Thanks Jeff. One goal is definitely to make the admin console more interactive and user friendly. I'm also hoping we can go one step further in making Geronimo more AJAX friendly as a platform. My suggestion is that we could take a step in that direction by separating the Dojo resources into a native web application where they can be shared by many applications and so AJAX enabled applications can take advantage of Geronimo's gbean capabilities (versioning, deployment, lifecycle controls, etc). These are the basic kinds of luxuries that developers often take for granted with JAR files, and I think AJAX developers would like to take advantage of just as well.
Best wishes, Paul On 8/11/06, Jeff Genender <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Paul, Yes...this idea has my full support. The more user friendly and better experience of the console only puts us ahead of the game. The few AJAX components we have already (thermometers) has garnered a lot of positive feedback, so the more, the merrier ;-) Jeff Paul McMahan wrote: > Dojo is a popular open source AJAX library that's available under the > BSD and Academic Free licenses. The DayTrader folks use it in the web > UI they recently announced on the Geronimo dev list and Chris used it > in the nice LDAP UI he did for GERONIMO-1823. I would also like to > start introducing some use of it into the Geronimo admin console when > its appropriate to do so. > > The way that developers usually incorporate an AJAX library into their > applications is by making a copy of its static files (javascript, css, > gifs, etc) in their webapp and referencing them from their servlets > and JSPs. The obvious downside is that each application has a > separate copy of the AJAX library, increasing the server's overall > disk footprint (Dojo is ~3mb) and preventing the browser from using a > single copy of the library files from its cache. Another downside is > that the AJAX library can't be upgraded independently from the web > application. > > I think it would be great if Geronimo could provide a more AJAX > friendly development environment by helping solve these problems. One > idea is that Geronimo could include the Dojo library as a native, > standalone webapp with its AJAX library files laid out so that other > applications can point at from their HTML. Referencing it in > geronimo-web.xml would cause Geronimo to start it up and make its > files available at some predetermined context root, say /dojo. > Referencing it with a versionless moduleId would make sure the most > recent version is always used. So AJAX enabling your application in > Geronimo would be a simple as "add this line to your > geronimo-web.xml". > > Does this sound like a good idea? Any suggestions or concerns? > Perhaps this could be done as a plugin instead of a native module? > > Best wishes, > Paul
