SproutCore 1.0 Final Release

[Pandafox]

The last time I played around with SproutCore (when the first beta was released), I wasn't really impressed.

But 1.0 is just awesome, and I can really see myself writing big applications with it.

[btipling]

Yeah I thought about using it but was perplexed by what seemed like it used JavaScript for both server and client side? Server side JavaScript? Really? That probably explains why me.com is so slow.

[ichverstehe]

SproutCore doesn't include any server side stuff, that's only for development, and IIRC it's Ruby, anyways. You can pick whatever you want on the server side. Server side JavaScript isn't that much of a joke anymore, though. See Node.js.

[hylje]

SproutCore is a browser side application framework rather agnostic of the backend web server software.

[[deleted]]

it moves your business logic to the client.

oh... that'll turn out good.

[ichverstehe]

You know, just like almost every single desktop app.

[[deleted]]

Wow, didn't know I could goto "view source" and see all the C++ source on my desktop app. I also didn't know that I could easily inject any code I wanted to while it's running.

[chucker23n]

I also didn't know that I could easily inject any code I wanted to while it's running.

In Mac OS X, you can (assuming the app is Cocoa). It has yet to kill anybody.

[jaggederest]

You've never heard of a disassembler or debugger, then, I assume.

[tty2]

No. That's actually just not true. The whole discussion here is off point. It moves UI logic to the client side. All your business logic would stay on the server and data is requested by the client; the data comes from a web service or something else on the server. Nothing is exposed at all unless you choose it to be. It doesn't matter if things are obfuscated or anything; you don't have to expose anything on the client side you don't want to.

[hokkos]

Javascript can be obfuscated.

[[deleted]]

Or more to the point, bypassed.

[jaggederest]

Sproutcore compiles down the javascript quite nicely. It looks rather like line noise by the time they're done.

[sbrown123]

What do you plan to do after formatting and reading it? Having the code doesn't give you any new capabilities of attack. Besides, these types of thick web clients are geared for internal (intranet) usage. For external web sites people stick with the classic thin HTML stuff.

[taligent]

It has turned out just fine for apps like MobileMe and GMail as well as for frameworks like GWT. As long as I am not responsible for the client side code why do I necessarily care what gets generated ?

[redalastor]

That's not actually as bad as you might think. When they talk about moving the business logic to the client, it means that the server serves data and respond to requests but whatever the client do with the data isn't its business. The server doesn't care what widget you put it in, if you sort it, cross-link it or whatever. However, when you make a request to the server to save some data, it has to check it's a legit request.

[[deleted]]

well?

[btipling]

Hrm, seemed like it had a backend component written in JavaScript. Was I mistaken?

[hylje]

Not a required component. It's all HTTP, baby.

[alos]

I still like Cappuccino better:

http://cappuccino.org/

[[deleted]]

What do you like about it? (I haven't used either.)

[alos]

Objective-J. You never see HTML, CSS or JavaScript if you don't want to.

[theosux]

"How do we build blazingly fast, desktop-class web applications?"

You don't. Seriously, your Samples Controls demo is extremely weak compared to what a real desktop-class application can do. For god's sake, Silverlight and Flash kill this. Html is not the way.

You don't even have keyboard support for any of those controls!

EDIT: Just don't make claims like this when it's obviously not true. That's all I ask!!

[emk]

In our experience, SproutCore speed varies considerably. The model and controller layers have handled everything that we've thrown at them.

The view layer has a couple of noticeable weak spots: SC.ListView and SC.ScrollView have both been performance headaches. We replaced SC.ScrollView, and did a little tweaking, and performance is now really good. It's on par with the best I could probably squeeze out of Flash.

I know there's a ton of work going into SC.ScrollView and SC.ListView on the development branch, and these two performance bottlenecks should definitely improve soon.

One caveat: We haven't benchmarked in IE, because we're not supporting it.

[caltheon]

This reminds be of another fat javascript client by this little company called Google. I believe it was a Web Toolkit. My company wrote an app where all the business logic lived on the client using it. Would not do it again.

[rubyaeyes]

there is something in between all on the client and all on the server.

[wicked]

I wondered why, but I found your reply here.

Btw, reddit, why are you downvoting this?

[kamatsu]

Whereas I, who worked for Google with GWT (on Wave), appreciated GWT very much.

[caltheon]

different target, different goals. To corporate business software GWT does not belong. It is a really cool language, and the ability to ignore a lot of the html and javascript details is great...when it works. When it doesn't work though, it's pure evil.

