Chapter 1. Introducing SproutCore

In this book we will learn everything we need to know about SproutCore, which is one of the most exciting and powerful application development frameworks in existence. As you will discover, SproutCore is a very large topic and covers a lot of ground, so before we even start discussing SproutCore at a high level, let's begin with a brief history.

SproutCore has actually been around for quite a long time in terms of the web, having been created by entrepreneur Charles Jolley, back in 2007. Charles created SproutCore to build a mail client, but was soon hired by Apple to grow the framework further and develop several even larger scale applications. Indeed you will likely recognize some of these web applications and may even remember the amazement when people first saw SproutCore apps such as mobileMe delivering a native-like look and feel in the browser without the use of plug-ins.

Until then, the Web 2.0 movement had largely failed to deliver on its promise of replacing the software of the desktop. Of course there are exceptions, but overall, the slew of web 2 apps that appeared were slow and clunky and lacked a lot of the basic features and refinement we had expected in the software. Oddly enough as mobile has gained in popularity, the advancement of web apps has actually slowed down. For instance, compared to the desktop, the network latency for mobile is horrendous and the type of web apps that are delivered a page at a time from a server are almost unusable.

However, and this is why I'm writing this book, this does not need to be the case! With SproutCore apps, the user feedback is instantaneous, lists can be scrolled effortlessly through hundreds of thousands of items. Also, there is drag-and-drop and keyboard control. The apps can run offline and overall the software built with SproutCore feels feature-rich, responsive, and robust. On top of this, SproutCore apps are 100 percent compatible across even less than the modern browsers, all without the use of plug-ins!

Perhaps best of all though, is that SproutCore is, and always will be completely free to use for you and me. As an open source framework, SproutCore gains experience in real world deployments and grows as professionals contribute that experience back into the source for us to use. That is why we're here and that is why whether you're building a new multi-platform social app or replacing an outdated internal management tool, now is the best time to learn about SproutCore.

In this chapter we will cover the following: