproutCore FAQ plugs Dojo:

Why should I use SproutCore instead of another framework?

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.

Re:There are many areas where Apple matters

[SanityInAnarchy]

I think the iPhone would disagree there. Pretty much as long as Apple refuses to put Flash on the iPhone, anything iPhone-friendly will have to be some flavor of HTML. The fact that it would also work well on Linux is a bonus.

Re:There are many areas where Apple matters

[samkass]

I think "retard" is a little strong. Obviously you're not in MobileMe's target market, but there is an integration between Apple's products that makes things easier for those "retards" who don't mind paying money for having things handed to them instead of spending time digging around the internet like you (and I) do.

And any time someone brings something new and interesting to the web, especially something they're willing to open source, it's a positive thing.

Roughly Drafted==Spam

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Uh-oh,

You've linked to Roughly Drafted - the site that was caught trying to spam digg.

Roughly Drafted is poorly written & not credible. Please don't link to it - as the unofficial apple weblog puts it:

Posts like this that use underhanded techniques and shoddy math to prove a biased point aren't helping the Mac community. In fact, they're making it look even worse because, once found out, they are (rightfully) transformed into key evidence for clueless Apple fanaticism, which can easily harm the reputation of almost anyone with something genuinely educated and relevant to say about Apple or their products, whether it's a good or *gasp* unpleasant statement.

If you're an Apple fan - don't link to RD; that website actually hurts, rather than helps Apple.

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

TUAW is poorly written & not credible. Please don't link to it - as anyone with any sort of brain will verify.

If you're an Apple fan - don't link to TUAW; that website actually hurts, rather than helps Apple.

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[Nicky G]

Sorry, I don't keep up with the minute-by-minute Mac fanboy vs. Windows fanboy battles on the Intertron -- just linking to a relevant article on the subject at hand. I actually don't use Digg, so I have no idea about the history there. Some of Daniel's articles come off as a bit skewed, sure, but it's his blog and he's entitled to his opinion. Plus, is trying to get a few people to email Digg and Apple, which your linked blog article claims, the same as "spamming" it? Give me a break.

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[Gewalt]

Wait a minute... Did you just post on a blog that some other blog doesn't like its competitor blog and that somehow this other blog is supposed to be able to decide which blogs are harmful to me? ...whiney fanboy indeed...

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[0xdeadbeef]

There is credible evidence that he created over sixty accounts to promote his blog.

And really, Windows fanboys? Didn't anyone ever tell you that professing a belief in such things is an Apple zealot shibboleth?

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[Admiral Ag]

Rubbish.

Roughly Drafted is one of the better Apple blogs out there. I don't agree with everything the guy says, but it is original and interesting, unlike most Apple blogs, which are just rehashes of press releases (sadly much like the rest of the news).

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I wish RD articles were at least formatted better, and were less verbose as well.

RD articles seem to have several links to other articles inserted into the article that have the format appearance of being a section header, which gets quite confusing. Generally, those links don't seem to have any to do with the context of the article or section of the article in question either, it really breaks up the mental flow of reading an article in a jarring way.

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

RD is full of technobabble and truthiness designed to wow the one button types. Occasionally there's an interesting point about marketing or strategy, but good luck finding it in all bullshit.

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[tm2b]

I would agree, except that the SproutIt official blog names it as the blogger's favorite article on the topic.

Re:Roughly Drafted==Spam

[Angostura]

In this case, the Roughly Drafted article is well written and appears credible , so that rather looks like an ad bloginem attack.

correction

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get "some" services which are "similar" to .mac for free.

But not all of them and not in the same way.

There are a number of nuances that can not be completely replicated by the free alternatives and they certainly will not be as tightly integrated into the OS and into 3rd party apps that run on the OS.

Sorry, but you're dismissing some things you don't know everything about.

And calling people retards certainly does not help your case.

looks sweet

[Anonymous Coward]

MIT license, doesn't look like ass, fast, well designed... score: SproutCore 4, EXT: 0. If I wasn't going to be dick-deep in teen pussy tonight, I'd be all over this shit right now.

Re:looks sweet

[mrsteveman1]

When you say teen pussy, is that in dog years?

proprietary

[bcrowell]

Apple has a chance here to keep the Web becoming even more proprietary as Silverlight and Flash battle it out to lock the Web application market into one proprietary format or another.

It's not true that Flash is completely proprietary. There are multiple open-source compilers, and there's an open-source browser plugin. You do have to work hard to develop in flash using an OSS software stack, but there are people doing it. Gnash, the open-source browser plugin, has gotten to the point where it can play you-tube videos, provided you have the right hardware and sacrifice an unblemished calf. Adobe has also been slowly moving in the right direction as far as open-sourcing some of their code, and relaxing some of the more onerous licensing restrictions. A lot of the problems with making flash more open are actually problems with codecs, and that situation is also showing signs of improving, with support for less patent-encumbered codecs being added to newer versions of flash.

Re:proprietary

[mrsteveman1]

Yea but, whats the point?

If things can be accomplished with COMPLETELY open and free (as in freedom) frameworks and languages, why choose Flash?

Re:proprietary

[appleguru]

You're missing the point... flash and silverlight require plugins to work in a web browser. Not only is this an extra install for the end user, it also means not all platforms and browsers will be supported (A great example being no flash/silverlight on the iPhone...) The nice thing about "SproutCore" is that is 100% based on web standards (HTML, XML, JavaScript, etc) and will work on any platform and in any browser that follows those standards out of the box, no plugins needed!

Re:proprietary

[erikina]

I look at Flash opening its specifications as an act of desperation by Adobe to save it from Silverlight. And I've tried Gnash, and to call it usable is a joke. I experienced a total of 1 or 2 websites that it actually worked with. Swfdec was a little better. And the youtube "working" (does it even seek yet?) is not some natural consequence of a decent flash player, but the result of specifically targeting it - and is highly unrepresentative of the rest of the web.

These days, I try not use flash (got flashblock) but for the times I need it, the official Adobe is installed. Perhaps when Silverlight gets released for linux, and developers start using it - Adobe will lift its game a bit.

Re:proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

Changing a few of the terms in your argument, the same could be said of Windows: there are a number of open-source compilers, you have to work hard to develop on it using OSS tools (though there are people doing it), it's gotten to the point where you can port OSS applications without too much agony and it can be said that Microsoft has been slowly moving in the direction as far as open-sourcing some of their code- albeit at a speed that makes a glacier look supersonic and mostly at the behest of a court.

However, "A lot of the problems with making flash more open are actually problems with codecs, and that situation is also showing signs of improving, with support for less patent-encumbered codecs being added to newer versions of flash" you can do direct substitution of 'Windows' for 'flash' and still get the full effect.

Still think Flash isn't all that proprietary? Try selling a competing editor or changing the spec.

Re:proprietary

[josath]

I definitely agree...but some things just can't be done in javascript. If you need more performance, video/audio, real tcp/ip socket connections (not that crazy 'comet' hack, or wasteful polling), zlib compression, even if you want to rotate an image to an arbitrary degree on the client with antialiasing, then you need flash. Java applets take too long to load, even though the runtime performance is usually better than flash. Flash has the advantage over Silverlight of install base. SVG has limited browser support & limited features compared to Flash.

Unfortunately there's really no other choice if you want to build certain types of (buzzword alert!) "Rich Media Applications".

More on-topic: This ScriptCore looks like Yet Another Javascript Framework (YAJF?). Some choices seem particularly odd, such as choosing to reimplement buttons through javascript code instead of using native browser widgets. And they say it's iPhone-compatible, but oddly one of their demo pages caused my Java VM plugin to start up! I'm not sure what it's being used for though.

Re:proprietary

[Dak RIT]

SproutCore is pretty impressive for building real JS web applications, although the story doesn't real end there.

There's a convergence of other improvements, such as HTML5, CSS, and SVG, that are filling a lot of the multimedia roles previously the domain of flash.

For example, WebKit already supports CSS transforms, gradients, client-side database storage, animation, HTML5 media, downloadable fonts, masks, reflections, etc.

