___cliff rayman___ writes: > please take this as interested and not critical. i was viewing the source: > http://petshop.bivio.biz/src?s=View.items
Criticism welcome. I hope you don't mind the rant below. > and i noticed these lines: > > ----- snip ---- a > ])->put( > cellpadding => 2, > cellspacing => 2, > ), > ----- snip ----- > > this looks like the presentation layer peeking through. The view components are all presentation. I didn't mention that the framework is actually MVCF, were the F stands for Facade. The server that runs http://petshop.bivio.biz also run http://www.bivio.biz The pet shop facade is: http://petshop.bivio.biz/src?s=Bivio::PetShop::Facade::PetShop and the "www" facade is something different, and not visible from the petshop facade. A facade in bOP controls the entire look and feel. In the case you pointed out, it might be a good idea to put the cellspacing and cellpadding in the facade, too. It was just laziness. > the petshop site is obviously a demo, and therefore does not have > the polished look of a professional site, which is very > understandable. what i wonder is, could a professional web design > team make a polished website without involving the programmers? Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by WebSite and programmers. I think of the pet shop as an application, not a WebSite. The same argument would apply for GUI desktop applications. Are you a programmer if you use JBuilder or PowerBuilder? I think so. Are you a programmer if you build a WebSite with ColdFusion or PHP? Again, I think so. If you are a programmer, then you need to know how to program. I don't see anything hard about programming Perl in a constrained environment if you are a website designer/programmer. Structure is important in most WebSites, and all web-delivered applications imiho. If you just want to do layout, there are many tools which are much better than an HTML editor, e.g., Photoshop. Once the layout is complete, you give it to "coders" who encode it in whatever language is best for the application delivery mechanism. > what happens when a cell padding of 3 is more desirable for the > design? The designer modifies the source in CVS, tests it, and checks it in. > it seems to me, that in all of the technologies i have > looked at thus far, that attempt to separate the presentation layer > from the model/view, the precision and flexibility needed to > graphically communicate to the user is more difficult that the > standard pagedesign approaches (dreamweaver and a little embperl or > other embedded language thrown into the mix) . phrased another way, > how does bivio or other mvc technology, let web artists design sites > as beautiful as http://www.marthastewart.com or the even more > beautiful http://www.genwax.com (cheap plug)? <rant> Ah, that is the question. The answer is beauty is in the eye of the user. I work with a lot of sites at the technical level, and I'm continually may amazed at the low quality of the sites from a user perspective. Let's take Martha Stewart (please ;-) and visit "your account". For your info, the link is: http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml;jsessionid=4HVBOQCWGUVEHWCKUUXCIIWYJKSS0JO0?type=page-cat&id=cat688 This is a good example of the business logic creeping in to the UI. What do I care if Martha programs in Java. What happens to her users' bookmarks if she switches to C#, or heaven forbid Perl? In bOP, you can have any link you want associated with a task on a per Facade basis. In fact you can have multiple links pointing to the same task. Look at the links in http://www.bivio.com/demo and see if they make sense to you. We have some pretty advanced users, who take our links and embed them in custom home pages in their files area (which is browsable unlike most groupware sites). We can maintain backward compatibility forever. Now when I come to the page on Martha's site which asks me to login it's very pretty and weighs in at 45KB without counting the rose (32KB). I can't login here, because there are no form fields. The rose is very pretty though (did I say that already?). Many of our users still connect to us with AOL at 26kbps with 60mhz/32MB boxes. They definitely appreciate the fact that most or pages are under 20KB. Only because our pages are programmed that way. In summary, I buy into the minimalist approach of Nielsen. Visit http://useit.com for more info. Usability is designed, and it takes a lot of time to design and test it. The actual coding part is minuscule in comparison. </rant> Rob
