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Hello everybody. This is a thread especially targeted to the Zkoss team.
First of all: well done. To me, zkoss seems way better than JSF in terms of documentation, performance, usability and features. I use it since a year almost, and must say it's one of the best things I ever used for ajax web apps.
That said, in order to improve your software and your marketing strategies, I will give you my personal feedback on two things which are arguable on ZK.
1- While the ZK engine is something really great, the components are quite poor. Both in quality and quantity. The themes, the styling and the whole graphics is quite bad. Also, zk misses some really important components. I don't know if I can make names of other frameworks within this forum... feel free to moderate my post. But, did you ever have a look at the PrimeFaces showcase? All the components are absolutely spectacular. Very nice theme, beautiful buttons, boxes, windows, rounded angles, shadows, transparency. And they also have more than 100 components, which I really miss here in ZK, like the growl and message components.
2- Pricing and spring support. I think that Spring support is quite fundamental here, it's not something that should be paid an extra 399$. And even then, 899$ for the pro version is really out of question. It's more than half my monthly pay (I live in Italy) and I'm not even using ZK all year since I do also desktop projects and consulting.
In fact, I still stick with ZK CE for those reasons. And perhaps many others. I cannot buy a 899$ framework and then have to write my own JDBC, AOP and everything else Spring has, nor can I pay further 399$ for zkspring. And even if all this cost much less, I simply have not the skills or the time to worry about restyling the components and create new ones (i'm the classic java programmer who hates js and css).
I love the ZK engine and strongly suggest to make zk+spring integration FREE and seamless. And please include a skilled webdesigner and artist in your team.
Taking the concept of beauty and fluid, it is certainly a weak point zk, I hope the team can do something as soon as possible.
In fact, when I proposed, in the company, zk, has lost many points against Vaadin because of issues with Vaadin, you can create beautiful applications with little (http://demo.vaadin.com/sampler).
Then zk is rightly much higher Vaadin as functionality, widgets, documentation, etc. .... and I do not recommend anyone to use Vaadin up to version 6.
I want this to be constructive criticism, because I think zk a great product and I congratulate the team, but believe me, we have not as graphic, at least take a cue from bootstrap, simple, straightforward, beautiful!
ps: @ zk team, it would be better to remove sun as a partner :)
@czynga
you're right, but unfortunately people want everything and its opposite.
And when I discussed about choosing zk, or Vaadin, Vaadin won because it was cool (and very usable I can guarantee it), and customers like cool things, if they see zk think the usual flat app.
That 's why I'm insisting on also cool, because from my experience when you show up with an application, the first thing they see is the graphics, and then if it works. and the first impression helps you to handle everything that comes after.
I still say, however, that apart from this zk is a lot ahead of Vaadin.
All considerations are valid and useful, I think.
Never used Vaadin, but I admit the demo is rather impressive and the site itself is somehow really "marketing/fashion oriented".
That said, the real problem is that it is often complex to understand at a very first glance if behind a nice UI there is "power".
And it also depends on what you have to do - for a B2B application, "power" is even more important, for a B2C application UI is often 80% of success.
Provided that it is important to understand if something is "doable", coolness can be applied in a second step.
Of course, if Vaadin provides something new as UI (not just appearance, but components), why not taking inspiration to extend ZK?
As for my experience, I never encountered a problem that ZK could not solve somehow.
Asked: 2012-08-29 13:32:49 +0800
Seen: 726 times
Last updated: Nov 05 '12
