http://cheetahtemplate.org/index.html
When we are doing web application development, one of the most tedious thing for developers is to modify the page layout to reach users' satisfaction. This kind of modification is most likely time-consuming and error prompt. A minor change in the HTML code requires time for communication with users (or designers), actually programming task, testing, and sometimes recompilation and deployment. Even though you seem to be able to make the change to match with users' expectation, sometimes, the change may introduce another bug and raise extra effort.
It would be good to have the web application layout totally managed by users (or designers), which programmers can concentrate on developing the back-end logic. Therefore, the community comes up with a solution by making use of template engine. The basic idea is that the template engine provide help to generate HTML code with templates, and leaving business logic separated from the display logic.
Since the two logics are separated, users and programmers can now work at the same time on different aspect of the system. This would lower the communication overhead and error rate as each party is now assign with their most familiar area of work. Besides, since templates can be saved in files, instead of compiled in code, the deployment would be much more easier.
The above link is a template engine written in Python, which maybe useful for our course project. If you are interested, you may also search for template engine in other languages, e.g. PHP, .Net, Java, and etc.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Ajax Pattern
http://ajaxpatterns.org/Patterns
You may have heard of design pattern in software development. There're patterns like Singleton, Composite and Strategy in software development. For Ajax application development, we also have some specific patterns.
The above Wiki site shows a list of pattern specifically for Ajax development. They range from high level (application feature) to low level (software architecture). There are real world examples stated in the site for some of the patterns. For example, you can find Google Suggest in the Suggest pattern.
Among those patterns, I'm particularly interested Periodic Refresh and Unique URLs. Periodic Refresh is one of the AJAX application feature I use most of the time (in GMail and Google Reader). It is really useful in helping me keeping up-to-date and alerted.
Unique URLs may not seem to be useful to you. But when you try more AJAX application, you will find that bookmarking an exact URL in it. In the users' point of view, the bookmarking of these URLs would be preferable. To solve this mismatch between technology and user requirement, the pattern Unique URLs is proposed. It make use of the "#" character in URL (like what we did for HTML anchors), which I think is a bit tricky but a bright idea.
Next time, when we are going to develop an AJAX application, we may go there and see if it give us some new idea on how should our application look like.
You may have heard of design pattern in software development. There're patterns like Singleton, Composite and Strategy in software development. For Ajax application development, we also have some specific patterns.
The above Wiki site shows a list of pattern specifically for Ajax development. They range from high level (application feature) to low level (software architecture). There are real world examples stated in the site for some of the patterns. For example, you can find Google Suggest in the Suggest pattern.
Among those patterns, I'm particularly interested Periodic Refresh and Unique URLs. Periodic Refresh is one of the AJAX application feature I use most of the time (in GMail and Google Reader). It is really useful in helping me keeping up-to-date and alerted.
Unique URLs may not seem to be useful to you. But when you try more AJAX application, you will find that bookmarking an exact URL in it. In the users' point of view, the bookmarking of these URLs would be preferable. To solve this mismatch between technology and user requirement, the pattern Unique URLs is proposed. It make use of the "#" character in URL (like what we did for HTML anchors), which I think is a bit tricky but a bright idea.
Next time, when we are going to develop an AJAX application, we may go there and see if it give us some new idea on how should our application look like.
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