Web

Did you guys know that you can use the ‘[ ]’ brackets in HAML to automatically set the id and class on a tag, kind of like Rails’ tag helper?

I’m currently in Botswana, doing volunteer work at a nonprofit Christian agency called Love Botswana Outreach Mission. Among my responsibilities are helping out with the organization’s IT needs. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the organization is wired for 24/7 Internet access, despite being located about 10km out from the center of Maun, a medium-sized village.

One trend on the Web these days is to move away from traditional full-stack frameworks (like Rails) toward client-side, full-stack Javascript frameworks (among them Dojo, GWT, SproutCore, and Cappuccino). There’s been a lot of buzz about SproutCore and Cappuccino, because of their design elegance, shiny Mac-ness and promises of really rich client experiences. I’ve been checking them out and here’s some of my observations so far:

I’m looking to develop a Web application with a full-stack Javascript framework like GWT, SproutCore or Cappuccino. I’m making the decision to go with a Javascript framework over a traditional full-stack framework (like Rails) because: