Re: [Webmacro-devel] What my webapp will offer web designers

[Lane S. <la...@op...>]

Hi Marc,

This sounds good..

I think my point that I have been trying to raise stems from the issue 
of the lure of having a really easy web app kit and then thinking you 
can do some things like consistent transactions with it out of the box. 
See google "Transaction ACID" for a general discussion on transaction 
consistency and how easy is to get it wrong in a multi-threaded env like 
a single servlet.

What I am trying to help you do is to develop a framework which will 
allow and not preclude an ACID transaction.

-Lane

Marc Palmer wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> As per Lane's recommendation a few days ago, I'm going to start a 
> couple of threads detailing what my forthcoming webapp offes designers 
> and java devlopers - treating each separately. Sorry for the delay in 
> all this but we had a baby 3 weeks ago and I'm "off work" and doing as 
> much as I can to help with caring for our new daughter! OK, on to my 
> other baby...
>
> First let's define what I mean by web designer. I mean anybody who 
> hacks together websites, whether professional or amateur, but 
> typically not a Java programmer.There are literally tens of millions 
> of would-be web designers out there - an order of magnitude more than 
> there are "serious" java programmers (i.e. people who can write more 
> than a main() method with a for loop in it).
>
> For these "web designers" the webapp will offer a single binary 
> download that can be installed immediately in any servlet container 
> and template- driven pages can be viewed immediately.
>
> After doing this, they can view the webapp's docs which are served via 
> the webapp itself using WM, and "context sensitive" help that tells 
> them exactly what request parameters and template variables are 
> provided by the actions, helpers and plugins.
>
> They can immediately edit the demo templates and instantly see the 
> changes in their browser by hitting Refresh. At this point they 
> already have a powerful content system - server side includes, loops, 
> variable passing, macros, session vars and so on.
>
> Then they can learn about the more advanced features - helpers, 
> plugins and actions - after which they can download these classes from 
> websites, most likely webmacro.org, that add more advanced functionality.
>
> Built in to the binary deployment should be some of the most common 
> advanced facilities:
>
> * Sending e-mail
> * Logging clicks to links
> * User login/authentication
> * Storage/retrieval of field data by "view id", an arbitrary grouping 
> mechanism that spans actions and pages.
> * Useful helpers - file system access, date manipulation, simple XML 
> DOM access (for RSS display for example)
>
> So, as far as web developers are concerned that's it pretty much. It 
> seems simple, and it is really. That's the beauty of it, I think.
>
> I'll try to post about the developer side of it tomorrow.
>
> Marc


-- 
Lane Sharman
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