I know Flex MXML / AS3 very well. I also have good knowledge in C#,XAML and ASP.NET.
I will be forced in the next years to do more HTML (Webapps) work. I could take ASP.NET but i dont like it really as i have to care about all that browser specific things and coding Javascript ist just horrible when you come from C# and AS3. Also ASP.NET isnt just as smooth in writing and using Components as it is in MXML or XAML. MXML (with FDT not FlashBuilder) and XAML also have awesome tooling for their Markuplanguage and their business language which i need.
I know some Java too and willing to learn a new language if gives me what i need.
I took a look at Vaadin and GWT but both seem to lack a Markuplanguage. Beeing Searchengine friendly would also be a big plus. Any Recommendations ?
Considering the HTML 5.0 standards going forward and the admission of Adobe that they'll be dropping support for Flex you might want to look at ASP.Net
Also remember that Microsoft is going to stop doing Silverlight stuff
It's not what you want to hear, but it's an option you may have to pursue.
Here are some options:
Haxe
OpenLaszlo
Laszlo White Paper
Breaking OpenLaszlo loose from XML data
The Server-side Architecture Behind OpenLaszlo Applications (pdf)
SWF Scout SDK
Swiff Chart Generator
Tour de Flex
OpenLaszlo Whitepaper
SVG-Based User Interface Framework
Related
I am trying to learn ASP.NET (C#) and the biggest struggle I am having is the design aspects of it. I have primarily been a windows form designer. All of the projects I have worked on have used windows forms and it was much more intuitive and cleaner to design in than HTML/CSS. I am trying to learn how to design web pages, but it seems all "design" needs to be done in CSS. How do you design something you don't see and just use pixels and references to other objects? I don't see how you design anything that way.
What is the best way for me to be able to effectively design for websites using CSS and ASP.NET coming from a more visual approach of windows forms? I have read 3 books on ASP.NET and it makes sense but all of the design is done is source views and CSS sheets. Is there another method or approach I should be aware of? I am using VS 2015 BTW as my IDE.
Please and thanks
CSS and HTML are the building blocks of the Web. Like you, I used to struggle moving from the Drag and Drop world of VS 2003 after initially starting out with just Netscape and Notepad in college. Drag and Drop, like Web Forms, is an unhealthy layer of abstraction in that it removes us from a true understanding of how the Web works.
Just accept that this is the nature of things and stop fighting it. Back in the days of VS 2003, our team would set up VS so as to never default to the designer panel when starting or opening projects. Besides, the tool was totally undependable and created a tangled Frontpage-style mess of so-called HTML.
Make the switch to pure, semantic markup and CSS. Download a good template from a site like Creative Market (I usually search using "Bootstrap 3") to learn from. Study HTML5, CSS3 and RWD (Responsive Web Design) and let yourself have some fun. Yes, it really CAN be fun.
Work by switching from your IDE to the browser and back again.
I'm using a Windows Form Application in Visual Studio 2013 to design a prototype for a software. I'm not a software-developer, the only purpose of the project is to communicate with the dev-team to let them know what the end-product is supposed to look like.
There is not really much flexibility when it comes to designing control, like buttons, textboxes, etc. so I was wondering if it is possible to attach stylesheets to VB.NET projects? Thank you
There is not really much flexibility when it comes to designing
control, like buttons, textboxes, etc.
NO. winforms is a really old technology that basically has no amount of built-in support for custom UIs. It is not recommended for any new projects (only to maintain legacy applications) and it will be completely useless if you're not a developer, since any sort of custom look and feel needs to be done with an ugly procedural code technique called "owner draw", which requires too much code for anything, and is unable to provide professional-looking UIs due to the lack of hardware acceleration and lack of support for pixel-independent UIs.
If you're doing a prototype (as opposed to a real application), as others have recommended, you should use design tools such as Photoshop, or maybe a quick HTML + CSS kind of approach.
Otherwise, you can easily create a modern-looking application using a technology that is the replacement of winforms, called Windows Presentation Foundation, or WPF, for short.
There's also a design tool made specifically for this technology, called Expression Blend, which is bundled with recent versions of Visual Studio, and offers a very designer-centric approach to building UIs:
To summarize: winforms is useless. Use proper, relevant, current technology instead.
There are no such things as stylesheets in WinForms applications. You can change the appareance on a form and control basis by changing the Appearance properties.
You can create base controls and forms that have your appearance changes and then use those to create other forms to make things easier to design out the screen.
There are also 3rd party control sets that do have skins/themes, which maybe what you want but you have to purchase them first then you are limited to that control suite.
When I develop applications for the web, I usually have the html for the layout, the css for the looks, the javascript (or css3 if supported) for the fancy animations and a server-side scripting language (php, python, ruby) to do the database, CRUD and calculations stuff.
