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First impression ...

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Marten Feldtmann-2

First impression ...

I just wanted to summarize my first impression after working a few days with Amber:

First I would like to say, that I am a Smalltalker and not a Javascript person and I see Javascript in this area as some kind of C compiler to get connection to other libraries.

After all: this stuff has the capability to change the web world for Smalltalker - but that still seems to be a long way to go.

But to go into details:

Perhaps I must say, that I know ENVY and this drives all my source code management wishes:

-> editions of methods, packages (ENVY)
-> prerequisites of packages (to be able to deploy and check the code) (ENVY)
-> the most annoying error in the current master code is the problem with method categories.
-> then copy/paste via mouse would be nice
-> some other stuff is at least strange: access to instance variables within inlined javascript code is not working as expected
-> source code management should be changed
-> more docs about deployment, javascript <-> Smalltalk interaction
-> better examples how to do clean rendering
-> is the need of jquery ok ?
-> debugging is at this stage difficult
-> I press "commit" after any changes I enter into the code widget (tedious work)

and so on and so on. But I still get the feeling, that it could change the WWW-world of Smalltalkers as Seaside did it some years ago.

Marten Feldtmann-2

Re: First impression ...

I have an additional ones:

- limited support for base Smalltalk classes. I would expect to have at least all classes and methods in the ANSI standard
- how does rendering work at all ?

Nicolas Petton

Re: First impression ...

In reply to this post by Marten Feldtmann-2

Thanks for reporting your first impressions :)
Amber is a community effort and we can all together improve it and get
where we want.

Maybe you could help with some of the issues you are facing?

Nico

Marten Feldtmann <[hidden email]> writes:

> I just wanted to summarize my first impression after working a few days
> with Amber:
>
> First I would like to say, that I am a Smalltalker and not a Javascript
> person and I see Javascript in this area as some kind of C compiler to get
> connection to other libraries.
>
> After all: this stuff has the capability to change the web world for
> Smalltalker - but that still seems to be a long way to go.
>
> But to go into details:
>
> Perhaps I must say, that I know ENVY and this drives all my source code
> management wishes:
>
> -> editions of methods, packages (ENVY)
> -> prerequisites of packages (to be able to deploy and check the code)
> (ENVY)
> -> the most annoying error in the current master code is the problem with
> method categories.
> -> then copy/paste via mouse would be nice
> -> some other stuff is at least strange: access to instance variables
> within inlined javascript code is not working as expected
> -> source code management should be changed
> -> more docs about deployment, javascript <-> Smalltalk interaction
> -> better examples how to do clean rendering
> -> is the need of jquery ok ?
> -> debugging is at this stage difficult
> -> I press "commit" after any changes I enter into the code widget (tedious
> work)
>
> and so on and so on. But I still get the feeling, that it could change the
> WWW-world of Smalltalkers as Seaside did it some years ago.
>
>
>
>

--
Nicolas Petton
http://nicolas-petton.fr

Marten Feldtmann-2

Re: First impression ...

In reply to this post by Marten Feldtmann-2

... and additional ones: speed.

I've been written some demos for HbbTV devices using amber and the loading time of the source code seems to be a major problem - and those Javascript interpreters are slow.

Ankh'nAton

Re: First impression ...

In reply to this post by Marten Feldtmann-2

I'd also appreciate more examples or better recipes showing how to
organize page structures.

My own async approach is a topdown design into a new page class.

Have a look at:

http://tcltalk.ath.cx/amber/examples/tb-pages

To get the source, click on 'IDE' and select the category 'TB-Pages'.

Tom