Spry framework
Encyclopedia
The Spry Framework is an open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 Ajax framework
Ajax framework
In web application development, an Ajax framework is a framework which leverages Ajax, a collection of technologies for building dynamic web pages on the client side...

 developed by Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

 which is used in the construction of Rich Internet Applications. Unlike other pure JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....

 frameworks such as the Dojo Toolkit
Dojo Toolkit
Dojo Toolkit is an open source modular JavaScript library designed to ease the rapid development of cross-platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications and web sites. It was started by Alex Russell, Dylan Schiemann, David Schontzler, and others in 2004 and is dual-licensed under the modified BSD...

 and Prototype
Prototype Javascript Framework
The Prototype JavaScript Framework is a JavaScript framework created by Sam Stephenson in February 2005 as part of the foundation for Ajax support in Ruby on Rails. It is implemented as a single file of JavaScript code, usually named prototype.js...

, Spry is geared towards web designers, not web developer
Web developer
A web developer is a software developer or software engineer who specializes in, or is specifically engaged in, the development of World Wide Web applications, or distributed network applications that are run over HTTP from a web server to a web browser....

s.

Components

The Spry framework broadly consists of
  • Spry Effects - animation effects like blind, fade, grow, highlight, shake, slide and squish.
  • Spry Data - data binding to HTML markup using minimal code or proprietary markup. Spry uses Google's
    Google
    Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

     Xpath
    XPath
    XPath is a language for selecting nodes from an XML document. In addition, XPath may be used to compute values from the content of an XML document...

     JavaScript library to convert XML
    XML
    Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

     into JavaScript objects. It can handle XML
    XML
    Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

    , HTML
    HTML
    HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

     and JSON
    JSON
    JSON , or JavaScript Object Notation, is a lightweight text-based open standard designed for human-readable data interchange. It is derived from the JavaScript scripting language for representing simple data structures and associative arrays, called objects...

     data.
  • Spry Widgets
    Widget (computing)
    In computer programming, a widget is an element of a graphical user interface that displays an information arrangement changeable by the user, such as a window or a text box. The defining characteristic of a widget is to provide a single interaction point for the direct manipulation of a given...

     - framework for development of widgets, and included widgets such as the accordion
    Accordion (GUI)
    In a graphical user interface, an accordion is a vertically stacked list of items . Each item can be "expanded" or "stretched" to reveal the content associated with that item...

    . CRC

Versions

Spry is currently in beta. The current version is 1.6.1. Adobe has not specified a target release date for the Spry framework, nor has it posted any sort of roadmap. Spry prerelease 1.5 was released on May 17, 2007

Usage

The Spry framework is directly integrated into Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

's Dreamweaver CS3.
There is further speculation as to how Adobe will utilize the Spry codebase. Possible uses are:
  • Ajax development within an IDE
    Integrated development environment
    An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

     such as Eclipse (software)
    Eclipse (software)
    Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...

    .
  • Ajax generation from server code using ColdFusion
    ColdFusion
    In computing, ColdFusion is the name of a commercial rapid application development platform invented by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in 1995. ColdFusion was originally designed to make it easier to connect simple HTML pages to a database, by version 2 it had...

    . Ruby on Rails
    Ruby on Rails
    Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.-History:...

     offers similar functionality.
  • Ajax application generation from Adobe Flex
    Adobe Flex
    Adobe Flex is a software development kit released by Adobe Systems for the development and deployment of cross-platform rich Internet applications based on the Adobe Flash platform...

     code. OpenLaszlo
    OpenLaszlo
    OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for the development and delivery of rich Internet applications. It is released under the Open Source Initiative-certified Common Public License ....

     will offer similar functionality with their "Legals" release (version 4).

Competitors

Spry competes with a number of other Ajax frameworks and toolkits:
  • Atlas Framework from Microsoft
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

  • Ext
    Ext (javascript library)
    Ext JS is a JavaScript library for building interactive web applications using techniques such as Ajax, DHTML and DOM scripting.Originally built as an add-on library extension of YUI by Jack Slocum, Ext includes interoperability with jQuery and Prototype...

  • Dojo Toolkit
    Dojo Toolkit
    Dojo Toolkit is an open source modular JavaScript library designed to ease the rapid development of cross-platform, JavaScript/Ajax-based applications and web sites. It was started by Alex Russell, Dylan Schiemann, David Schontzler, and others in 2004 and is dual-licensed under the modified BSD...

  • Echo
    Echo (framework)
    Echo is a web application framework that was created by the company NextApp. It originally started as a request-response web application framework that leveraged the Swing object model to improve the speed of application development...

  • Google Web Toolkit
    Google Web Toolkit
    Google Web Toolkit is an open source set of tools that allows web developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java. Other than a few native libraries, everything is Java source that can be built on any supported platform with the included GWT Ant build files...

  • jQuery
    JQuery
    jQuery is a cross-browser JavaScript library designed to simplify the client-side scripting of HTML. It was released in January 2006 at BarCamp NYC by John Resig...

  • Mootools
    MooTools
    MooTools is a lightweight, object-oriented, web-application framework for JavaScript, written in JavaScript. It is released under the free, open-source MIT License...

  • Prototype
    Prototype Javascript Framework
    The Prototype JavaScript Framework is a JavaScript framework created by Sam Stephenson in February 2005 as part of the foundation for Ajax support in Ruby on Rails. It is implemented as a single file of JavaScript code, usually named prototype.js...

     and Script.aculo.us
    Script.aculo.us
    script.aculo.us is a JavaScript library built on the Prototype JavaScript Framework, providing dynamic visual effects and user interface elements via the Document Object Model ....

  • YUI Library

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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