Hi, This thread is a very important for Qooxdoo community. I would like to ensure that any criticism express here will be taken as constrictive, we all love Qooxdoo framework.
My main keyword : "no upfront fees". 1. My main concern : Qooxdoo adoption is not wide enough. It is always a benefit to increase developer base. Open source project need open source developers, so we need more developer, not less. When we discuss with our customers, Qooxdoo choice is always tricky to explain as they just never heard about Qooxdoo. The fact that Qooxdoo is the foundation product or RAP architecture from IBM is a good point not not enough. Our customers heard about JQuery, Dojo; Air, Flex, ... but not Qooxdoo. I think the following point contribute to the fact that Qooxdoo user base increase too slowly : 2. contribs do not make Eclipse's mistake : lots of wonderful plugins for everything everywhere. People get lost when they arrive and this contribute to point 1. Make things simple first. Later on, if they want, they could digg for contrib : "no upfront fees". => the framework you can download must contain all needed elements without any use of contrib, especially for widgets. (when you just start Qooxdoo, including a contrib is seen as a complex task) Maybe a process like Apache is a good idea : first contrib are hosted on incubator and later on as top level project. a community (not just few 1&1 people) vote and ensure quality of top level project. That committee also ensure that there are no dozen of contrib for the same things. Things need to be kept organized, it won't be organized by itself. 3. initial complexity I think the Qooxdoo learning curve is too steep. I already said it, I didn't change my mind. Qooxdoo build is too complex for first time developer : "no upfront fees". Give Qooxdoo as an optional big all-in-one file to download. This is universal, any developer understand that one big file can be included and then used. This is not optimal, OK, but this is not a bad news, this is a GOOD news. Let me explain. The developer learn Qooxdoo building his apps step by step concentrating on why he choose Qooxdoo : the javascript framework, the widgets. No need to install Python, no need to learn and understand config json file : just a simple file to include. Now he has a Qooxdoo apps but not optimized, the good news come : Qooxdoo has a gift called Qooxdoo build. It is in Python and can optimize the apps for free ! Isn't that a good news ? The developer has to learn the build system only when it need it and not before. "no upfront fees". Of course, the build is still the advised way to use Qooxdoo but let the developer decide by himself, please do not decide for him that he need or not that build. This will make Qooxdoo simpler to use at first time, and so improve point 1. 4. multimedia and appearance Default "modern" appearance could have better look. Eye candy is important. I don't think people will be motivated enough to develop their own theme or some widgets. Unfortunately, human being will let people choose other framework for bad reasons : appearance and lack of time. Contrib is not either an answer (see point 2). I don't have idea here but I hope we will not dive again in our beloved API without trying to improve appearance. Conclusion : Usual warning and disclosures : I do not intend to whine, complain or other negative things. I'm just trying to help improving a product I choose as an element of the software architecture of our product. We are now highly tight to Qooxdoo. After more than 5 years following Qooxdoo project and nearly 3 years using it, I would like to thanks Qooxdoo for letting us building Web GUI without using nasty tags ;-) My 2 cents. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ qooxdoo-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/qooxdoo-devel
