Struts1 is arguably the most successful web framework, but it always felt heavy. It's how I found WebWork, which I am convinced is the greatest web framework. When WebWork made the move to Apache as Struts 2, I was excited since it meant this great framework would continue on after the great work by Jason and Patrick after Rickard's original masterpiece (I am sure there are others but those are the ones I know).
So now we have been Struts 2 since Jan 29, 2007. I think there have been great improvements during its almost two year stay, but I worry that recently the project suffers from either two many cooks or not enough generals. I know I am barely good enough to use Struts2, so I am certainly not nominating myself as any kind of solution, but I wonder if others share my worries. We all use Struts2 because it is such a powerful and flexible framework. It makes many more patterns easy than it makes hard and is fairly easy to understand at the level you need to be useful with it. But we commit to Struts2 because we believe it has a future and because many others like us believe that too. In order for this to be true, Struts2 needs to progress with a unified vision and efficient releases that move the platform forward. There is lots of competition out there, Rails, Grails, Spring MVC, Wicket, Stripes, Seam among a 100 others. I think Struts2 is positioned to capture a large part of that market but I also think there are things that need to be addressed to do so: * OGNL - Is is staying? Is it going? Can it be secure? Is it fast enough? * Convention - Buzz factor to me, but buzz none the less. I type pretty fast. * REST - Great way to organize web based applications * Lower Level Customization Documentation - ActionMapper, Configuration Manager, Plugin Patterns -- How to get the most out of Struts2 by understanding not only how it works but how customize it to meet your needs. * Model and Service Layer - We know Struts2 is a web framework and its good at it. So there is Appfuse and that is something I have worked on. Stripping down Appfuse and hopefully making some kind of Groovy-based Model, Service, Action, View generator. More on that here: http://www.nabble.com/RE%3A-Getting-ready-for-Struts-2.1.1-td17446803s2369.html#a17461105. I think the plan is good, but I haven't done as much as I need to yet * AJAX - Never been a fan of the Dojo tags -- DWR? Prototype/Scriptaculous? JQuery? I used proto and scriptac for a while but I have moved to JQuery recently. * Stable and public API to keep backward compatibility * Portlets are still first class citizens? How do we tackle all this? Do we have a meeting? Do we create a Chief who can make decisions for better or for worse? Clearly decisions need to be made. Do we start StrutsCon 2009 and lock everyone in a room until the decisions are made? I started to also write apps in Rails and I promised myself I would learn Grails to stay current, but judging from Phillip's session at JavaOne and the traffic on the mailing list there is still A LOT of interest in S2. Ideas? Volunteers? Beueller? "So little to do and so much time. Wait. Strike that. Reverse it." -Willy Wonka http://www.nabble.com/-s2--2.1-to-2.5-Roadmap-discussions-td17585419.html#a17585419 http://www.nabble.com/-s2--Roadmap-%28was-Tag-it-and-Roll-it-%29-td5474867.html#a5474867 -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Concerned-Strutszien%3A-A-Manifesto-tp20053620p20053620.html Sent from the Struts - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