A lot of these things are only available in WebKit right now, although they've all been proposed or will be proposed as web standards in the near future, and provide a nice glimpse at where the web is heading. Web 3.0 (or whatever marketing term people come up with) is clearly though going to be focused on multimedia.

Re:proprietary

[bcrowell]

Not only is this an extra install for the end user, it also means not all platforms and browsers will be supported (A great example being no flash/silverlight on the iPhone...)

I'm with you all the way as far as preferring standards over proprietary stuff. However, the iPhone seems like a bad example to me. It's a proprietary platform, controlled by Apple. It's also a machine with a very low-powered CPU compared to the typical desktop system, so flash probably wouldn't be viable on it even if Apple wanted it to be.

Re:proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

The part of the article you quoted actually makes no sense. Apple has a chance to keep the Web becoming more proprietary by releasing OSS framework? I think the submitter means

Apple has a chance here to keep the Web from becoming even more proprietary as Silverlight and Flash battle it out to lock the Web application market into one proprietary format or another.

Re:proprietary

[ahankinson]

It's a proprietary platform, but its web browser isn't. Safari (or WebKit, to be correct) is one of the best and most actively developed Open Source browsers out there. It's also one of the most standards-compliant browsers out there.

Re:proprietary

[John Dowdell]

"If things can be accomplished with COMPLETELY open and free (as in freedom) frameworks and languages, why choose Flash?" The key word in that sentence may be the first.... ;-) (The original story seemed strange to me... many screenfuls of text, with the elevator pitch seeming to be "One particular JavaScript Framework will Rule The World -- *if* it's from Apple!" The weblogs didn't show much skepticism today, so I'm glad to see some realistic questioning here at Slashdot.) jd/adobe

Re:proprietary

[mrsteveman1]

Yea i know, if sproutcore can't do what people seem to think it will then theres a problem, but it appears to be a reasonable way of doing things.

I think well defined standards implemented by the browser might be a better approach than binary apps running in a plugin.

By the way, JDs post is not a troll.

Re:proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, Apple makes the argument against "proprietary" flash/silverlight by utterly controlling their very proprietary iPhone. So its kind of disingenuous to use the iPhone as an example of a platform that loses out because flash, etc. aren't on it. Not to say the iPhone doesn't rock. Just making the point about the example given.

Re:proprietary

[riceboy50]

flash probably wouldn't be viable on it The conclusion I come to is that Flash is too bloated. I have run into many situations where it killed even my desktop systems.

Re:proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

...will work on any platform and in any browser that follows those standards out of the box

In other words, it doesn't work with IE 6.

Re:proprietary

[Foofoobar]

Not true... only works in Safari. Much like XUL only works in Mozilla based browsers. This is more similar to XUL but I see XUL having an easier time as Firefox has a larger install base and doesn't require installing Ruby.

Re:proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

and will work on any platform and in any browser that follows those standards out of the box

Yeah, in a perfect world. Unfortunately in this world, different browsers (and even different versions of browsers) may interpret the same piece of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript in a variety of ways. For complex applications Flash (via the Flash plugin) more or less guarantees consistent behavior across different browsers.

Not saying that makes Flash the best choice (it isn't in my opinion; in fact, Flash makes my balls ache), but we're still a long way off from having consistent enough cross-browser behavior for these technologies to completely obsolete the need for Flash.

Re:proprietary

[vidarh]

We had a re-implementation of the then-current flash running on a slow 486-level Cyrix back in 1999 for a "webpad" product that was never launched. SOME features of flash require quite a bit of CPU these days, but most of it really doesn't.

Re:proprietary

[macjosh]

Nice thought, however I think 'web 3.0' will actually be heading towards a more social web. It's already beginning with applications like facebook and myspace. I think the true web 3.0 will actually be technology that allows users to connect with online personalities/identities. Currently those profiles are walled into someone else's server. Web 3.0 should change that. It may look a bit fancier with these great new frameworks coming out, however I believe these frameworks will only aid in presenting the next web shift, not defining it.

Re:proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has a chance here to keep the Web becoming even more proprietary as Silverlight and Flash battle it out to lock the Web application market into one proprietary format or another.

It's not true that Flash is completely proprietary. There are multiple open-source compilers, and there's an open-source browser plugin. You do have to work hard to develop in flash using an OSS software stack, but there are people doing it. Gnash, the open-source browser plugin, has gotten to the point where it can play you-tube videos, provided you have the right hardware and sacrifice an unblemished calf. Adobe has also been slowly moving in the right direction as far as open-sourcing some of their code, and relaxing some of the more onerous licensing restrictions. A lot of the problems with making flash more open are actually problems with codecs, and that situation is also showing signs of improving, with support for less patent-encumbered codecs being added to newer versions of flash.

By the same measure, Win32, Microsoft Office formats, and numerous other formats out there aren't proprietary because you can implement it.

Sorry mate, it is proprietary. Until the day that I see Adobe not only make the specification available without needing to sign an NDA (which they've done just recently), but also completely opensource the whole plugin (without any exceptions) and licence it under something like CDDL or BSD, I'd sooner cheer lead for Microsoft and Silverlight.

Adobe have screwed the *NIX community over for years, and buggered if I know why you seem to be hell bent by slobbering at the mouth over 'promises' which Adobe have made. Heck, they can't even make a Plugin for non-Microsoft platforms that doesn't suck!

Quite frankly, if Adobe fell off the edge of the cliff tomorrow, along with all its employee's and management, it would a net benefit to the computing world and the environment.

Re:proprietary

[Jellybob]

The demos worked fine for me in the latest RC of Firefox 3.

SproutCore only requires Ruby on the server and developer side, for the end user it's just HTML.

Re:proprietary

[yabos]

I hope Firefox picks this up fast and/or it gets into the standard soon because it's really great but only works with Webkit so you can't really use it unless you're writing an iPhone web application or something only used by people using pre release versions of Webkit(or Safari 4 when it's out).

Re:proprietary

[Akaihiryuu]

While Flash does have its uses (videos, sites like Homestarrunner, etc), making Flash-based websites in general usually just makes for horrible unusable sites. I can't stand going to a site and having the *entire page* just being a flashblock icon, knowing that when I click it I'll have to trudge through a slow, horribly designed site. You want to do animation or something like that (like Homestarrunner), sure Flash is fine for that. But PLEASE don't use it to make your site.

Re:proprietary

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You are correct. That was a typo on my part. Thanks for the correction.

Re:proprietary

[Foofoobar]

Ouch. Your kidding. Well then I'm really not going to use it. Building websites with backends on Ruby is one thing but building distributable applications on RUBY whose scalability is questionable is a scary concept. Thats like asking to paint yourself into a corner. I'll stick with XUL; alot less JS to load (entire MVC in JS??).

Re:proprietary

[iluvcapra]

Just scanning the docs, it doesn't seem to REQUIRE ruby on the backend, it should be useable with Python or Perl (or ASP.NET for that matter). The framework is all Javascript and JSON.

Re:proprietary

[Foofoobar]

Well it said it requires it for developing. So it must require it in some sense or else why develop in it.

lockin

[Speare]

I started writing on DOS. (I won't count the Apple ][.) Wrote for PDP-11s. Wrote for Windows. Wrote for SGI GL (before OpenGL). Each new platform was yet another paradigm, yet another set of non-portable libraries or techniques.

I like POSIX, and I like portable languages and toolkits that I can take from platform to platform. I like writing little graphical apps or command-line tools in Perl, Python, GTK, SDL, OpenGL that I can run on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, or even my Nokia N810. All the knowledge is transferrable, all the benefits of the little tools are transferrable with a little work to smooth out details like widget placement or font decisions.

I never bothered to get deep into Objective C, because while it's theoretically transferrable, it is really just used to write for the Apple Carbon/Cocoa/Core/Whatever/Don'tNitPickItsJustAnExample* stack. Same went for DirectX on Windows when I still wrote software for Windows. I would like to make apps that do whizzy things with Core Animation or whatever, but I just can't make myself get excited at the prospect of learning yet another vendor-lockin technology. The hardware-accelerated compositing is cool, the effortless scripting of visual objects is interesting, but not interesting enough to actually learn something that won't be portable.

If I really want a visual effect like Core This or Direct That, I will write a portable library to do it in OpenGL on Python or something. Or if the need isn't extreme, I'll just wait for someone else to write the general library if it ever happens.

Re:lockin

[The End Of Days]

I'm not sure why you brought it up, or why you had so much to say about so very little, but I'm sure that I speak for all of us when I say thank you. Truly a man for your time and place.

Re:lockin

[Anonymous Coward]

Could someone please mod this to (Score:6, HasBallsToSpeakTheTruth)? Post is just that good.

Re:lockin

[wralias]

Either I'm not seeing a different thread that you are replying to, or I just don't understand the relevance of what you are saying. This article is about a JavaScript MVC framework - there isn't really a vendor lock-in to speak of.

Re:lockin

[ceoyoyo]

So... you're excited about SproutCore which is open source and specifically designed to be cross platform?

Re:lockin

[jasenj1]

No. Because SproutCore takes the normal JavaScript conventions, tosses them out and replaces them with a bunch of Objective-C conventions - which as the OP mentioned are only useful if you are a hardcore Apple programmer.

IF you are an Objective-C programmer THEN SproutCore gives you a familiar environment to write webapps in. For the rest, it's just another JavaScript framework - and one that does things rather oddly.

- Jasen.

Re:lockin

[ceoyoyo]

What in particular is an Objective-C convention? I didn't look really closely, but most of the features they're talking about, such as MVC, bindings, etc. aren't limited to ObjC. They're mostly older techniques that ObjC lifted from other languages.

Re:lockin

[Blakey Rat]

Blah blah blah... did you have an actual point?

Re:lockin

[Anonymous Coward]

Never bothered to get deep into Objective-C? What about C++ or Java or C#? If you're comfortable with basic C syntax and know a little about object-oriented programming in general, the Objective-C language can be learned in a few hours. Seriously.

Mastering a framework like Cocoa is the big task; learning the language isn't difficult for most programmers.

You're a programmer. Tools evolve, and change, and learning new things is part of the game, and always will be. Sometimes previous knowledge is portable, often it is not. If portability is that important to you, then by all means study only portable technologies. But in the real world, portability is more often an ideal than anything of great practical value.

What the hell would I know, I've only been programming on CP/M, DOS, Windows, Palm OS, and OS X for 25 years or so...

Apples and Oranges

[A Guy From Ottawa]

From TFA, SproutCore is basically a rich set of JavaScript libraries. Flame/mod away, but it's true.

Flash/Silverlight don't only contain the same app struts for you to build upon, but they are also incredibly powerful application hosting frameworks with rich graphics and multimedia libraries to go beyond what HTML can render.

Comparing SproutCore to Flash and especially Silverlight is nonsense. Saying it's a Flash/Silverlight killer is delusional.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[MightyYar]

Flame/mod away, but it's true. Now, there's no need for that, now is there? :)

I don't think anyone expects SproutCore to "kill" Flash in its current usage - mostly ads and multimedia. I think the claim is that SproutCore could kill Flash's aspirations (via AIR) to become a standard for building rich apps on the browser.

I mean, you have to admit that if you were considering building a rich app, and you were looking at all of the options... well, now Apple has some real rich apps working via javascript and Google has always had their javascript rich apps - at the very least it shows you that you can be successful while sticking with javascript.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Space cowboy]

... because it's not as though Webkit provides rich multimedia at all, and I guess Sprout could never provide any of those "struts" to build any applications at all...

Yep, that's right, delusional...

Simon.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Mongoose Disciple]

Yeah, that's what I got out of it as well.

JavaScript libraries are better and more capable than they ever have been, but they can't escape being what they are. There are just too many questions that they are not the right answer for, and getting cross-platform cross-browser compability to be as good as the promise of open standards is not yet there for any reasonably complex web app. (That is to say, you can get a complex app to work right on a variety of platforms, but you're kidding yourself if you think it's going to be free/easy.)

Something like Flash/Flex or Silverlight isn't the answer to all web problems either, and never will be -- but more and more I'm seeing businesses ask for extremely rich interface intranet-ish apps to be done as web apps, and then be frustrated when the standards/JavaScript/etc. solution either is quirky or non-performant in some way that really matters to them. I think this kind of app is going to be done more and more with Flex or Silverlight or something similar in the next few years, and I don't see SproutCore as seriously competing in that space.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Shag]

more and more I'm seeing businesses ask for extremely rich interface intranet-ish apps to be done as web apps, and then be frustrated when the standards/JavaScript/etc. solution either is quirky or non-performant in some way that really matters to them. I think this kind of app is going to be done more and more with Flex or Silverlight or something similar in the next few years, and I don't see SproutCore as seriously competing in that space. Back when I first started getting paid to do web stuff (early 1995) businesses routinely asked for things that made no sense for the web, and couldn't be done cross-platform with out-of-the-box browers.

It's so nice to see that businesses still haven't gotten a clue, and prefer technologies that will isolate chunks of their potential customer base.

(Remember, when you code something for Flash N, all those people with Flash N-1 or N-2 are screwed until they install the new version, presuming the new version's available for their platform.)

Yeah, JavaScript sucks. So does Flash. So does all software. The only difference is how.

Re:Apples and Oranges

[Sandor at the Zoo]

From TFA, SproutCore is basically a rich set of JavaScript libraries. Flame/mod away, but it's true.

From TFA, SproutCore is basically a set of ASCII text files that someone typed into some .js files. Flame/mod away, but it's true.

How does that work?

[zogger]

How do those seekrit sh-h-h-h-h don't tell nobody! NDAs work with OSS? The "O" part starts for "open". "..and now here we show you these open source new goodies, but you can't tell anyone about them, no details, nor show them, but they are really open, honest!"

Good luck with that. Apple makes some good stuff, but let us not confuse them with being some sort of "open" champions, because they are *not*.

Re:How does that work?

[foniksonik]

Uh... ever used a OSS language or library to create something really cool? Did you just hand it out immediately to anyone who glanced your way? Probably not... you probably enjoyed the attention for a little while, then doled it out when you had everything packaged up nice and pretty so nobody would know that you hadn't quite cleaned up your fancy pants code before announcing it.

Same is true with Apple. They often keep things closed or at least private until they are ready for general consumption.... ie: well documented APIs, community tools in place, a stable codebase, etc.

NDAs work just fine with OSS... you don't have to publicly announce what you are *planning* to do with OSS.

Re:How does that work?

[Angostura]

My guess would be that the NDA didn't cover anything to do with the technology - it is out there for all to try. It probably covered Apple's plans for using the technology. And that seems quite reasonable to me.

There are 6 million iPhones out there

[melted]

By end of year there will be 12 million of them. I'd go out on a limb and say that about 20% of iPhone users actually use the web browser in it on a regular basis. I hate to break the news to anyone, but that's a minuscule fraction of the market.

Don't get me wrong, I have an iPhone myself, but let's be real here - people will be loading binary apps on it starting in July, at which point web development will become an inconvenience on the iPhone for a lot of things.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[catmistake]

just Fyi, I, and roughly a million others (probably more) have been loading binary apps on iPhone for a year or so. Some of these apps, such as the package manager, rely on HTML... and every so often they update and it gets even slicker. I really can't understand what you mean by 'inconvenient,' when it seems the whole point of webapps is precisely for convenience.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Talez]

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/3/apple_s_iphone_smashes_larger_market_on_web_video_music_usage

The most important thing about the iPhone isn't the sleek design, the touchscreen, iTunes integration, or any other single feature. It's the way that people use the device. Specifically, it's that people actually use it to do stuff besides making phone calls. Examples:

Almost 85% of iPhone owners browse the Web on their phones, versus 58% of the U.S. smartphone market and 13.1% of the overall U.S. mobile market, according to mobile research firm M:Metrics.
Some 31% of iPhone owners watch mobile TV or video, like Google's (GOOG) built-in YouTube software, compared to 4.6% of the overall market.
About 20% of iPhone owners access Facebook, versus 1.5% of the overall market.
And 74% of iPhone owners listened to music on their phones, compared to 28% of the smartphone market and 6.7% of the overall market.

Even if the usage is overstated that's still a hell of a lot of mobile Internet users.

The iPhone isn't like a regular smartphone. Rather than trying to supplement an experience for someone with existing shitty expectations of the big boy Internet on mobile devices, it's trying to broadly appeal to the market and it's becoming a catalyst that is literally changing the dynamics of the mobile data market.

Saying that people will be loading binary apps will kill off web development is like saying Web 2.0 is pointless because we all have Windows.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[DECS]

According to real statistics, well over 80% of iPhone users "use more than ten functions," and even more use Safari for browsing. That's why the phone has a majority share (~75%) of mobile website traffic in stats despite "only" taking 27% of the new phones sold in the US and only having been on the market for a year.

Web development is for the web, not targeted at the iPhone. Whether or not key customers can view your content is a big deal. iPhone users will have more impact than their numbers suggest, just as Mac users do.

The fact that this also benefits Linux users is just a nice finish.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Anpheus]

Which package manager? Installer.app doesn't rely on HTML, it loads a main page that is HTML but the user interface, search function, etc, are all CocoaTouch/UIKit. It downloads .xml files as well for its information.

The other main package manager, Cydia, is based on apt, and it too will draw an HTML page for its intro, but the UI, search, actual management functions, everything else is CocoaTouch.

HTML makes a lot of sense when you have applications with fluid data that should be refreshed. WebKit is compact, you can make a static UI pretty quickly and efficiently and support is pretty good. But a Web App cannot install stuff to your phone if it's properly secured. (I only add that because one of the methods of jailbreaking an iphone was a website with a remote code execution exploit.)

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

taking 27% of the new phones sold in the US

Wrong

The iphone took about 2.5% (you were off by an order of magnitude). Don't get me wrong, this figure is very impressive for a new entry to the mobile market, but falsely inflating figures just makes you look stupid.

Or perhaps you don't know the difference between 'phone' & 'smartphone'?

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

many tens of millions of subsidized instant eWaste phones

Speaking of eWaste, it's a pity Apple doesn't:

1) Not use toxic chemicals like brominated flame retardants and Polyvinyl Chloride in the iPhone (Nokia & Ericsson don't).
2) Offer free take-back for the iPhone (Nokia & Ericsson do).
3) Make a user-replacable battery (Nokia & Ericsson do).

So, how exactly is the (also-subsidized) iPhone superior from an eWaste perspective to its competitors?

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[catmistake]

Installer.app relies on HTML (for its initial page load).

Happy?

My point was that parent was incorrect to predict that binaries will kill webapps when binaries have been here pretty much all along and new webapps appear almost hourly... because they are so easy and convenient to create.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Anpheus]

I said that already though. While both apps use WebKit to pull a front page and news about the application, neither is a webapp.

Just because *gasp*, they both use WebKit to render webpages doesn't make them webapps. In fact, isn't WebKit the only rendering engine available on the iPhone right now? Yes, yes it is.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[catmistake]

Your reading something I've not written.

Again, parent was claiming binaries would kill webapps, that somehow adding binaries to iPhone would mysteriously make webapps inconvenient. I disagreed. To make my case, I pointed out that binaries have been here all along and webapps are doing just fine with HTML -- in fact, some binaries, such as Installer.app, actually used HTML. Now please stop trolling me.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[glebd]

"Apple doesn't <...> not use toxic chemicals, Nokia and Erisccon don't"—Don't don't not use? I could not have said it better. While you're at it, why not ask them to ban dihydrogen monoxide from their iPhone manufacturing process?

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[yabos]

I'm sure he was talking about smartphones because that number accurately describes the iPhone's sales compared to other smart phones in the USA.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Twisp]

True, but the issue is that this is exactly how bad data gets started. A slight misquote, and you have a false statistic that means something completely different from the actual data.

"Damned Lies and Statistics" is an excellent book on the topic, with some amusing examples.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Anpheus]

Your initial comment was "Some of these apps, such as the package manager, rely on HTML..."

No, they don't. The HTML is just a news window. A single pane of a much larger application that performs much more complex functions. Webapps != apps that use HTML. I want you to thoroughly comprehend that. Using HTML because it's a mature, 'featureful' syntax for displaying a wide variety of static and some dynamic content is a smart move, not one indicative of the state of web applications.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[catmistake]

Troll, you keep repeating something I never wrote. I never once said binaries were webapps, yet in every reply you add that correction. Installer.app, not a webapp, never ever claimed by me to be a webapp, not even a little bit, RELIES on HTML for more than the initial page load (such as when you tap to get more info on a particular binary, the data that loads is HTML). Let's try something different: please, please troll me again and say I'm writing something I never wrote... Please? Just once more, tell me binaries are not webapps? Learn to comprehend, not confabulate, jackass.

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[cromar]

He's right. You are totally misunderstanding what he is saying...

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

I take it that you can't find any flaws with the content of my post, so instead are attacking its grammar?

Re:There are 6 million iPhones out there

[Lars T.]

http://www.apple.com/environment/recycling/ipodrecycling/

Apple's recycling program offers free and environmentally friendly disposal of your iPod and cell phone with no purchase necessary. Whiney PC Dumbboy is not: not wrong - again.

An odd fit?

[iamghetto]

The photo gallery demo on SproutCore.com fails to work on Opera - the right photo pane not even rendering. Although Opera isn't widely used, with its exceptional standards-compliance it's a great barometer for how compatible something may ultimately be.

It's an interesting idea, and maybe I'm missing the "awesomeness" of it, but I don't find a compelling reason to switch to this over a standard development stack. It just seems as though it's a highly widgetized javascript framework, running on ruby.

I develop in Rails and C#, and I'd just as soon use jQuery and it's host of extensions to build my own application like widgets that I could use across any backend.

I've looked through the documentation and I'm hoping I'm just missing something about SproutCore's awesomeness.

Re:An odd fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't seem to work quite properly on Camino, either...

Re:An odd fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and thanks to their draconian no robots allowed policy, I can't check any other browser compatibilities out using http://browsershots.org/ . This platform doesn't seem to be getting off on the right foot with me.

Re:An odd fit?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Although Opera isn't widely used, with its exceptional standards-compliance it's a great barometer for how compatible something may ultimately be. Fans of Opera always say this; but it's been my experience, when developing web apps, that Opera tends to lag behind Firefox and even Safari when it comes to CSS support - specifically when it comes to using Javascript to modify various CSS parameters on the fly.

When I have filed bug reports against Opera the developers have been very responsive - but still, the fact is that I've had to file bug reports because of shortcomings in Opera.

Re:An odd fit?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't work for me in Firefox or Epiphany either.

Re:An odd fit?

[Yvan256]

And how are static screenshots supposed to help you check the DHTML/Ajax compatibility across browsers?

Re:An odd fit?

[Yvan256]

I'm still waiting for Opera to add simple border-radius support. I thought Opera 9.5 would finally add it, but sadly it didn't.

So it's square corners for Opera and IE6/IE7. I'm not patching things up via SVG to have round corners in Opera.

tagging retards...

[thekm]

Tags on the article at time of posting: apple, rails, ruby, rubyonrails (tagging beta)

...is ruby really that lame that people are tagging unrelated articles to grassroots this bitch into existence?...

Re:tagging retards...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

We have also created some build tools that will take care of efficiently packaging your HTML, JS, and CSS for delivery over the web that are based on Ruby. However, Ruby is not required for you to use SproutCore except during development.

Besides from being lazy enough not to investigate further, do you have any other reason to call a perfectly fine programming language "a bitch" just for the sake of a part of its users?

Re:tagging retards...

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon 'cause i mod'ed here. SproutCore uses ruby for its installer and for its server (at least for its test server.)

Re:tagging retards...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's just pretty obvious that Apple intends iPhone developers to use Ruby on Rails for development.

Re:tagging retards...

[thekm]

did you get linked to the same links that the post linked me to!?...

Just to make sure, here's all the links that the post refers to:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/16/apples_open_secret_sproutcore_is_cocoa_for_the_web.html
http://www.sproutit.com/
http://www.sproutcore.com/
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080530/0022021266.shtml


...I read the article as linked, and just to make sure, I ran some text searches across them, and neither "ruby" or "rails" came up in the article content. From a goodly amount of reading, I didn't come across Rails being put forward as the big platform choice to warrant the tagging. So once again... the ruby/rails crowd seem to be shills, or at least certainly eager to grass-roots their little world into existence; because a packaging system isn't enough to be tagging the article as if it's the main technology.

Re:tagging retards...

[AchiIIe]

> is ruby really that lame that people are tagging unrelated articles to grassroots this bitch into existence?

I personally tagged ruby in there because the project owner did the same,
see: http://code.google.com/p/sproutcore

Re:tagging retards...

[VGPowerlord]

I don't know about the person you're responding to, but I found the mention of Ruby on the Sproutcore Hello World Tutorial (bolded for emphasis):
"If you haven't yet installed SproutCore, it's really easy if you have Ruby installed on your machine."

"Note that if you are on a Mac, you will need the developer tools installed as well for Ruby to work."

Re:tagging retards...

[IntlHarvester]

Actually if you look at the (very minimal) docs on sproutcore.com, it runs out of a Rails app server.

But otherwise it looks like a front-end toolkit, so its not clear to me how much it actually depends on RoR.

Re:tagging retards...

[thekm]

I don't know about the person you're responding to, but I found the mention of Ruby on the Sproutcore Hello World Tutorial (bolded for emphasis): "If you haven't yet installed SproutCore, it's really easy if you have Ruby installed on your machine." "Note that if you are on a Mac, you will need the developer tools installed as well for Ruby to work." Thanks for that. Tagging articles with shill-tags that you have to dig all the way past the bloody article and into the coding tutorial to find, is exactly my original point: bad tags by people trying to will Ruby development into relevance. But hey, I'm glad someone found the actual Ruby reference in this, it validates the existence of the tags and made the dozens of Ruby developers out there quite happy.

Re:tagging retards...

[vidarh]

The views are written using Ruby, for starters, which means a significant chunk of the code a developer working with SproutCore will actually work with is going to be Ruby.

good website for sproutcore

[bobby1234]

or not http://www.sproutcore.com/ Site Temporarily Unavailable We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this. error id: "bad_httpd_conf"

Re:RoughlyDrafted

[DECS]

Sorry that's not true and you know it.

Over a thousand of my readers wrote Digg to ask it to stop censoring my articles (and cc:ed me) after a small contingent of Digg users complained that I was poking at their Xbox, Zune, and Windows Enthusiast views.

Digg has never accused me of creating scores of accounts, and some anonymous blog entry is not "credible evidence."

Promoting articles I write by submitting them to sites designed for that purpose is not spam.

Web 2.0 exists because

[melted]

Web 2.0 exists because you don't have to code your apps for each and every device separately. This is not the case with iPhone - anything not specifically built for iPhone is just awkward to use.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[ahankinson]

Almost. The iPhone is the most viable portable (as in, in-pocket) mobile web platform out there right now. So much so, in fact, that I would say that the awkwardness in having to pinch and squeeze websites to view them is cancelled out by the convenience of having the web without lugging around a laptop.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[Nazlfrag]

What of the Nokia N810? You get a Mozilla browser w/full Java support, Flash 9.0, keyboard, 800x480 screen. Sure, you need wifi or a bluetooth phone to connect, but it seems much more viable for easy surfing with the flash support, keyboard and nice wide screen.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[SanityInAnarchy]

It seems very likely, however, that the next generation of smartphones will be trying to steal features from the iPhone -- at the very least, I'd expect (relatively) high resolution, if not touch.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[glebd]

Nokia internet tablets have excellent screens that make reading experience great. Unfortunately, that's where it stops (for me, at least) because their maemo Hildon UI is so hideous, it's not even funny. Here's a hope Nokia's acquisition of TrollTech will improve things.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[glebd]

Many are trying already--just search for 'iPhone killer'. None comes even close--all of them are striving to match iPhone's feature list, and what really matters is the overall experience.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[Angostura]

Ummm, well I do rather a lot of browsing on an iPod Touch and I rather disagree with you. In fact, I tend to use the fully configured 'normal sites' rather than the stripped down 'iPhone friendly' versions'.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[*weasel]

I've got an n800. Trust me - you do not want to compare the actual web browsing experience.

microb was a big step forward, and I hear it's getting ever better in the dev builds. But even with the bigger screen and higher resolution, the act of browsing the web is more awkward on an NIT than the pan-n-zoom iPhone. Even on an NIT you need to pan and zoom a great deal. However, it's not optimized for that kind of use, and switching zoom levels and scrolling about is a choppy experience.

The Flash support is also largely theoretical; the device has neither the horsepower nor the video bandwidth to actually handle a flash file of any complexity. If you let it fully buffer a youtube video, it does 'ok'. If you save off smaller flash games to the internal memory, then dump the browser and play the files directly, it can do some files passably. But it's not the experience anyone thinks of when you say 'flash support'. It's the kind of experience that makes me disable the flash plugin because it's a net negative on the act of browsing.

And the points below about the horrible UI in general are sadly accurate. The Nokia Internet Tablets are still heavily stylus-focused, awash with lazy desktop-style interfaces, with a disappointing half-effort toward finger support. Don't get me wrong: I love having a stylus. I love being able to sketch, doodle and jot with accuracy. I just don't want the device to assume its presence means they can ask me to drag it out every time I need to choose between 'Ok' and 'Cancel'. Nor do I want the apps to assume that since it's there, they can load up every screen with tiny buttons, checkboxes, etc.

As the devices stand today - there's no contest. For a handful of geeks, the NITs are wildly superior devices. For everyone else, they're a mess; a promising mess, but a mess none-the-less. And a mess that Nokia doesn't seem to know what to do with.

Here's to hoping that their Trolltech acquisition means good things. But after comparing maemo's last two years to the iPhone's last one -- I have little reason to believe the NITs will ever be better browsing devices for the average user than the iPhone at any given point in time -- despite its advertised java and flash support.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[SanityInAnarchy]

all of them are striving to match iPhone's feature list, and what really matters is the overall experience. Nice kool-aid.

I wonder where the overall experience comes from? Oh yeah, must be all the great features. Let me put them in a list.

Re:Web 2.0 exists because

[Hes Nikke]

I wonder where the overall experience comes from? Oh yeah, must be all the great features. Let me put them in a list. try this: USABLE features.

fidette

[mkcmkc]

More importantly, is that in dog?

DECS

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice sig. You're clearly not a sockpuppet at all.

Re:DECS

[Admiral Ag]

Actually no, but thanks for pointing that out. I had no idea that DECS was DED until I read your post. The sig I picked up months ago because the original made me spit coffee over my monitor.

I am a regular reader both RoughlyDrafted and TUAW. I don't care about past spats, but I like both blogs.

It's a Javascript-centric Rails clone?

[HisMother]

None of the other commenters here seem to have checked out their site at all. Sproutcore is apparently a JavaScript-generating, Ruby-based templating framework. To me it looks kind of like a Rails clone with jQuery built in.

Personally I'm not seeing the need...

Re:It's a Javascript-centric Rails clone?

[realinvalidname]

I went to the Sproutcore session at WWDC and IM'ed a friend back home to say "hey, this looks pretty interesting." He's done more webapp work than I have (I was mostly there for the iPhone SDK), and his reply was "meh, looks like a Rails clone".

That said, there are worse places to take your inspiration from than Rails and Cocoa.

Actually, the secret sauce may not be Sproutcore's Rails-ness, but rather the fact that it makes fairly aggressive use of cutting-edge CSS, the <canvas> tag, and other modern browser features to achieve a near-RIA experience entirely within the browser. With Apple's support for WebKit, and its shunning of Flash and Java on the iPhone, this is clearly the direction they want rich web content to go.

Re:It's a Javascript-centric Rails clone?

[fmobus]

In their Photos example, I see SQL queries embebbed in javascript source. Not sure this is a good idea... http://sproutcore.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/samples/clients/photos/main.js

Re:It's a Javascript-centric Rails clone?

[Stewie241]

well... right above the code I think you are looking at, is the line:

console.log("This browser does not support HTML5 client side storage. Will proceed with fixture data.") ;

It looks like the SQL is run on the client side, which is not the same security risk as if it was run server side, where it would most certainly be bad.

Re:It's a Javascript-centric Rails clone?

[fmobus]

True. Reading it more carefully, it looks like an sql engine is built-in in this framework, allowing for queries against a local cache/datastore. Not sure if it's a good idea in terms of performance, but surely programmers will like the familiarity.

A little too late?

[bogaboga]

To me, all this looks like Zimbra. Am I right? By the way, are all components Open source? Without an answer in the affirmative, I will not touch it even with a 10 foot pole.

Re:A little too late?

[RiotingPacifist]

I dont get why you have to sign an NDA so you cant talk about Open Source code tbh!

Re:RoughlyDrafted

[Anonymous Coward]

I like my iPod Touch, but I don't like smug Apple fans like you who choose to worship a corporation and deride others for using a different product. You need some serious growing up to do. [Unless of course you are doing it make money from all those affiliate ads on your site; then it's OK.]

Apples and Apples

[TubeSteak]

Comparing SproutCore to Flash ... is nonsense. It's apples to apples.
Flash & anything javascript related is a security bomb waiting to go off.
Just because this is coming from Apple doesn't remove the deficiencies in Javascript.
 
/I don't actually know anything about Silverlight's security or lack thereof, so I left them out of this.

Re:Apples and Apples

[MightyYar]

Flash & anything javascript related is a security bomb waiting to go off. Please pardon my naivety...

Why is an app built on javascript to run on a web browser more insecure than a standalone app that does the same thing? I mean, why are you worse-off from a security standpoint if you use Apple's "Mobile Me" mail as opposed to a binary application on your desktop from Apple?

Intuitively, I would think that the javascript solution would be a bit safer, since it at least is supposed to run in a sandbox. A downloaded app can do anything it wants once you double-click it.

I understand that both solutions are less secure than using a text browser to check your web mail, but that solution really sucked and I never used web mail as my main interface until Gmail came along. To bastardize Franklin, I'm trading some security for some freedom :)

Re:RoughlyDrafted

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of curiosity, am I supposed to have some idea who you are?

A recruitment ad I saw this morning.

[sycodon]

Be the next generation web app designers...$120k!

Requires 3 years experience in:
  SproutIt, MobilMe, and SproutCare

RAILS?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is this tagged with ruby on rails? theres nothing in the article to suggest so, or are the rails nutters at it again?

(yaya, flamebait, i know)

Hi Daniel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just how many accounts do you have on slasdot?

More than twitter even it would appear.

Re:Hi Daniel.

[Lars T.]

Just how many accounts do you have on slasdot? One more than you, Mr. AC.

Re:Hi Daniel.

[the_fat_kid]

mod +1 Burn

How does it compare to GWT?

[VGPowerlord]

After reading a bit about this, it sounds like something similar to Google's GWT (with Gears), except that SproutCore uses Ruby instead of Java.

How do the two compare?

Re:How does it compare to GWT?

[Anonymous Coward]

except that SproutCore uses Ruby instead of Java.

How do the two compare?

Based on this, my guess is that SproutCore won't make you wish you had lost your sight as a child as you write thousands of lines of boilerplate to coerce Apache to serve up your Ajax hello world. It'll be more like:

require 'sprout'
sprout = Sprout.new
sprout.content = "Hello World"
sprout.render

Re:How does it compare to GWT?

[bobbozzo]

And instead of AJAX, they'll call it AppleJax.
Hmm... maybe I should trademark that.

Re:How does it compare to GWT?

[VGPowerlord]

Except that GWT compiles into HTML; Javascript; and CSS, so you don't have to "convince" Apache at all.

Re:How does it compare to GWT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I haven't written anything in SproutCore yet, only read some of the docs, but I have written some stuff using GWT. Here's a 30 second comparison based on first impressions.

• You write your apps in JavaScript with SproutCore. With GWT you write them in Java and GWT compiles it down to optimized JavaScript. You can mix and match Java/JavaScript quite easily. As it happens, I think JavaScript is a nicer language than Java but nonetheless, writing web apps in Java has turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. Mostly because Eclipse is pretty damn good, and because it's much more natural to write clean, object oriented code in Java than in Javascript. You certainly can write such code in JavaScript but the environment really doesn't encourage it. Also, lots of Java libraries can be reused if they aren't heavily dependent on the JRE (eg, generic calculation libraries).

• SproutCore seems very MVC centric. GWT in contrast really isn't. You can certainly build an MVC app in GWT but there isn't much support for it out-of-the-box. SproutCore is also very into the properties and bindings aspect of the framework. They seem to consider this pretty central. Of course you can write code with properties and callbacks in Java too. I'm not aware of any direct equivalent to bindings.

• SproutCore seems to be Ruby centric but I can't tell for sure if it really is. GWT is backend independent - if you use Java you get nice features like simple RPC and the ability to step from client into server using the debugger, but I'm not using a Java backend for my project and it works OK anyway.

• SproutCore seems to have very light documentation. This is my main concern about it. Having read what material I could find on the site I don't really feel like I understand the framework or what it offers me well. Also, their doc viewer app triggers visual glitches in Firefox 2/Linux which is a practical concern. In comparison the GWT docs are excellent. The SproutCore API reference is very sparse and, to be frank, buggy (check out the progressbar docs).

• SproutCore manufactures its own widgets to make them look Apple-like. GWT uses native widgets. Native widgets take on the native theme and are accessible. If you're writing software with accessibility requirements (eg, for govt) then this fact alone kills SproutCore dead AFAICT. If you want extra widgets for GWT you can use GWT Ext which is a much more complete widget library than what SproutCore provides.

• GWT has an excellent optimizing compiler, which lets you write at a high level of abstraction whilst still giving small downloads and decent speed. SproutCore doesn't.

Anyway, to conclude, I wouldn't use SproutCore today. It seems very immature documentation wise, it might have a hard Ruby dependency, I'm not sure why I'd want to use it and GWT has many (many) features that I now wouldn't want to be without. GWT has really changed the way I think about writing web apps. It'd take one pretty amazing JavaScript framework to make me leave it and SproutCore just isn't it.

It can use any backend

[Santana]

The author just happens to use Ruby on Rails, but you can use Java also (Apple is using WebObjects) or PHP ...

Re:RoughlyDrafted

[DECS]

... from the mouth of an anonymous coward!

280 North seems to have the same idea in mind.

[phuul]

It seems like the guys at 280 Slides have been working on something similar. They have an Apple background and called their language Objective-J, from what I can tell it's an extension on JavaScript in a similar manner to way Objective-C is to C. Their Cocoa like framework on Objective-J is called Cappuccino.

Now I don't know if SproutCore is anything like what they are doing (wasn't at WWDC so I don't know the details), but the end goals of both projects seem like the same thing. A language and framework where whatever you make should just work across browsers. It's very early days for both, so we will have to see. From the article it seems like SproutCore is going to be fairly open. The 280 North guys seem like they want something similar for Objective-J and Cappuccion but they are still working on cleaning up the frameworks.

Either way, the competition should be good and hopefully bring sanity to the client side scripting world.

SproutCore is completely JavaScript based

[landonf]

To me it looks kind of like a Rails clone with jQuery built in.

Personally I'm not seeing the need...

According to the FAQ, it's about as far from a Rails clone as you can get and still be on the web:

The SproutCore framework is completely JavaScript based. We have also created some build tools that will take care of efficiently packaging your HTML, JS, and CSS for delivery over the web that are based on ruby. However, Ruby is not required for you to use SproutCore except during development.

http://www.sproutcore.com/about/

moderation should require an IQ test

[Anonymous Coward]

mods, this is not really very interesting. There is zero information content, and frankly, it's stated so poorly that it's not even really clear what riceboy50 is actually saying, except, "me thinks Flash bad." Nobody gives a rat's ass if some imbecile tried Flash once and it crashed is 486 PC running Windows 95 and Netscape. What if he had said exactly the same thing about Javascript? It would be interesting if he had provided, oh, any information at all. Yeah, we all *know* Flash is a bloated horrible pile of crap. But saying that isn't interesting, if anything it's redundant.