I recently had an idea for a standalone desktop application.
I've spent some time looking around on numerous sites to get a basic understanding on how it would work, but I think the only thing I understood was that it does not work like I am used to.
My questions at this point are the following:
1) How does the interaction between Application and Frontend (design) work? Is it like html/css in which you "inject" data and get responses via actions (buttons, links, forms etc.) or is it different?
2) Specificly, if I'd develop with c++, how do I get from a console output to a GUI, and how do can I do "fancy stuff" (so to say) like I do with jquery, for example?
3) I took a look at both Flex and Titanium. If I understand correctly, they offer the possibility to publish web applications written in html/css and either AS3, Flex or Python/Ruby to the desktop. But are they "good"? (if you pardon this silly question, I hope you understand what I mean :D )
I'm sorry if I misunderstood everything terribly, have mercy with my ignorance :)
EDIT 13/Jul/2011: I'm particularly confused about the basic structure. Is it like MVC?
well if your app is to be data-centric , I would probably go with Flex. It is very powerful if you want to make RIA(rich internet applications) or desktop apps via adobe AIR. And, since you already are comfortable with designing websites via a markup language you will like MXML (though you can bypass that and program entirely in AS3, as it just compiles the mxml into AS3). You may also continue to use CSS style sheets or other various skinning techniques to style your app. Air will allow you to communicate with the client through a variety of protocols and both manipulate and store it on the client side.The AS3 compiles to a .SWF file and is then held in an HTML "wrapper", but I believe it does support embedding of html.
Hope that is what you were looking for!
I'm being a ASP.NET developer over years but recently I started to work with some PrimeFaces solutions with JSF 2.0. I haven't nothing to complain about it.
It is worth emphasizing a few points that did me likes the PrimeFaces: many components, easy to use, fully based on jQuery and jQuery UI (which are very important to me) and very focused on web standards (even more important to me).
But there are some cases that I would really want my server-side with ASP.NET. I don't want to start a discussion here about advantages between JSP and ASP.NET, both has many motives to be used.
Well, the standard ASP.NET components aren't jQuery based, aren't themable with jQuery UI Themes, aren't fully based on web standards (a big problem) and the variability is much more simple (there aren't Carousel, Accordion, Captcha, Slider, Spinner, etc, etc, etc).
EDIT
Continuing the saga, the #Raynos answers inspired me to study lighter possibilities, like the suggested manos. But I really would like something a little more automated, at least in the HTML generation for common controls. Someone known working CRUD samples for manos or additional modules supporting this task?
Recalling that the main question is still open anyway: Do you know any UI Framework for ASP.NET based on the same ideas of PrimeFaces, prefered open-source like it is?
I suppose we cannot answer your question with something simple. As showed by other answers, unfortunately we don't have in ASP.NET any UI framework fully web standards based.
You surelly have that choice about not using ASP.NET but another .NET Framework based engine. I really think that ASP.NET MVC would be the more closest to JSF and so to PrimeFaces. But it haven't a large set of builtin controls based on jQuery as you liked on PrimeFaces. Also, if you only used up to now the vanilla ASP.NET, the MVC concept can be very confusing to start through a professional project.
It may be safer to continue with your technology knowledge while learning something totally new. Even so I don't indicate manos to your project, although it shows to be very light and stable. Furthermore, with it you would need to "recreate the wheel" for many tasks that ASP.NET knows to do well within the standards and such.
Based on these arguments, it seems that in your case you (or your team) is so familiar with ASP.NET that your immediate need is to use good tools to improve the shortcomings of ASP.NET on HTML5, web standards and themes. Then you don't need to change everything you knows right now, just improve what you already know (and of course we recommend that you consider these other approaches gradually).
So let a few helpful hints for you:
First read about and download a sample of a good architecture using HTML5, jQuery and jQuery UI. This post covers all those technologies and have the full source code to download.
Also have in mind that you don't need start your project from scratch. There is the great HTML5 BoilerPlate which comes with dozens of good pratices (and a nice Web.config created with many nice ideas). Important note that it's also based on jQuery as you want.
Maybe you already have some incredible themes created for PrimeFaces and you would like to use on your ASP.NET projet. Then remember: to take advantage of the jQuery UI Themes you just needs using class names and DOM hierarchy. If your PrimeFaces Complex DataTable gerenates an incredible HTML which is so beautifull with your CSS, just use the same generated HTML inside a UserControl so you can reuse it around all yours pages without needing rewriting all the HTML.
Also remember that PrimeFaces is opensource and because of it you always can open the sources, read the jQuery codes and reuse what you really think are perfect for you.
Then, finally, there are many tools and approaches to support you enjoy what you've done with PrimeFaces and also enjoy your existing knowledge in ASP.NET. Unfortunately we don't have done something like this to ASP.NET, but maybe what you'll do will be so good that you can publish opensource for everyone?
