Book Image

SproutCore Web Application Development

By : Tyler Keating
Book Image

SproutCore Web Application Development

By: Tyler Keating

Overview of this book

SproutCore is a framework that exists to allow developers to deliver on the promise of the Web with more than just simple attractive demos, but with complex software and remarkable user experiences. SproutCore’s creators recognized early on that developing real web software requires the same software development tools and practices that have evolved over decades in the native software field and thus SproutCore brings these to the Web. SproutCore Web Application Development is more than just a guide to one of the largest and most powerful web application frameworks out there, it’s also a guide to writing genre defining web applications and solving the unique problems that the web platform creates. Containing the results of thousands of hours of software development experience, this book is invaluable for anyone already writing software for the Web or just starting out. SproutCore Web Application Development comprises of three sections. In the first section we introduce SproutCore and walk through a simple SproutCore application. From there, we look in detail at all of the main components of the framework before finally working through a rigorous real-world example from start to finish. Learning about SproutCore means learning about writing software for the Web. In this book, you will not only learn what sets SproutCore apart from other web libraries and frameworks, you will also learn about solving the difficult challenges that web development poses. We will look at all the components of an application and how to translate wireframes, mocks, and design descriptions into clean, efficient, and maintainable code using MVC, data adaptors, statecharts, and more. We will look at SproutCore’s powerful binding and observing and watch how changes propagate across our app effortlessly and magically with very little code. By the time you complete SproutCore Web Application Development, you’ll be ready to develop your own application that redefines what it means to be a web application.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
SproutCore Web Application Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Knowing when SproutCore is the right choice


As you may have noticed, I use the word "software" occasionally and I will continue to do so, because I don't want to make any false pretenses about what it is we are doing. SproutCore is about writing software for the web. If the term software feels too heavy or too involved to describe your project, then SproutCore may not be the best platform for you.

A good measure of whether SproutCore is a good candidate for your project or not, is to describe the goals of your project in normal language. For example, if we were to describe a typical SproutCore application, we would use terms such as:

  • "rich user experience"

  • "large scale"

  • "extremely fast"

  • "immediate feedback"

  • "huge amounts of data"

  • "fluid scrolling through gigantic lists"

  • "works on multiple browsers, even IE7"

  • "full screen"

  • "pixel perfect design"

  • "offline capable"

  • "localized in multiple languages"

  • and perhaps the most telling descriptor of them all, "like a native app"

If these terms match several of the goals for your own project, then we are definitely on the right path.

Let me talk about the other important factor to consider, possibly the most important factor to consider when deciding as a business on which technology to use: developer performance. It does not matter at all what features a framework has if the time it takes or the skill required to build real applications with it becomes unmanageable. I can tell you first hand that custom code written by a star developer quickly becomes useless in the hands of the next person and all software eventually ends up in someone else's hands.

However, SproutCore is built using the same web technology (HTML, JavaScript and CSS) that millions are already familiar with. This provides a simple entry point for a lot of current web developers to start from. But more importantly, SproutCore was built around the software concepts that native desktop and mobile developers have used for years, but that have barely existed in the web. These concepts include:

  • Class-like inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism

  • Model-View-Controller (MVC) structure

  • Statecharts

  • Key-value coding, binding, and observing

  • Computed properties

  • Query-able data stores

  • Centralized event handling

  • Responder chains

  • Run loops

While there is also a full UI library and many conveniences, the application of software development principles onto web technology is what makes SproutCore so great.

When your web app becomes successful and grows exponentially, and I hope it does, then you will be thankful to have SproutCore at its root. As I often heard Charles Jolley, the creator of SproutCore, say:

"SproutCore is the technology you bet the company on."