Web GUI Frameworks Comparison

Criteria for comparing GUI frameworks

please see GUI_Frameworks_Comparison#Criteria_for_comparing_GUI_frameworks

ClickOnce Deployment

MSDN ClickOnce Deployment

• ClickOnce deployment allows you to publish Windows-based applications to a Web server or network file share for simplified installation.
• It is using Winforms.
• Our binary Patchtool does basically do the same with applying patches at each start of the application via HTTP.
• general article about how to use Clickonce.
  • http://www.codeproject.com/KB/install/QuickClickOnceArticle.aspx
• It is possible with an Apache webserver, just need to add some application types to .htaccess:
  • http://groups.google.com/group/MonoDeveloper/browse_thread/thread/1eae7e77b9f6441e
  • http://software.clempaul.me.uk/articles.php?article=1
• use Firefox as Browser
  • ClickOnce and FireFox with a custom setup equals ClickThrice and be disappointed

Silverlight, Moonlight

• no .net remoting
  • .net remoting: not in Silverlight; http://stackoverflow.com/questions/291253/does-silverlight-support-remoting
• no winforms natively
  • Winforms: not implemented natively; http://www.netikatech.com/products/winforms, http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh/archive/2007/06/26/winforms-on-silverlight.aspx

Google, Yahoo

I am not sure how much those libraries can be integrated with .Net; some are Java orientated

• http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/overview.html (with Java to js compiler)
• http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/
• http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/ The YUI Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. YUI is available under a BSD license and is free for all uses. The YUI project includes the YUI Library and two build-time tools: YUI Compressor (minification) and YUI Doc (documentation engine for JavaScript code).

AJAX, ASP.net

see also: HowTo: Session based application with ASP.Net

projects to look at:

• http://sourceforge.net/projects/magicajax A framework that provides AJAX technologies for web pages created with ASP.NET. It allows developers to easily integrate AJAX support into their pages without replacing the ASP.NET controls and/or writing javascript code.
• http://anthem-dot-net.sourceforge.net/ The Anthem project adds AJAX-like features to ASP.NET. What sets Anthem apart from other frameworks is that it integrates itself into the server-side control model made popular by ASP.NET. This includes full support for view state, server-side events, and everything else the typical ASP.NET developer has grown accustomed to.

• http://gaiaware.net/ Gaia Ajax is an Open Source RAD Ajax Framework for ASP.NET that eases the development of dynamic web applications. Gaia abstracts away JavaScript and allows you to write everything in .NET managed code like C# and VB.NET.
  • http://samples.gaiaware.net/Beautiful-Out-Of-The-Box.aspx

• http://www.springframework.net/ Led and sustained by SpringSource, Spring.NET is an open source application framework that makes building enterprise .NET applications easier. Providing components based on proven design patterns that can be integrated into all tiers of your application architecture, Spring helps increase development productivity and improve application quality and performance.

• http://qooxdoo.org/ AJAX framework; concentrates on the browser;
  • see in combination: http://aspnetriaen.blogspot.com/ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/aspnetria/) qooxdoo.net

Web Services with SOAP

• goal: replace .Net remoting with web services/SOAP so that there are more opportunities to use the OpenPetra Server.

• see implementation in csharp/ICT/Petra/Server/app/WebService
  • current implementation:
    • does not support sqlite
    • only works with mono xsp on Windows
    • not yet: logout, shutdown server
    • bug: cannot relogin: complains about nested transactions
    • server starts a db connection, it is reused for each request
    • user information can be stored in cookies and/or HttpRuntime.Cache

• question: how much stateful operations on the server do we need?