There are a few problems to which jQuery isn't a good solution at present:
1) If you have to work with certain design patterns, either out of personal preference or because that's how your organisation works, jQuery will allow you to do that. For example, I rolled my own MVC framework on top of jQuery with no problems. However, it would have been beneficial to have had a known, well-supported MVC framework to use off-the-shelf. For someone coming into JS development from other areas where these frameworks are just part of the standard toolset, jQuery can appear a bit too minimalist. 2) There's a lot of stuff being done in support for RESTful Ajax (the RESTful JSON stuff is v. cool imo). Again, jQuery has no explicit support beyond allowing you to do Ajax calls. This is great, but it would save on development time if there were standard libraries that could support common REST patterns. 3) I know jQuery UI supports widgets, but it's a long way off being a comprehensive UI/widget framework. 4) No real support for data handling. That means ORM for stuff like Adobe AIR SQL databases (or other SQL databases), no particular support for ActiveResource-style use of remote data as a data source (see #2). Basically, jQuery is awesome for handling the DOM, but what if your data lives somewhere else, and most of your app revolves around manipulating that data? However, none of these are really a good fit for jQuery core. Adding them to jQuery core would increase code size, increase complexity, add new paradigms and generally confuse everyone. The reason I love jQuery and use it ahead of Dojo every time is because I can work out how I'm going to use it in my head, only occasionally referring to the docs. But I like Justin's idea of creating a layer on top of jQuery that would provide a lot of the 'enterprise' stuff. I've been reading Martin Fowler's Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture recently (it was a Christmas present!) and I'm struck by just how useful those patterns are. It would be great to have some pattern implementations that sit on top of jQuery. The project I'm working on at the moment (with the self-created MVC framework) is an Adobe AIR app for internal use within a business as part of an Enterprise Resource Planning system. It's a long way away from being 'just' a website, and I think that having the kind of tools that Justin talks about would be genuinely useful to me. Maybe I'm not a typical user though. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "jQuery Development" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-dev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
