Últimamente los frameworks de CSS surgen como champiñones. Ahora lo difícil no es encontrar un framework, sino decidirse por uno.
Acabo de encontrar un framework llamado Skeleton que hace honor a su nombre, ya que frente a otros frameworks más pesados como Twitter Bootstrap que ofrece un montón de características (tantas, que nunca llegas a conocerlas todas), Skeleton ofrece únicamente un esqueleto para la maquetación, la famosa rejilla de 960 píxeles de ancho y 12 columnas, y poco más.
A la larga lista de frameworks para PHP (Cake-PHP, CodeIgniter, symfony, etc.) se añade uno nuevo: Yii.
Según la página web de Yii:
Yii is a high-performance PHP framework best for developing Web 2.0 applications.
Yii comes with rich features: MVC, DAO/ActiveRecord, I18N/L10N, caching, authentication and role-based access control, scaffolding, testing, etc. It can reduce your development time significantly.
Mis alumnos de “Programación en Internet” me han hablado hoy de Bootstrap, el framework de Twitter para sus aplicaciones web. Este framework utiliza algunas de las técnicas más modernas para ofrecer plantillas para maquetar, estilos estilos para tipografías, formularios o botones en una librería.
Este framework hace uso de LESS, del cual hablé en enero de 2012 y que permite escribir CSS dinámicos, con variables y condiciones.
En el artículo Google working on advanced Web engineering se explica que Google está trabajando en la creación de una nueva plataforma de desarrollo web debido a las limitaciones que presenta la tecnología actual:
“We’re getting to the place where the Web is turning into a run time integration platform for real components,” said Alex Russell, speaking at the EclipseCon, being held this week in Reston, Virginia. At Google, Russell works on the Chrome browser. He is also the creator of the widely used Dojo JavaScript framework.
Despite its popularity, the Web offers only relatively primitive programming capabilities, compared to other platforms for delivering applications, such as Java or Microsoft Windows. One major shortcoming is that Web technologies don’t have a “common component model,” which slows code testing and reuse, he said.
As an example, Russell showed off a new element he created called commenting. For Web pages that allow user comments, the commenting element, rendered as a tag, can automatically format the text submitted by a user and even add an accompanying photo. The tag is actually a program, complete with its own API (application programming interface), Russell said. With the unified component model, HTML can be a sub-class of a larger environment, allowing for more ways to manipulate HTML code.
Google engineers, Russell included, are also developing a proposal to add classes to the next version of JavaScript. A core element of object-oriented programming, classes are blueprints for reusable chunks of data and behaviors. Today, JavaScript does not support classes, so JavaScript programmers tend to use function calls to define many chunks of operational code that aren’t actually functions, such as methods and constructors. This practice is time-consuming and makes the code more difficult to reuse.
LESS – The dynamic stylesheet language, es una librería JavaScript que permite escribir CSS dinámicos, con variables y condiciones. Cuando se utiliza el CSS, se interpreta y se genera la versión “ejecutable”.
Por ejemplo, el diseñador puede escribir:
@color: #4D926F;
#header {
color: @color;
}
h2 {
color: @color;
}
que se convierte en:
#header {
color: #4D926F;
}
h2 {
color: #4D926F;
}
El artículo Five tips for building a web application more cost-effectively proporciona cinco consejos para construir aplicaciones web más eficientes:
El artículo original en inglés:
From the small business looking to improve its business processes to multinational corporations that need to manage important data and transactions, a growing number of companies are building their own web applications.
The benefits are countless, but so too are the potential risks and costs. Software development, after all, is a tricky business, and for companies that aren’t in the business of developing software, building a web application can be very difficult.
Here are five tips for making the undertaking more cost-effective.
Invest in a spec.
Writing a good specification has a cost and it isn’t always easy. For these reasons and more it’s easy to ‘skip the spec’ and jump right to development. Unfortunately, this usually isn’t productive, as the lack of a spec makes it much more difficult for your developer(s) to ‘get it right’ the first time.
Use a framework.
When in the hands of an experienced developer, a development framework can reduce the amount of code that needs to be written, promote code reuse, encourage cleaner code, and implement the proper separation of the data, presentation and logic layers. These can produce immediate cost savings. But the cost-saving advantages of using a framework are long-lasting too: an application built with a framework is generally easier to maintain, and ownership of it can usually be transferred to another developer or team far more easily.
Buy a template.
A good web application is a usable web application. Therefore it’s not wise to skimp on a design. But not skimping on design doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel either. If you’re building an administrative tool, for instance, there are plenty of quality administrative templates that can be purchased at low cost from sites like ThemeForest. Where such templates are viable, potentially thousands of dollars can be shaved from development costs.
Don’t bring on too many developers.
When building a web application, many companies assume that the more developers they have on the project, the faster it will be developed. For large projects, this assumption may not be incorrect. But for most projects, the reality is that more developers can slow the process, in turn making the application more expensive to develop.
Don’t put it all on the developer.
Some web applications can reasonably be built from start to finish by a single developer. But others, which are more complex, may require work that a developer isn’t best capable of handling. Instead of asking for a developer to be a jack of all trades, consider what other roles (project management, DBA, UI designer, etc.) may be required.
5 tips and tools to develop php applications fast: