If you want to setup a new web site, today there are a lot of frameworks and content management systems in the market. One of the most common is WordPress which can not only be used as a blog software but also to build pretty web pages. But WordPress has some disadvantages in my eyes. It is build with a lot of PHP code, you need a database and at least you will be attacked by masses of hackers. If you only plan to setup a small web site you can do this with pure HTML. But this isn’t an ideal solution if you want to separate content form design – which is a best practice in these days. Continue reading “Building Websites with Markdown and Maven”
Singe-Page-Application = Don’t think about the business logic!
Today, I discussed with some capable developers the pros and cons of SPA frameworks. This discussion resulted in a debate about the business logic in SPAs, which brought me to the following thoughts about a SPA architecture. In one sentence: Don’t think about the business logic!
Why? Take a moment and remember about the basic idea of a Singe Page Application, what is the general concept behind all that? Basically it is the fact that we can represent any kind of information in modern web browsers. Using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript enables us to deal with information in a very easy way. Browsers were build to present information – noting else!. JavaScript on the other hand is just a way to deal with some behaviour how to represent information to the user. For example: fade in some very important message, or show a bubble information text when the user moves the mouse over a picture.
On the other hand we today know very well the concept of REST Services. This is one of the major enablers of Singe-Page-Applications. All frameworks, like Backbone, React, AngularJS, Emer.JS or Ben.JS deal with REST Services and help us to handle the information which we want to show to the user. But if you think about that – these frameworks were build on the following problem: how to present data in a Web Browser using JavaScript?
Today the most SPA frameworks also deal with a heavy load of functionality which makes it hard to understand most of these frameworks. This is because people began to think about another problem: How can we process information? But this the domain of business logic. In the past this business logic was placed in server side frameworks like JEE or Spring. I think this is the right place for this kind of logic. A server should think about how data should be stored in a database, validate data, transform data or update data depending on various business rules. But the time when the Single-Page-Frameworks become more and more common in modern development, many people begun to believe that JavaScript is now the place for business logic. And so we began to use REST Services just to store and fetch data entities. But this is absolutely wrong! Business Logic means to deal with business data in a way going conform with the business process. So business logic is something which is related to the data and not to the representation of data!
So at the end this means that you should put all your business logic into your REST Service API which is the interface between your Browser front-end and your database back-end. And now you will see what Singe-Page-Applications are really good for: they just represent the data provided by your REST Services. No business logic here! Just show the user the data provided by the back-end. This means: if there is data – show it to the user – if there was something going wrong with the data – show the error message to the user. A Singe-Page-Application can be as dumb as a Terminal application in the 1980s. Put your business logic into the back-end, and use SPA to represented your data. The result will be a be scale-able, flexible and modern Web Application. And the best: You don’t need to worry about which framework you choose on the front-end. No matter if Angular 2.0 brings up a new concept. The goal of your Web Application is just to represent information – nothing else!
Take a look at the open source project Ben.JS which solves the problem of representing data in a web browser….
Linux Debian and Skype – no microphone
Today I had a strange problem with my skype installation in Debian. The microphone seems not to work. Finally I found the solution here.
The trick is the following:
- Open the Sound settings when you start a skype test call.
- Click on the tab ‘Recourding’
- Choose the option : show ‘all streams’ at the bottom of the tab
- Now when the skype call runs you will see the skype application appearing
- There is a tiny button muting the microphone. This option was selected in my case. Deselecting the mute button solved the problem for me
Why I started another Singe-Page-Application Framework
Today I decided to start a new open source project providing a singe-page-application (SPA) framework. This sounds crazy, because we live in a time in which so many different spa frameworks are developed.
The reason why I am interested in singe-page-application frameworks is that I have an existing complex JEE Application build on JSF 2.0 and I am looking for a way to reduce the evolved complexity of my web front-end. I don’t think that JSF can compete with SPA in modern web applications. On the other hand I already have an existing Rest Service API in my application. So this is the reason why I stared to look around for a SPA framework that fits my needs.
Continue reading “Why I started another Singe-Page-Application Framework”
Single Page Applications – AngularJS vs. Ember.js
I just started to develop my first JavaScript single page application (SPA) and so I took a look on different JavaScript frameworks. I just want to share some of my thoughts here:
My own background is JEE and I have developed a JEE application with EJBs, JSF and a little bit jQuery. Because of the fact that my existing project (imixs-workflow) provides already a REST API, migrating from JSF to a JavaScript SPA looks promising .
Continue reading “Single Page Applications – AngularJS vs. Ember.js”
Eclipse Luna crashes on Ubuntu
Today I had strange problems with Eclipse Luna after an Ubuntu Update.
The solution was changing the eclipse.ini by adding
-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.DefaultType=mozilla
and changing the memory settings.
Thanks to Bård Aase Blog: http://blog.elzapp.com/2014/07/01/making-eclipse-kepler-and-luna-work-on-ubuntu.html
Eclipse Mars on Debian Jessie with Gnome 3
After downloading the new Eclipse IDE Mars I was disappointed of the corrupted design. Several dialog pages did not work as expected or were empty until the dialog window was resized.
As Eclipse release 4.5 (Mars) is based on GTK 3, the problem in my case was the missing library “gtk3-engines-oxygen”. This it the so called Oxygen widget theme for GTK3-based applications like the Eclipse Mars release.
After installing the missing library with apt:
apt-get install gtk3-engines-oxygen
the Eclipse Mars Release works perfect!
Customize Eclipse them Jeeeyul’s Eclipse Themes
A very nice plug-in for Eclipse is the ‘Jeeeyul’s Eclipse Themes‘. This plug-in provides a set of cool themes for eclipse and also a cool editor to customize the theme individually.
Adjusting the window margins
Another annoying thing in Eclipse GTK with Gnome is the small margin between to windows so you cant grasp the space with the mouse to resize the view.This problem can also be solved directly with the Jeeeyul’s plug-in:
In the ‘General’ section of the Jeeeyul’s Themes section you can change the “Winddow Pacing”. Disable the option ‘Cast Shadow’ and set ‘Part Stack Spacing’ to 5 and ‘Margins’ to 0. After that you need to restart Eclipse.
Alternative: Disable GTK3
An alternative is to simply deactivate GTK3 for Eclipse Mars. You need to set the environment variable ‘SWT_GTK3’ to ‘0’.
I am using the following bash start script to launch Eclipse Mars:
#!/bin/bash cd /opt/eclipse-jee-mars/ export SWT_GTK3=0 ./eclipse
See also the comments below.
Using Fonts Instead Of Icons For Responsive Web Design
Usually in most web applications icons are used for an appealing design. But icons have the disadvantage that you can’t change the design easily without replacing the hole set of icons especially if you need different colors or a different size of your iconset. The last one becomes a big problem when you try to develop a responsive web design. Continue reading “Using Fonts Instead Of Icons For Responsive Web Design”
Extending Eclipse BPMN2 Plugin – Part III.
This is the third part of my tutorial about how to extend the Eclipse BMN2 Plugin. See also:
In this part I will explain some details about how to manage properties of a custom task element and how to implement custom property sections. Continue reading “Extending Eclipse BPMN2 Plugin – Part III.”
Open Source – what does it really mean?
Open Source is one of the most misunderstood domains in our new society. I just read an article about the failure of the sharing economy. The author closed with the idea, that really no one would like to share something if he doesn’t get something back which brings him into an better position. And this is not inhumane.
The failure of the sharing economy brings me to new thoughts about open source. I am working in a open source project since several years. What does it mean to me? It is not to give my work to other companies for free. We run a company which provides commercial services. These services mean: “Hey we have a cool fancy technology. If you like it, we can help you to get started“. And this is because software development is not one of the easiest things in our live.
So what I am sharing in my open source project is not the enterprise software to be used by the big industry for free. I just share my thoughts about problems in the area of software development. My thoughts are open for anyone who is interested in discussing those kinds of software problems. It’s like sitting in the pub and talking with someone about the last football match. Just sharing thoughts and come up with new ideas. That’s the meaning of Open Source.