Chapter 4 - Sample Frameworks for Web Application Development

Abstract

The number of programming frameworks that support the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) has exploded over the last year. This chapter analyzes sample frameworks for Web development, including AjaxTK, OpenLaszlo, and Ruby on Rails. It begins by discussing programming frameworks for various programming languages to ease the process of Web application development, which designed to make the world of the Web and Ajax more easily accessible to these languages. Among the available implementation languages for RIAs, Ajax has by far had the most popularity. The tools in Ajax frameworks group can be classified into client-side and server-side frameworks, where the former are usually just JavaScript files that can be downloaded by the user and to which the Web application makes references. There is a multitude of frameworks available that fall under the category of client-side Ajax frameworks, including Dojo, Kabuki Ajax Toolkit, Prototype, and Zimlets. There are specialized frameworks that handle specific needs, such as handling network communication including XMLHttpRequest, visual effects, integration with Flash technology, or XML. The number of frameworks for Web development that fall into the category of server-side frameworks is even larger than the number of client-side frameworks. More than fifty frameworks, for languages such as C++, ColdFusion, .Net, Java, Lisp, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby have been listed. Ruby on Rails is a leading server-side framework for Ruby. Some frameworks like OpenLaszlo translate from one programming language to multiple RIA technologies at a click.