Maqetta: Open Source HTML5 Editor From IBM

PybusJ writes "IBM has released an online HTML5 editing tool called Maqetta, hosted by the Dojo Foundation. eWeek calls it an open source answer to Flash and Silverlight. That remains to be seen, but it does look interesting."

Comments

Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good gosh, this thing actually makes Eclipse, NetBeans and Visual Studio feel fast and efficient.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[MemoryDragon]

Well the entire thing is coded in dhtml, not html5 but pure dhtml which scales down to firefox 3.5.
And actually it is not that slow, it is ok and what you can expect from a pure html + javascript solution.
The neat thing about this is, it puts out pure dojo widget code, which is heavens sent if you want to generate
dhtml forms rather quickly.
The downside is it pushes out the more easily readable pseudo tag code

which is slower on browsers which do not have document.querySelectorAll than the programmatic initialisation (nevertheless pseudo attributes are a no go before html5 as well where the syntax for those things was finally finalized)

Either way thanks ibm and this is a neat thing. The dojo library undeservedly is rather unknown it is one of the most extensive javascript libaries out there and one of the oldest as well, and one of the cleanest designed ones as well.
Jquery is utter junk compared to it, but it does not reach entirely the code quality of the YUI 3 lib.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should try it when the site's not been slashdotted...

Been using Maqetta for past week (read news via eWeek) and it's not that the site is slashdotted, it simply darn slow.. The things is slow even when running locally (the distribution is bundled with jetty 7).

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[PopeRatzo]

If that's the case, then this is further proof that "cloud computing" is a load of bullshit.

You're just figuring this out about "cloud computing"? Did you ever thing "cloud computing" was anything but a way to take away control from the individual? "Oh yeah, just put everything you are and do on some servers "out there". Why should you have everything that's of value to you where you can put your hands on it? It's more fun if you disperse it to the Cloud. And if you give me a hamburger today, I will gladly pay you back on Tuesday."

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Mr. DOS]

I have programmed with dojo several years and if you go to www.dojocampus.org you have quite a good documentation outside of that, there are several really good books.

Or you could just use jQuery, which has good official documentation, a good community, and is faster to boot.

Re:Holy fuck. It makes Eclipse and VS feel fast.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I would agree that the documentation is extensive on dojocampus.org if it wasn't so frequently vastly and utterly WRONG. I've been developing with Dojo since somewhere around .08 (circa 2005 I think) and even back then it was attrocious - but rightly so - it was a new project with an overwhelming number of people who jumped in the pool. And for versions 1.3 through 1.5 the documentation was often never updated. The documentation would say in big bold headers - This documentent is outdated please click here for the new documentation - which every single one of those links pointed to dojocampus.org - THE HOME PAGE, not the actual updated documentation for said specific feature - because more often than not that page DIDN'T EVEN EXIST. I'm not lazy and am willing to then research for the new answers except that if they existed they were so frequently wrong that I personally deem the dojo project and utter failure. Sure I was able to bend the framework to my needs when forced to, and figure out why the hell line 75,278 threw a JS error, but I would never start a project with that POS again.

And to even suggest books as an alternative indicates to me that you haven't worked with DOJO for a LONG time (by tech standards anyway) because the last books published for this pile of garbage were in 2008 - and they were some of the last books I will ever purchase on computing due to their innaccuracies and outdated mode of technical coverage. Even those books admittedly report that the content in the books is deprecated but should be applicable until version 2 - which was over 3 years ago - and they are still only at 1.6 and they are still just as innaccurate as they were in 2008 because those Russell is about as naive to think the interfaces would be backwards compatible for that long as equally naive he is on the practicallity of the framework to begin with.

And even had they been more accurrate (a feat I don't blame Russell for because no one could be expected to properly document about it in it's persistent state) they still let you down - Mastering Dojo should be a lot more than just how to use their widgets out of the box. I would have much rather seen more than 20 pages of documentation on how to use their abstract databinding interfaces for remote data in all of its variant forms with regard to a few key controls than over 100 pages of What is AJAX and Why use Object Oriented Programming in Javascript (WHICH IS A FUCNTIONAL LANGUAGE!!!!) Instead you get a grade school level of understanding when you expect a Black Belt level of intimacy as the pretty cover and double entendre would suggest.

When you have a javascript client side framework that is over 21 MB ZIPPED!!! you have a fundamental architectural and maintenance problem that is there to stay. It is a perfect concrete representation of the conceptual frustrations I have the the JAVA community as a whole and why I'm ashamed that I couldn't release my HTML based HTML composer that produces clean developer quality html markup before IBM released Maqetta because it's the type of solution that if done correctly can really spurr development versus wasting cycles on building a page from scratch every time - but when that development comes with the cost of DOJO that solution could just turn out to be a scar that nobody wants to revisit but for the wrong reasons.

