Beyond Smarty

**Henk Verhoeven** · Mar 13 '07, 11:45 PM

Re: Beyond Smarty

Man-wai Chang wrote:

>
Is there a way to code using UI classes, rather than dealing with HTML,
CSS and Javascript directly?
>

Hi Chang,

You could use a framework. PhpPeanuts for example will generate you a
user interface if you build a business model for the application. It can
not do that without high level user interface components. To make the
application really usable you will probably need to extend and override
these components and combine them in your own way. One of it's
compositon mechanisms is skins, basically php include files, but because
of the level of the components it calls upon it can be like Smarty on
steroids.

However, it's a framework, not an IDE. It does not intend to shield you
from HTML etc. It only applies principles of reuse, abstraction and
default reasoning* to help you avoid doing the same low level HTML
things over and over. This aproach can lead to a very high productivity
while still being in control of the details. The framework is free and
you can use it in commercial projects, but it comes at the price of
learning to understand how the framework works.

If you need an IDE that really shields you from the HTML level, maybe
codegear's Delphi for php will be something for you. It may not be for
free, not as flexible and productive in the end, and you will probably
have to learn a lot as well, but the learning curve may be quite flat
and with a little bit of luck you will never see much of the
HTML/CSS/javascript level. Pity that it's trial is not available yet
(according to a message of Steven Munlo dated march 5 on this news group).

Greetings,

Henk Verhoeven,
www.phpPeanuts.org.

* Default reasoning is a technique from Artificial Intelligence. It is
also used by Ruby on Rails.

Beyond Smarty

Beyond Smarty

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