Flash swf is an open documented and speced format

[Qbertino]

Summary has yet again a "Bullshit about Flash" factor in it.

The reference implementation of the Flash VM may be proprietary, but the formats and standards involved have been open source and independantly speced longer that Java has been open sourced. In fact it was Adobes SVG that was a reaction to Macromedia openin the flash swf format. That's how long Flash has been as open as you can wish for.

+1 Informative

[weston]

Thank you -- This is all kinds of awesome, and I hadn't heard a lick about it before!

awkward to use

[shmlco]

"... anything not specifically built for iPhone is just awkward to use."

Because the design language and interface UI requirements are different when you're making an application driven by touch as opposed to a "normal" web page with miniscule widgets and links designed to be manipulated by a mouse/cursor combination.

If you don't design for fingers, then the application WILL be awkward to use. Period.

Re:There are many areas where Apple matters

[PenguSven]

Also-to add to the above. I pay for .Mac (soon to be MobileMe) it gives me auto synced mail, bookmarks, contacts, storage, gallery etc etc for the aforementioned price. being a contractor, every hour I'm not working is an hour I'm not making money. now at $75/hr exactly how many hours do you think I need to spend finding/configuring these other services that "do exactly the same" over a year, before I'm worse off, from a purely financial point of view.. i'll give you a hint: it's not many.

Flash off

[krischik]

Flash in its current usage - mostly ads and multimedia. Which is the reason I switch Flash of by default. I just plan hate ads with animations and websites which play music.

Martin

Missleading name

[Requiem18th]

Wait so Apple took SproutIt and "created" SproutCore? That's almost as bad as Microsoft's Office Open documents, SQL Server an other self aggrandizing names...

Re:Missleading name

[UnknowingFool]

Well, the main difference I can see it that SproutCore actually uses Sproutl. Apple added their extensions and libraries. It would be no different if someone named their Ruby extensions RubyCore. On the other hand, MS Office Open has nothing to do with Open Office. I admit SQL Server is rather a dumb name but that's lack of imagination on MS. :P

Stupid fucking browser

[kaiwai]

Reply by anonymous was actually mine:

By the same measure, Win32, Microsoft Office formats, and numerous other formats out there aren't proprietary because you can implement it.

Sorry mate, it is proprietary. Until the day that I see Adobe not only make the specification available without needing to sign an NDA (which they've done just recently), but also completely opensource the whole plugin (without any exceptions) and licence it under something like CDDL or BSD, I'd sooner cheer lead for Microsoft and Silverlight.

Adobe have screwed the *NIX community over for years, and buggered if I know why you seem to be hell bent by slobbering at the mouth over 'promises' which Adobe have made. Heck, they can't even make a Plugin for non-Microsoft platforms that doesn't suck!

Quite frankly, if Adobe fell off the edge of the cliff tomorrow, along with all its employee's and management, it would a net benefit to the computing world and the environment.

-- Fucking bloody fucking firefox not fucking keeping the fucking passwords; fuck, prime example of shit programmers doing a shit job checking their software.

Re:Stupid fucking browser

[ltrm]

Open standards are always to be preferred where Adobe is concerned.

Adobe are probably the worst example of price gouging in the software industry. Creative Suit is roughly double the price outside of the US for the download version, from the US server and no the English version is not localised.

Bottom line: I don't trust Adobe not to fuck people over because they already happily do so.

Rotating images, enter CSS transformations

[yabos]

Apple is also working on getting CSS transformations into the CSS standard. This will allow you to do to your arbitrary image rotations with only CSS and you can control it with javascript by just setting the element's style attribute. They're also working on CSS animations and transitions to bring Core Animation like effects to the web browser. Check out the Webkit nightlies if you want to see it for yourself. It's quite impressive and easy to use. Hopefully it'll be supported by more than just Webkit soon.

Re:Rotating images, enter CSS transformations

[josath]

I get your point, (and the previous poster as well who mentioned similar things) but how long until this sort of thing is included in Internet Explorer? Probably not until IE10, which is likely several years away. I'm not going to pick some technology which requires 80%+ of my users to download an entire new browser, that's an order of magnitude worse than requiring a plugin. So these things might be a good choice in the future, but for things that need to be done today, it's just not an option.

Re:Rotating images, enter CSS transformations

[yabos]

Yeah, that's the problem, but maybe if people care enough about it they might switch to a browser that works. It's at least a good incentive. Since Firefox the main reasons to use it over IE are standards compliance which most people probably don't care about, and security which maybe more people care about. If some cool sites are being created that only work with Safari, Firefox, Opera and not IE then maybe people will be willing to switch from IE to something else.

Rumors...

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard Duke Nukem Forever's engine will use SproutCore...

UTILIZING!!!!! AAAAAARGGGGHHHHH!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop using that word!!!! AAaaaaaargghhhh!!

Re:There are many areas where Apple matters

[MrMickS]

There comes a point in life where rather than spending time sourcing wheels, engine, doors, body, fuel system and spending time testing and assembling before a journey you just go out and get a car.

I'm happy with what .Mac gives me for the money. Looking at it MobileMe will deliver too. The tight integration with the OS is what's important.

Yeah

[yabos]

I just read about Objective-J a few days ago. I wonder what Apple thinks about it. It's basically a lot of porting of AppKit and they even call their frameworks the same thing (AppKit, Foundation etc.). It seems quite interesting and if anyone can make Javascript behave more like Objective-C then I'll definitely be looking into it more.

Why does everyone think this belongs to Apple?

[soward]

It's not 'Apple's SproutCore'. Last year at WWDC they had a session on the Dojotoolkit? but it wasn't Apple's dojotoolkit. In some of the web-related sessions Prototype was used, but it's not Apple's Prototype.

Let's just call it Apple's HTML5 and Apple's CCS3 while we're at it.
Maybe it's Apple's DreamHost that the www.sproutcore.com site lives on too..

fixed

[Paul Rose]

Stop utilizing that word!!!! AAaaaaaargghhhh!!

Re:RoughlyDrafted

[Anonymous Coward]

That's your article? Goddamn you suck. I read some of the drivel, and not only are you insane, you have NO FUCKING CLUE what you're talking about.

FAIL!

Re:There are many areas where Apple matters

[Snocone]

If it helps to get the retards to pay $100 per year for a set of services they can get elsewhere for free,

How long does it take you to find those services? To integrate them all to the convenience level provided by .me? To manage them?

I currently bill out at $100/hr, which makes .me a cost of exactly 1 hour of my time. Strikes me as a good deal less than I'd sink into replicating it with "free" services.

If you're not worth that much, or if you choose to not optimize your time as sensible people do -- that being the only absolutely limited resource there is! -- I respectfully submit that it is you, and not worthwhile people, who is the retard.

Re:There are many areas where Apple matters

[moosesocks]

Apple aren't refusing to put Flash on the iPhone. Adobe are.

Flash is (more or less) only available for major operating systems on x86-based architectures.

Non-Intel Linux isn't supported, and 64-bit OSes aren't supported on any platform. For a piece of software as major and significant as Flash, this is a pretty big deal.

PPC Macs are still supported, although support has been waning for several years, and was never all that good to begin with (extremely slow and buggy, even compared to the "good" Windows version).

Also, given the absurd levels CPU usage incurred by the Flash player, it's no small wonder that Apple don't want it on their device.

"the browser evolving towards acting as an OS"

[markdowling]

yeah yeah yeah - we've been hearing about this since Netscape was relevant. When's it going to happen?

So what was wrong with the article?

[SuperKendall]

In my book, trying to spam the wasteland that is Digg is a nobel and just cause - you have to if you want to break through the inner circle that controls the site content.

So instead of complaining about what they may or may not have done to Digg, explain more specifically about what was wrong with that specific article. If you want the site to get better then the way to do so is to correct mistakes they make, not censor them.

Even if he gets a little odd with numbers sometimes, generally I find he has at least a pretty good summary of the situation, even if you have to research a bit more. In an article that is generally about the technology at hand treating it as an overview for the technology makes it a useful source.