Even the DOJO build systems are terrible - they do not work as designated and past that have platform incompatibilities that produce entirely different results from when you build on Windows versus Linux. The architecture promotes the direct importation of over 50 separate libraries without the build, which from a "designed for the masses" perspective is a FAIL because you end up with people who hack in the results and produce a lag time on page load that is worse than YUI in it's early days.

The widget aspect is nice, but the dependencies and points of frequent failure between them is unbearable. I've worked with some difficult and poorly documented sy

Re:Pronunciation

[Jagen]

from the FAQ;

'"Maqetta" is a spelling variation of the Spanish word for mock-up ("maqueta"). The team members pronounce the name as if the "q" were a "k".'

So, yes. :)

HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[RingDev]

HTML5 is not a Flash/Silverlight replacement. It does some things better, it does somethings worse, but for the majority of the functionality of Flash and Silverlight, HTML5 just doesn't do it.

There is awesome stuff you can do in HTML5 and Javascript, but it's still no replacement for a dedicated sandbox. Especially with the new hardware accelerated XNA 3-d graphics and sound coming from Silverlight 5.

-Rick

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[TheRaven64]

It would help if you could give some specifics. 'A dedicated sandbox' is a pretty meaningless thing, since all JavaScript does run in a dedicated sandbox. Some of the things HTML5 can do:

• OpenGL ES via WebGL.
• 2D vector art, either immediate mode via canvas tags or scene graphs via SVG.
• Audio and video playback, via (scriptable) audio and video tags.
• Get network data without going through HTTP via WebSocket.

So, what can you not do with HTML5 that you can do with Flash / Silverlight?

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[Threni]

I understand Google use flash for their file handling in the browser; ie adding attachments etc. Can you browse network drives, select multiple files, get their stats/remaining disk space etc in html5?

I don't want to sound trolly as I'm not a web developer. It seems people are trying to do more and more in the browser to make the online experience a bit less crap and more useful like a normal application, but with a sandbox based-security system. I had hoped that something better would replace the browser but that doesn't seem to have happened yet. Perhaps it will...after just another 5 or 10 new standards are added to the mix...

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[maxwell demon]

Silverlight doesn't work on Linux. Which means they can add features like crazy, I'm still not interested.

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[dkf]

So, what can you not do with HTML5 that you can do with Flash / Silverlight?

With HTML5, you can't lock yourself in to a big corporation's strategy for hating users in various ways.

Damn you HTML5 for making things open!!! :-)

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[RingDev]

Which is a great point for using the correct tool for the job. If your goal is 100% market penetration, you'll be writing HTML4 for years to come, so the debate over HTML5 vs Flash vs Silverlight is entirely moot anyway.

If you're willing to drop some small percent in favor of a more robust interface, you can switch to Flash. Drop some more and you're in HTML5/Silverlight penetration range.

But clearly, if your target audience is Linux users, you'll either not want to use Silverlight, or limit your functionality to that covered by Moonlight.

-Rick

Re:HTML5 != Flash/Silverlight

[itsdapead]

HTML5 is not a Flash/Silverlight replacement. It does some things better, it does somethings worse, but for the majority of the functionality of Flash and Silverlight, HTML5 just doesn't do it.

HTML5 + JavaScript/ECMAScript + SVG + WebGL have the potential to act as a delivery platform for most of what Flash/Actionscript does (I've used flash a lot, but haven't used Silverlight). Plus, there's node.js to potentially offer a server-side solution.

What's lacking currently is (a) nice development tools similar to Flash Pro or Flex (depending whether you want code-based or visual development), (b) a clear winner in the Javascript application framework stakes (Until TFA is de-slashdotted I assume Maqetta uses Dojo? ) and (c) reliable, mainstream browser support for all the associated technologies (e.g. SVG - essential for Flash-style 2D vector graphics and animation - is currently a pain in IE and disabled on most non-hacked Androids - particularly vexing when all the Fandroids keep bashing Apple for not supporting Flash).

Maybe Maqetta will offer a solution to (b) in the future.

Better then miss america

[spliffington]

Here is it. An open source answer to flash. Like Gimp to Photoshop. Here it is.

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[pmontra]

It could be worse. Italian's public broadcaster (http://www.rai.it) switched to Silverlight a long time ago, both for live streaming (all broadcast channels are replicated on the web) and for archives. I fire up one of those Windows VM I use for testing with IE when I really need to see something there. What would you say if BBC switched to Silverlight too?

Re:Why even mention silverlight?

[Bucc5062]

While I can appreciate your thoughts on the whole silverlight vs Linux issue (a home user of Ubuntu), I checked out the site and found it a truly fascinating tool. Were I to visit England I could see how this would be a great help in getting off the main tourist paths and really getting to see the countryside.

I do not see (or can find) an equivalent site for the United States. Perhaps because of our size it is harder to implement, perhaps our self centered politicos think that a site like this would take business away from honest entrepreneurs. No matter, the complaint is noted, but do regard that it is a good helpful site. I did a quick search and found this link for Linux users who do not have Moonlight installed.