An eclectic-pencil blog

‘AJAX without JavaScript‘ is what you can expect managers to be talking about and ZK is something they may mention because at one time ZK marketing made that claim on their ‘Simply Rich’ homepage. Here are some useful quotes.

The first line of any ZK applet:

<noscript><p style="color:red">Sorry, JavaScript must be enabled.<br/>Change your browser options, then
<a href="">try again</a>.</p></noscript>

Here is a quote from the ZK site:

Browsers without JavaScript at all is another platform, also a challenge. We’d like to see if we can make them talk in ZK.

And this:

We are working with our partner to deliver an intuitive visual design tool that works with Eclipse IDE.

And if that is not enough, this gem:

To work with existent applications more efficiently, ZK components will be ready in the form of JSP tags. We also consider the possibility to provide them in JSF.

ZK is considered to be hot, but Mozilla + XUL is not. A rising tide does not lift all boats: some are sunk, have too must ballast or are otherwise already scuttled.

One ZK claim is that they have been able to use BeanShell to show what a good scripting language Java is. That should give you pause.

And they promise to offer scripting for Ruby (they may mean JRuby) and Groovy.

The only answer is to look at what the product offers (libraries? a framework? an RTE? a consistent API?) and requires (less web scripting, but more java programmers?) and then to look at genuine alternatives. The promise of a visual environment in Eclipse, so many years after the failure of visual environments to adequately address complex callbacks is taken up on my page … AJAX = AWAX.

It might seem that the choice between ZK and the GWT is obvious. I don’t think so, and I try to suggest why not. It is even claimed that they are complementary approaches. Perhaps in fairness ZK is more of a framework – but it is such a conflicting mix that after some initial enthusiam I am left completely lost as to its intent.

If nothing else it breaks any easy association of AJAX with RIA and that may confuse your manager. Then there is the claim that it allows building an RIA ‘without programming‘. I prefer the AJAX ‘without JavaScript’ claim.

The best outline of the ZK framework that I found was an image reproduced at Ajax Magazine.

As for hype there is ZK’s own claim to be “#1 Ajax project on SourceForge.net” and they report that they are finalists in the 2007 SourceForge community awards in 3 categories: “Best Tool and Utility for Developers,” “Best User Support” and “Best Technical Design”.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 1:45 pm and is filed under RIA, Software development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.