Re:So what was wrong with the article?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

In my book, trying to spam the wasteland that is Digg is a nobel and just cause

Well, I'm sorry - but in my book, trying to spam anywhere is neither noble, not just.

I'll leave you to your spamming now.

Re:So what was wrong with the article?

[SuperKendall]

Except on digg, "spam" is not the right word since he was simply trying to get his articles not cancelled!

Span in email is a totally different thing than trying to avoid an unjust burystorm.

Supporter here

[SuperKendall]

I was one of the ones who wrote. I'm a very real person, one who dislikes censorship of any form - the rest of you should be ashamed for promoting attacks on someone who is simply strongly opinionated. I am no minion or sock puppet, but someone concerned that very small groups are controlling most content that users see on digg, that kind of story inbreeding is really healthy for any site (and indeed on any given day you can see that over the years Digg frontpage story quality has dropped significantly).

I just wanted to throw in some words of support in the midst of the AC wasteland from people who can't even post with a real userID.

Flash is available on ARM

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't entirely correct.

Flash-lite is available for ARM processors. You can run it on Windows Mobile phones right now.

Information week reports that Jobs doesn't want Flash on the iPHone because it runs too slowly. That's from March of 2008 (earlier this year.)

Of course, you're contradicting yourself in your own post:

Apple aren't refusing to put Flash on the iPhone. Adobe are.
...
Also, given the absurd levels CPU usage incurred by the Flash player, it's no small wonder that Apple don't want it on their device. So really, I can't figure out if you're trolling or just being really silly.

Re:Flash is available on ARM

[Hes Nikke]

Flash-lite, just like Bud-light, and Diet Coke is just an imitation of it's namesake that does not address the needs of it's market.

Flash-lite has fewer APIs and features than it's big brother. Bud-light doesn't get you drunk (or taste like beer, but thats also a problem with it's big brother.) Diet Coke will give you cancer (see Aspartame) - a good way to loose weight... and hair and eventually life.

OOXML is "open" too.

[argent]

Writing a spec doesn't make a platform open. Using open components doesn't make a platform open. An open platform is one that isn't tied to a single vendor, which may involve the reference implementation being open source (eg, sockets), it may involve having multiple implementations (eg, HTML), but when you need to buy Adobe's development environment to edit and author arbitrary SWF then it's not "open" in any meaningful sense.

So tell me, mister bones, how does one develop general purpose flash without using Adobe's proprietary development environment?

Open systems with a single proprietary key component are open in name only.

Re:OOXML is "open" too.

[willy_me]

Your point is valid but there are exceptions.

An "open" spec (by my definition) will have the following properties:

- stable (not changing every year),
- easy to implement (relative to the task at hand),
- not designed to accept proprietary extensions (ie, ooxml binary blobs),
- defined update policy (third parties have to have a say in future versions).

The third point is critical as it allows for vender lock-in with an open format.

Now an "open" spec that lacks the requirements you mentioned isn't necessarily bad. If the single vendor is good enough with their implementation and there lacks sufficient motivation to produce alternatives then that's OK. So long as the properties I mentioned exist then there is nothing stopping an alternative implementation from being created when required.

Re:OOXML is "open" too.

[argent]

According to your third point DNS is not an open standard.

So long as the properties I mentioned exist then there is nothing stopping an alternative implementation from being created when required.

And when that happens then you can start talking about it being open enough to make its openness really matter.

Openness is not a binary quantity, but there are certain tipping points where openness really becomes meaningful.

* Encumbrance. An interface or protocol can be publicly documented, defined, and implemented, but be patent-encumbered.

* Control. An interface where the *effective* definition belongs to an open standards body. This is one place both OOXML and Flash fail. It's also been an area where Java has historically fallen short of openness.

* Implementation. "It's not open until it's forked" is one way of putting it. If you can take the reference implementation and replace it without losing essential functionality, then it's open. You can replace it by forking an pen source code base, or by making a new implementation from scratch.

* Platform independence. Flash fails this test because the reference implementation isn't available in a portable form. This is a common way for a single vendor to fall down.

The classic open systems platform is, of course, UNIX. UNIX was explicitly not encumbered: AT&T donated the only patent essential to its implementation to the public domain. The API was small, tight, and easily implemented... by 1983, there were multiple hosted implementations like Eunice and Phoenix, native implementations like Regulus, workalikes like Idris and OS/9, and hybrids like Lanetix and Cromix... not to mention the Software Tools project to provide the majority of the UNIX API purely as a library. AT&T owned the trademark and the reference implementation, but they had no control over the standard... as witness the complete failure of "Streams" in the networking market. As for platform independence... it pretty much defined the term.

Flash, on the other hand, has a single reference implementation, under the control of that implementation's owner, and it's complex enough that an independent implementation will never catch up to it any more than WINE can catch up to Windows.

what about the Lively Kernel?

[nolifetillpleather]

c'mon guys
http://research.sun.com/projects/lively/

DED vs. PT

[madmaxmedia]

Well, someone's gotta counteract Paul Thurrot ;-)

Also, I see you still have no reason to censor

[SuperKendall]

Since you still can't come up with anything wrong in what was actually an innocuous if opinionated summary of the technology, you have unfortunately applied the label "Uber Wanker" to yourself.

Just thought you should know, Mr. Uber Wanker.

I always let wankers have the last response so post away and I'll not bother you further. However since I and most other people do not read wankers mad ramblings, I'm not quite sure what ypu're buying there.

Re:Also, I see you still have no reason to censor

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Since you still can't come up with anything wrong in what was actually an innocuous

But I wasn't commenting on the articles content. I was explaining that we shouldn't reward the RD blog authors for spamming Digg.

so post away and I'll not bother you further.

God let's hope so - but considering you're the guy who thinks some spam is noble & just... who knows?

SproutCore isn't *that* young

[egghat]

SproutCore was built while SproutIT developed Mailroom. Mailroom was launched in February 2006 (Interview with Charles Jolley, SproutIt.com).

So the core is much older and tested rather well. The only thing that's new is the hype ...

Btw. The Ars Technica article on SproutCore is good as well SproutCore: rich web apps in JavaScript, no Flash needed

Re:SproutCore isn't *that* young

[virgil_disgr4ce]

Thanks for the reply and Ars Technica link. Yeah, "young" wasn't the right word, I meant more that it didn't appear to have nearly as many classes and modules as ExtJS, since that's the only other one I really knew about, and I also hadn't realized Sprout runs on RoR.

1/3 - Apple is 1/3 as green as nokia.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Although Recycle is less important than reuse.

Thanks for your agreement that Apple is 33% as green as Nokia.

Re:1/3 - Apple is 1/3 as green as nokia.

[Lars T.]

Thanks for your agreement that Apple is 33% as green as Nokia. Because I didn't bother destroying your other points? Whiney PC Dumboy, you're a hoot.

Re:1/3 - Apple is 1/3 as green as nokia.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Because I didn't bother destroying your other points.

Because you can't destroy my other points.

I look forward to your content-free reply.

Re:1/3 - Apple is 1/3 as green as nokia.

[Lars T.]

Says the guy who already swore that nobody could destroy even one of his three points. I won't waste my time with some ass who just claims things as fact that can easily be proven wrong. It is obviously your duty to prove your own words right.

Re:1/3 - Apple is 1/3 as green as nokia.

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

WMF: I look forward to your content-free reply.

LT: Says the guy who already swore that nobody could destroy even one of his three points. I won't waste my time with some ass who just claims things as fact that can easily be proven wrong. It is obviously your duty to prove your own words right.

It's like you're my sock puppet - you do everything exactly as I tell you.

Lets see if it works again - this time I predict that your reply will be both content-free & contain a not-particularly-intelligent insult.

Wolfcrier PC Dumboy

[Lars T.]

You keep lying, nobody needs to prove you wrong.

Just as I predicted!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

No content & a cheap insult!

I am proved correct (yet) again.

Re:Just as I predicted!

[Lars T.]

Pointing out you are a known liar is redundant, not without content.

Re:Just as I predicted!

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

Repeating yourself doesn't make you right - it makes your post without content.