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One of our front end developers did an evaluation of ZK. Overall comments were positive...but there were concerns too that I'd like to hear thoughts on:
Pros
1. Numerous prepackaged components.
2. Styles are more consistent cross-browser.
3. Styles can be overridden.
4. ZK Markup is easy to learn.
5. Regular HTML markup and JavaScript can be used with ZK.
6. Good developer documentation.
Cons
1. Generates an extraordinary amount of HTML markup with no content only for the purpose of styling.
2. Does not take advantage of CSS3 styling. Any plans to provide CSS3-based themes?
3. Improper use of HTML tables (being used of styling content rather than for tabular data).
4. Buttons are basically hidden and all that is seen is a table that has the button element in one cell and the button text in another cell (the actual button has no real text).
5. Uses depreciated HTML tags (i.e. <i/>) for purposes other than what they were originally designated for.
6. Overriding styles takes a good understanding of how all the HTML markup is generated and can leave a lot of unused CSS loaded on the page.
7. “Load on Demand” makes unnecessary server request for data that the client already has. Scrolling from top to bottom of a grid and then back causes a round trip to the server. May be necessary for large data sets but not for smaller ones.
Hi eptx,
I've got some quick comments.
Cons #2:
You can use CSS3 in custom styling, but they will not show up in IE6/7/8. If we make a theme with CSS3, then its appearance will be inconsistence across browsers.
If your application requires your users to use some specific browsers, you can customize the style with the power of CSS3, but when we build a theme we need to support all common browsers.
You can also contact us for support on theme customization.
Cons #7:
It's up to developers to use or turn off the load on demand feature. You can also use pagination.
Regards,
Simon
3. I think that the <hlayout> and <vlayout> tags are intended to reduce the use of tables in layout.
However, I agree that there is a steep hierarchy of div containers created by ZK.
I would also mention that use of a framework will always create more content that you would if you handcrafted your content. But then, using a framework will save you effort in many other areas.
There's always room for improvement, and I have found that, for better or worse, the ZK project is very active and constantly evolving. (Usually for the better.)
Asked: 2010-09-08 15:51:45 +0800
Seen: 301 times
Last updated: Sep 09 '10
