I’m not saying ItsNat hasn’t bugs, it may have, but they aren’t identified.

http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=47824#243768

Steal any idea you like for your “feature list”.

This is the categorization of ItsNat

http://www.itsnat.org

the framework I’m working on (to fully understand my explanations read before the introduction to the framework on the web page).

* Is it action based?

Yes and No. Page based navigation is not the focus, you can build the classic page based application but ItsNat doesn’t provide very much, the focus is AJAX. Anyway ItsNat introduces a new technique named “referrers”, the previous page is accessible to the next page, the new page can steal markup and data from the previous reducing the data hold in the client.

As ItsNat doesn’t impose a concrete servlet I think ItsNat can be plug into Struts or similar and ItsNat template rendering can be used as the view technology.

* Is it component based?

Yes, reusing Swing data and listeners models as possible. Components are highly customizable and new components can be built very easily. Anyway you can live without components, they are optional.

* Is it page based?

As said before you can do page navigation but the focus is pure AJAX: the application running in the same page with no reload.

* Is the Web tier generated?

Yes, ItsNat is server-centric and no client code is necessary, but isn’t “markup intrusive” because the markup is highly controlled by the developer so JavaScript can be mixed with some care including DHTML. Anyway ItsNat provides a bridge to call the server code from custom JavaScript code received as special DOM events in the server (user events).

* Is it JSP based?

No, ItsNat has an alternative templating technique. I just use a starter JSP to launch the app server and the browser ItsNat in no way depends on JSP.

* Is it template based?

Yes. ItsNat templates are *absolute* pure HTML (and SVG) pages with absolutely no logic (this view logic is done using Java W3C APIs). Furethermore “fragments” are pure HTML/SVG too, fragments are pieces of markup that can be included into the main page when needed.

* Is it Rails like?

No, ItsNat promotes best practices: static view separated of the view logic and business logic and persistency logic.

* Does it support a dynamic scripting language?

Yes and No. ItsNat is developed in Java and the focus is Java, but user code can be coded in a JVM scripting language.

* Does it support IoC?

ItsNat approach is “classic”, that is, imperative, as you say an IoC container can be used to manage user code.

* Does it support Web conversations?

Web conversations have sense in page based navigation. In a single page/pure AJAX application there is no need to share data between pages (in fact the session object is not needed anymore).

* Is it testable?

Yes, functional testing is built-in. ItsNat AJAX applications can be functionally tested simulating user actions using a technique called “server-sent events”, basically W3C DOM events are fired from server and sent to the client simulating user actions. The advantage is: testing code and normal code/data are together, testing code can see server data to check if the task was done correctly.

* How well does it support security?

Security is a primary concern, the server-centric nature helps very much.

* Is it well supported and maintained?

ItsNat is open source but it isn’t a free time-pet project, is business driven and professional open source.

The learning curve is very very flat, you won’t need very much support.

* Is it stable?

ItsNat is pre v1.0 but API is becoming stable. An ItsNat applications is mainly coded using Java W3C APIs and pure HTML/SVG code this prevents any ItsNat specific API change doesn’t impact very much your application.

* Will it help me adhere to standards?

As said before your code is basically Java W3C APIs and pure HTML/SVG code, aren’t they standards?

Regards
Jose Maria Arranz

ZK is Ajax Java framework without JavaScript. With direct RIA, 200+ Ajax components and markup languages, developing Ajax/RIA as simple as desktop apps and HTML/XUL pages. Support JSF/JSP/JavaEE/Hibernate/.., and Ajax script in Java/Ruby/Groovy/Python/..