Lessons Learnt from Diva Look
 
1. Convention over Configuration
 
We find that these new generation of Web tools like Ruby on Rails (RoR) have popularized something that could have been said to exist in WebObjects and DirectToWeb for awhile.
 
That is convention over configuration.
 
The use of defaults in D2W correctly can be exploited to produce apps that are customizable with less effort.
 
 The following are examples of CoC in ERDivaLook:
 
    i. The use of the stylesheet D2W key to define .css for pages from rules.
    ii. The use of an id D2W key (provided by a new D2W assignment class) to identify elements in the DOM for Ajax, Javascript, Scriptaculous and Selenium.
 
2. Single Responsibility Principle
 
This is a stricter conformance to the discipline of partitioning components and pages into separate functions: separate Edit and Inspect pages for example.
 
3. Keep it Stupidly Simple
 
An oldie but a goodie, KISS  has been applied to DirectToWeb to strip out all presentation from the markup and rules.
 
There are no more images, no tables (unless for tabular data), no (embedded) styles and no more D2W rules dictating any widths, colors or numbers of columns.
 
The result: vastly simpler components and a much more customizable and maintainable DirectToWeb app. Oh, and one more thing....ERDivaLook produces (semantically rich) pages that are (~99%) XHTML 1.0 strict compliant.
 
(Why might this be important you ask? Well, for starters, things like Ajax, Scriptaculous effects and Selenium all seem to work much smoother in well formed documents).
 
4. You Aint Gonna Need It
 
(Or more commonly synonymous these days with YAGNI) was applied to strip out extraneous features to make room for CSS, Ajax, Scriptaculous effects and Prototype events.
 
Having learnt these lessons from ERDivaLook, i’m now ready to translate these into the second revision of DirectToiPhone...
Lessons Learnt
Sunday, September 7, 2008