Thank you for your feedback and taking the time to look at Dash. It is very
much appreciated. Let me try to clear a few things up for you and explain
things further. ;-)
> When we do projects, we don't want any code getting involved in the design
> (or look and feel) of the pages - that's the job of the page designers, on
> an ongoing basis, not something they hand over to our servlet framework.
Right, as I said before, when we do web applications, Clear Ink works in a
totally different model than that. I think that is the part that is hard for
you people to understand. Innovation is sometimes hard to explain. ;-)
So, how do you handle security for your site? How do you track users around
your site? Do you have to make sure to include something at the top of each
and every page that you want to make secure? The design of the Dash
framework prevents you from having to do that. The single entry point
approach is definately the most secure method of creating web applications
because it leaves the least room for error.
> I don't think that JSP is trying to combine the two; it's giving people
> freedom to screw up however they want, or to architect however they want.
> IMHO this is a good thing. The maintenance of the pages should be the
> realm of people with graphics skill, not programmers like me who can't
> draw stick men. JSP allows you to do MVC, it also allows you to not do it.
> But it doesn't force it either way.
I'm an engineer as well. I can't draw stick men either. Look at the
working-dogs.com site. I did that...I'm obviously not a very good designer.
;-) On the other hand, we have done sites for our clients (including our own
site) using the design concepts of Dash that are quite beautiful.
Obviously this works really well for us and I would like to share with the
rest of you something cool and innovative. Instead of looking just at what
you think might be shortcomings, please open your mind to something new and
different. ;-) That is all that I ask.
The issue is that for web applications, we really do not see a need to give
the designers the ability to screw with the code that builds the web
application.
For us, it works well enough to have the designer give the engineer a mockup
of what the page is supposed to do and look like and then the engineer
follows the mockup as well as the functional specification document (FSD) to
make the entire site actually work.
We are saving time and energy in not having to train the designers how to
program if they don't want to (of course we are willing to train them if
they want to get into the programming end of things). We let the designers
do what they are good at and the engineers do what they are good at.
During the maintence portion of the project, I do not see anything wrong or
limiting with continuing to use the model of allowing the designers do the
design and the engineers do the engineering.
I have yet to meet one person that is really really talented in both areas
(design and engineering), if you have, then have them send a resume to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ;-)
Dash makes it easy for the engineers to programmatically (ie: by using ECS
<http://java.apache.org/ecs/>) create a consistent layout for the entire
site and does a really good job of allowing you as the engineer to create
re-usable pieces of code that do important things (like handling
forms...this is done through "Actions"). The whole
Layout/Page/Navigation/Screen stuff that you just quoted is why Dash is so
nice and allows us to avoid the shortcomings that non-templated systems
have. For example, to change a header or footer, we can still do it in just
one place. To change the layout for an entire site, we can still do that. It
really is not as big of a deal as you might think to allow an engineer to do
such things.
I keep repeating something though and that is that Dash works really really
well for web applications. Sites that simply have a header/footer that is
dynamic and millions of pages are in fact really best left to tools like
webmacro/jsp/freemarker, etc. Although, it is VERY possible to use those
tools from with the Dash framework and get the other benefits of the Dash
framework at the same time. For example, just have a Screen module that
calls the webmacro or freemarker engine directly to process the contents of
a file.
> I don't want a team of programmers working on the site...I want a team of
> programmers AND a team of graphic designers.....
Where the did I ever say that we don't have both teams work on the site? ;-)
The graphic designers are the ones that create the mockups and the look and
feel for the site and the programmers are the ones who make the web
application actually work.
Because we have more than one client
<http://www.clearink.com/index.htma?SCREEN=everyone>, this gives us the
maximum amount of employee/client overlap...after the designers have given
their mockups to the engineers, they can go and work on another client and
the engineers can do the same while waiting for the designs and mockups from
the designers. A very good use of our resources imho.
thanks again for your time.
-jon
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