PrimeFaces for ASP.NET is announced. http://blog.primefaces.org/?p=2128
Sounds like you need ASP.Net MVC instead of ASP.Net Web Forms, this gives you much more control.
You have the asp.net mvc html helpers toolkit, see: http://weblogs.asp.net/gunnarpeipman/archive/2010/08/16/asp-net-mvc-meets-html5.aspx
I'm not aware of great open-source .NET integrated UIs, but Telerik RadControls are themeable (sp?), standards compliant, integrated with ASP.NET, and built with jQuery. They are really great if you have a few hundred dollars to burn.
Otherwise, AjaxControlToolkit is integrated with ASP.NET and open source but I'm not crazy about it. It's not based on jQuery but I think it is standards compliant.
Sadly, the open source communities tend to shy away from .NET (and Microsoft in general).
PrimeFaces For .NET Cancelled
PrimeFaces for ASP.NET WebForms project has been cancelled after two releases and as PrimeTek we have decided not to do further investments. Instead of .NET, our secondary focus will be PrimeUI who is very close to 1.0 release already and can be used with any web framework.
You can check out the PrimeUI library which is:
a collection of rich javascript widgets based on jQuery UI. PrimeUI is a spin-off from the popular JavaServer Faces Component Suite, PrimeFaces.
Recently our newest web designer asked me why we use ASP.NET for our website. Reading through his question to the real one, I started thinking about it myself. Why are we using ASP.NET for web development?
The problem we find so far is colaboration between the design team and developers. Typically our designers create some snazzy cool look crayon laced web pages, then show them off for approval in all their glory. Once approved, the developers rip the HTML out and shove it in to ASP master and detail pages, and huzzah! out comes pretty website.
Since Dreamweaver doesn't play nice with Visual Studio, this is the same process for even small tweaks and changes. I would prefer to just write the backend and let the designers draw the pretty pictures and fancy CSS. Our current websites have plenty of reason to use ASP on nearly every page, so I can't do half in HTML, the other half in ASP.
I have no aversion to doing something else, another language, CMS platform, some other random buzzword, etc...
What are your experiences with this design situation? Are we doing it the hard way? Should we consider alternate platforms and languages? Are there any good, proven ways to allow designers to work on ASP (while still using Dreamweaver)?
Start learning Asp.net MVC as soon as possible. Designers will love you for that. :) And you'll be up to date with new development technologies that will also make your solutions much more robust and less complicated.
But otherwise. Designers should be able to read XHTML fluently. Learning asp.net semantics shouldn't be too hard. Then give then Visual Studio where they can manipulate content. As long as they know how asp.net web forms work things should be fine. They'll probably be able to do majority of things using just CSS. I know I can. Sometimes I do have to check resulting HTML, but it works.
Aside from Wicket (a java web framework), I don't know of any framework or language that would allow designers to continue to work on the design once developers have started to add logic to it.
I would suggest two things though:
Use a MVC framework - ASP.NET MVC, Ruby on Rails, Django, etc since this allows for far more separation of presentation and logic
Keep your presentation layer as stupid as possible and use helpers as much as possible or even better, put the logic in the domain objects. The view should only show or get data with absolutely no logic for processing data, this will keep the pages much more designer friendly.
I find your question very interesting because no matter what kind of technology the project uses the interfaces between the different roles will always cause some friction. I am not sure if there is a technological solution to this communication issue because the designer and developer speak literally different languages.
Depending on the skillset of your designers and developers an additional layer might help you out. I do not know how ASPX works but i am sure there will equivalents to the concepts of other technologies.
In case you have mainly static content which can be expressed in XML than you could provide the backend which delivers the content in XML with a defined Schema and your designers could describe the transformation in XHTML and CSS via XSLT. Given that your designer are capable using XHTML and CSS the addtional effort to learn XML and XSLT is not that huge. I find this solution much powerful than template languages which try to emulate the richness of the serverside scripting language in their own limited constructs. In case you have dynamic elements on the clientside like DHTML, AJAX or you name it you could define your own xml tags which are transformed to richer client side objects after the designer did their work. I guess the designer will understand the usage of these special tags and you provide the proper translation into client side objects.
I used this approach with some coworkes based on PHP. PHP was only the driver for the transformation. The content was assembled into xml with special tags which were transformed into XHTML and CSS via XSLT. Once the objects and the transformation for the different objects is defined you build up a library which can help to shorten the developement cycle of new pages of you webapplication. The benefit of the extra work is, that you designer can change the layout of the page without ever touching you server side code.
Maybe this helps.
Consider using either Expression Web or SharePoint Designer. The latter is now free.
I know you specify dreamweaver, but have you looked at Blend? It plays very nice with Visual Studio and is quite a nice app. to work with.