Anthony, I think it was mentioned before in the "Warned off Weblocks on StackOverflow?" thread, but weblocks would benefit from documentation work. I'd enjoy a new tutorial in a style that doesn't use continuations. No worries about snappyvote source, I just thought that'd be a low-energy way to contribute. I'm glad you pointed to elephant, cl-selenium, postmodern, and stefil - it's instructive to know what the community is using.
Cheers, On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Anthony Fairchild <[email protected]> wrote: > Ian, > Thanks for the feedback and the bug report. I will fix that one soon. > As for sharing the source I would be ok with sharing widget snippets or > examples but unfortunately I cannot share the full source at this time. > Sorry that is not very helpful. > Anthony > > On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Ian Tegebo <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Thanks Anthony, >> >> I'm still considering weblocks. Your description was informative. >> I've been reading the docs and trying to understand the demos. I'd >> love to see your code and any kind of documentation material you'd be >> kind enough to supply would be a bonus. >> >> By the way, the site looks good with one possible bug; after clicking >> the "Send signup link", I was shown a message box directing me to my >> email but after clicking okay I got the following message above the >> email input field: >> >> "The email address is not valid. Use password recovery if you already >> have an account." >> >> On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 4:01 PM, Anthony Fairchild >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> > Greetings Weblocks users, >> > I have been quite successful using Weblocks to build a web application >> > and I >> > thought I would introduce it on this list and provide some additional >> > information about how I use Weblocks. Maybe this information will be >> > useful >> > to newcomers and I'd love to get some feedback :-) >> > My application is called SnappyVote, http://snappyvote.com, and is meant >> > to >> > be a general purpose voting application. The basic idea is you build a >> > ballot with choices and then invite your friends to vote on it. This >> > can be >> > useful for a variety of applications, like voting on where to go for >> > lunch, >> > or what is the greatest movie of all time or 'Employee of the Month'. >> > Right >> > now it is alpha quality but it is being used by several people already. >> > I >> > plan on extending it to allow additional voting types like ranked list, >> > yes/no, to do surveys and provide web widgets that you can embed into >> > blogs >> > or facebook or whatever. >> > Now a little bit about how I use Weblocks. I started using Weblocks >> > when >> > it was relatively new and used it for several small projects. I also >> > tried >> > other lisp web frameworks (uncommon web, plain hunchentoot) and found >> > that >> > Weblocks made the most sense to me. It was quite a learning curve and >> > I >> > did a lot of things wrong in the beginning. At times I got incredibly >> > frustrated with it but somewhere in the process everything just clicked >> > and >> > I have been productive ever sense. One thing I learned fairly early on >> > is >> > the bundled widgets were great for quickly prototyping UI but when it >> > comes >> > to customizing the behavior they are fairly limited. This is *not* >> > really a >> > problem because building custom widgets is not that hard. So every >> > widget >> > in SnappyVote, except maybe forms, are all custom. >> > I do not use any of the continuation-based flow stuff like do-widget >> > except >> > for maybe one or two places. While they do make some things cleaner, >> > IMHO I >> > dont think they are necessary and, at least for me, they caused more >> > headache than what they were worth. I recommend that newcomers stay >> > away >> > from these things unless there is a good reason to use them. YMMV. >> > I use Elephant with the BDB backend and I like it a lot. It was very >> > easy >> > for me to understand the basics and I like defining my data in terms of >> > CLOS >> > and not tables. The only thing I'd recommend is staying away from is >> > associations as they seem to break under some conditions. If the site >> > outgrows Elephant I will probably refactor my db code to use postmodern. >> > For unit testing I use stefil, mostly for its simplicity and my >> > familiarity >> > working with it on other projects. I have had great success using >> > cl-selenium with stefil for UI testing. cl-selenium is quite stable >> > and >> > very easy to set up. I cannot recommend this enough and I was surprised >> > that there is no mention of it on the weblocks site or on this mailing >> > list. In addition to unit testing, I use SBCL's sb-cover library to get >> > code coverage for my unit tests. sb-cover has a nice form-by-form >> > color-coded report that shows me exactly which code paths are missed in >> > my >> > unit tests. Again, highly recommended! >> > Well, that's it. Again, feedback is welcome and I hope this is helpful >> > to >> > some of you. >> > Thanks! >> > Anthony >> > >> > -- >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> > Groups >> > "weblocks" 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/weblocks?hl=en. >> > >> >> >> >> -- >> Ian Tegebo >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "weblocks" 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/weblocks?hl=en. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "weblocks" 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/weblocks?hl=en. > -- Ian Tegebo -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "weblocks" 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/weblocks?hl=en.
