Hey Jonathon, it's great to get your point of view on this.
That said, I'm sure you know mine is coming... ;) Don't worry I'm not going to attack what you said, but rather hopefully just explain some anomalies.
On Feb 26, 2007, at 5:05 PM, Jonathon -- Improov wrote:
Since they're talking about the UI, then they are somewhat correct. Some of the UI use Freemarker, some use form widgets. Also, there's a great deal of refactoring going on at the moment for UI (by Adrian Crumm). One of the problems with CSS styles usage, just to name one UI problem, is that styles don't describe the content but the UI attributes instead.
The ecommerce UI is 100% FreeMarker, the form widget is not used because the customer facing stuff is meant to be customized in a very visual way.
In general, the UI isn't as cleanly coded as it should be.
This is certainly true, and probably always will be. However, for many it doesn't matter so much...
But then again, large variety of coding constructs in the UI are to be expected, and are less crippling than similar mess in the backend modules. Developers generally place less emphasis on UI than backend, since UIs are really much easier to correct in comparison.
The reason it is how it is now is that very few people have the motivation and means to improve it. Most of the web design folks don't really use the HTML or CSS from the base template AT ALL.
A good web design company will start with a graphic design, code it up in HTML/CSS, and then put that HTML/CSS into the dynamic templates (FTL files), replacing the dummy text from the design with dynamic code as needed.
Two points on this:1. there is no natural feedback cycle here to improve the open source project 2. for projects that take this approach the current HTML and CSS practices in OFBiz are only an example and are mostly thrown away for real world use
I don't know about $2500 pricetag for doing up the UI alone. At double that price, you could have a whole new OFBiz tailored for your organization (without data migration from legacy systems).
Wow, where could I get that? If I could get a sub-contractor to do that much for that price I'd make a killing!
Please do share...
> but I think doubling the price right around the time that the project should> be completed is not good business.Oh. Your developers should've fully assessed OFBiz in the early stages. This tells me one of many possible things: your contractor may not be very IT-savvy, and couldn't assess OFBiz himself/herself nor afford a capital outlay to hire a team to do the assessment before he/she took the project from you.
This is a good point. For ecommerce stuff, another important thing is to make sure they have web design and dynamic web site experience.
Lastly, we need to understand that OFBiz is open source. We didn't pay anything to use it (unless you bought the docs!)
If you buy anything from anyone that's what you're buying. You are NEVER buying OFBiz itself. I assume you are referring to the training materials from Undersun (well, now from Hotwax). If so, you are not buying it from "OFBiz" or any organization that owns any of OFBiz. If you buy the training materials you are paying to use them, not to use OFBiz, in any way imaginable.
I know, the initial knee-jerk reaction is to ask: "Why'd they represent it as thus?". Call it bad or inaccurate or back-firing marketing if you want, but OFBiz is a solid platform to work with, and it's free.
This is a good point too Jonathon. It does make me wonder though what Eric saw that represented things to be different than they are. Eric, perhaps you could comment on that? Was it something on an OFBiz site or in OFBiz documentation?
-David
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