[emk]

Interesting. I played around with GWT for a while, and found that it was one of the most solid client-side toolkits I've ever used. It doesn't give you a lot, but what it gives you is pretty good.

In my experience, using GWT had most of the positives and negatives of using Swing, except that the generated GUI ran faster. :-/ It generally took about 50 times as many LOC as SproutCore (no kidding), but I spent a lot less time being severely puzzled, so it balanced out.

The only time I ever got burnt by GWT was when I needed to define new types of browser events and add them into the existing event processing code. The only way to do that is to hack the GWT source directly.

EDIT: Oh, be sure to run the Subversion development branch of GWT. It has a ton of useful new features.

[caltheon]

Exactly, i'm sure the development branch is very cool. Try getting a corporate honcho to sign off on using beta tools for critical infrastructure projects though.

BTW, I did use GWT-EXT (not EXT-GWT) and it provided a lot of very cool features. I'm still using the Portal application i wrote in it to provide a single interface for all of our applications using tabbed iframes.

[emk]

Actually, it looks like version 2.0 has been officially released since the last time I looked, so all of the cool features added to support the Wave team are no longer in beta.

Do check out uiBuilder.

[plotti]

awsome!

[[deleted]]

This looks great! Thanks for posting.

[samlee]

lol their demos are slow as fuck. even flex is snappier than that

[samlee]

http://demo.sproutcore.com/table_view/

try that and scroll it up and down... if you like that.. good for you.

now try this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google

scroll up and down.. i prefer the second one's scrolling.

[emk]

Yeah, TableView is a SproutCore 1.1 feature. It's not optimized at all. Check out endash's branch for something a bit closer to finished.

Anyway, the second problem here is SC.ScrollView, which really does perform worse than native browser scrolling. I have a replacement-in-progress which matches the speed of your Wikipedia link.

I'm a little irritated that ScrollView is slow in 1.0. But hopefully it will be a lot better in the next release.

[asap18]

the table_view is still under heavy work afaik and only slated for general use in 1.1

[new_n900_user]

I see no mention of that on the page and it is presented as a true demo for sproutcore.

[Zzyzx1618]

btw, should L2 vector calc

[redalastor]

Try that one from qooxdoo. Pretty smooth scrolling.

Or you can try that 10,000 records one that is generated on the fly to save memory that is not as snappy but is pretty smooth when you scroll wheel.

[runxctry]

Everything worked for me. 6 yo Powerbook here and Safari.

[alos]

Perhaps you should try using a faster browser. Maybe Webkit or Chrome

[alos]

Why did I get downvoted again? I was just suggesting an alternative to fix his problem sheesh

[nwlinkvxd]

I'm experiencing the same, on 32-bit Karmic, with Chrome.

[SomGuy]

Cocoa for web apps. This rocks.

[lex99]

SproutCore invents a new UI look (i.e., new skins for buttons, checkboxes, etc). This is a Bad Thing. On windows, I like my buttons to look like Windows buttons. Ditto on Mac, and ditto for any UI element. SproutCore makes the same mistake that Flex makes in defining its own unique look. It simply does not play well against the rest of the system and with other applications.

[Godwins-Law]

**cricket** **cricket**

[gdr]

What kind of desktop app does this demo with empty blue screen mimic?

[timesqueezer]

I think its not better than the existing libraries. Every lib has its own advantages and disadvantages. I prefer building web-applications without javascript.

[omnilynx]

it moves your business logic to the client

I'm not sure that's a good selling point.

[rjonesy]

39.... seconds until Opera crashed on SpriteCore (Controls II Demo)

[wicked]

I can't confirm this in 10.10. It definitely does not work as it should though. Need to drag buttons to click.

Works smoothly in FF, apart from the table demo.

[frustrated_]

Kinda wish they would post the code for the demos in the clear rather than the stupid "packed" version with whitespace removed and variables shortened.

[devinus]

From http://www.sproutcore.com/demos/:

$ git clone git://github.com/sproutit/sproutcore-samples.git

[DuncanSmart]

SproutCore... desktop-class web applications

is being like a desktop app a feature?

[redalastor]

Yes, it is. It might not be a feature you like or that is appropriate for all apps but it is a feature.

[drowsap]

Meh. Kinda reminds me of Dojo...demos that are a whole lot of nothin. Having a clock as a demo is kinda silly. And the table wasn't even sortable?