[PROPOSAL - specialized taglib for fast interface development]

[Jean-Noël Ribette <je...@improve.fr>]

Hi,

I have been working with Struts for one month now, and I think Struts is a
great framework. My company is going to use and support it. Otherwise, there
are a view features I would like to see in Struts or as an extension. Here
is a proposal for a special library to increase interfaces development
speed. More information can be found at
http://struts.application-servers.com


My company - Improve, (and a lot others I guess) are working on big web
application, which have those specificities:
- Hundreds of screens
- Developers with very different backgrounds, including people with 20 years
of experience in Cobol and without a good knowledge of new technology.
- All developers need to be able to develop application screens.
- That kind of application has 3 types of very simple screens: selectors,
lists and cards.
- The look and feel of the applications is very strict. The screen designer
has no freedom to choose it.

 Some time ago, Improve developed its own framework to build such
applications.
 The goal was to increase the productivity of the interface part without
drawback on the maintability of the application.

 Now, Improve is moving to Struts and would be glad to see special features
in Struts for this kind of applications, as we think such application are
very common. What we would like to be able to do is to reduce the time
development of those applications by three, which we did with our framework.

 We propose to add those features to Struts by adding a tag library named
Struts Light. Here are the functionalities:

- only 3 types of screens (selectors, lists, cards),
- standardize layout created by the library tags.
- allow people with no special Java or HTML skill to build pages.
- easy customization with CSS.
- reduced code length
- better readability
- easier maintenance
- faster development

Of course, this set of components would reduce the layout possibilities, but
one could always choose to use common HTML or Struts tags when needed.

To illustrate my point of view, we have already written a few components
that we invite you to have a look at the URL
http://struts.application-servers.com. Improve is going to use this
development for its own purpose, but would like share it people who might
find it useful and possibly see it incorporate into Struts as an extension.

Please say what you think about it.

Bear in mind that Struts Light goal is to simplify the development of
applications with simple interface.

--
--__/ \__-------------------------------------------
  improve             Jean-Noël Ribette
--/-----\--------------------------------------------
 Tel : 01 41 97 83 20        http://www.improve.fr
     http://www.application-servers.com