Comments on: Djblets and Review Board moving to jQuery http://www.chipx86.com/blog/2008/09/18/djblets-and-review-board-moving-to-jquery/ Virtualization, Open Source, and Life Mon, 10 May 2010 11:14:30 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: ChipX86 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/2008/09/18/djblets-and-review-board-moving-to-jquery/comment-page-1/#comment-42150 ChipX86 Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:18:26 +0000 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/?p=265#comment-42150 Jer: I have. At the very beginning, Review Board ran on scriptaculous and Prototype, but as we began to do more advanced interaction, those libraries didn't really help us much. However, it's been a while since I've looked at either of those, but we basically was going to have to write a lot of the UI-level stuff ourselves, and it didn't really give us the code quality that jQuery gives us. One of the nice things about jQuery is that everything is plugin-based and everything chains. Unlike most toolkits where you end up creating some sort of an object and pass it an element, in jQuery the element is pretty much the context, and you do something interesting on it with a function that was registered by a plugin or the jQuery core. It's something better explained in the tutorials and docs, but it means that everything looks consistent and reads well. Al: ExtJS has its own special restrictions on top of the GPL. The broader licensing restrictions would force us to release under a commercial license if we wanted to allow people to modify code within their company or if people wanted to write commercial addons to Review Board. In our case, Review Board isn't just a website. It's a distributable web application with an API and we know it's being integrated with commercial, proprietary codebases. So the GPL3, and especially ExtJS's licensing restrictions, makes it impossible for us to use it. Jer: I have. At the very beginning, Review Board ran on scriptaculous and Prototype, but as we began to do more advanced interaction, those libraries didn’t really help us much. However, it’s been a while since I’ve looked at either of those, but we basically was going to have to write a lot of the UI-level stuff ourselves, and it didn’t really give us the code quality that jQuery gives us.

One of the nice things about jQuery is that everything is plugin-based and everything chains. Unlike most toolkits where you end up creating some sort of an object and pass it an element, in jQuery the element is pretty much the context, and you do something interesting on it with a function that was registered by a plugin or the jQuery core. It’s something better explained in the tutorials and docs, but it means that everything looks consistent and reads well.

Al: ExtJS has its own special restrictions on top of the GPL. The broader licensing restrictions would force us to release under a commercial license if we wanted to allow people to modify code within their company or if people wanted to write commercial addons to Review Board.

In our case, Review Board isn’t just a website. It’s a distributable web application with an API and we know it’s being integrated with commercial, proprietary codebases. So the GPL3, and especially ExtJS’s licensing restrictions, makes it impossible for us to use it.

]]> By: Al http://www.chipx86.com/blog/2008/09/18/djblets-and-review-board-moving-to-jquery/comment-page-1/#comment-42149 Al Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:06:21 +0000 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/?p=265#comment-42149 I think with the GPL you only need to publish the source if your going to to charge for it. You can use it internally just don't sell it. Which makes things weird since you don't sell websites, you make one and people use it. Its more of a service. I think with the GPL you only need to publish the source if your going to to charge for it. You can use it internally just don’t sell it. Which makes things weird since you don’t sell websites, you make one and people use it.

Its more of a service.

]]> By: Jer http://www.chipx86.com/blog/2008/09/18/djblets-and-review-board-moving-to-jquery/comment-page-1/#comment-42147 Jer Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:21:15 +0000 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/?p=265#comment-42147 Have you used Prototype before? I've been using it for a few years, but I've never used jQuery, so I'd be curious to hear a comparison of them. Have you used Prototype before? I’ve been using it for a few years, but I’ve never used jQuery, so I’d be curious to hear a comparison of them.

]]> By: mabinogi http://www.chipx86.com/blog/2008/09/18/djblets-and-review-board-moving-to-jquery/comment-page-1/#comment-42146 mabinogi Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:30:50 +0000 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/?p=265#comment-42146 Actually, number of requests is pretty much the _only_ factor for speed when you're in a different continent. A roundtrip from Australia to the USA can frequently take 400ms. Javascript and CSS usually has to be downloaded before the browser will render a thing, and all browsers seem to serialize those requests, so assuming that you had 7 javascript files and 1 CSS file, that'd be 3.2 seconds before _anything_ would render, even if each of those files were a single byte in size. In contrast, assuming 1.5Mb ADSL, you could have a 500kB single javascript file and the page would still render faster than the one with 7 single byte files. The discrepancy gets worse when you start talking about ADSL2 - I frequently wait for longer than it would take me to download an entire song for webpages to render their very first word simply because there's way too many individual JS and CSS files Actually, number of requests is pretty much the _only_ factor for speed when you’re in a different continent.
A roundtrip from Australia to the USA can frequently take 400ms. Javascript and CSS usually has to be downloaded before the browser will render a thing, and all browsers seem to serialize those requests, so assuming that you had 7 javascript files and 1 CSS file, that’d be 3.2 seconds before _anything_ would render, even if each of those files were a single byte in size. In contrast, assuming 1.5Mb ADSL, you could have a 500kB single javascript file and the page would still render faster than the one with 7 single byte files.
The discrepancy gets worse when you start talking about ADSL2 – I frequently wait for longer than it would take me to download an entire song for webpages to render their very first word simply because there’s way too many individual JS and CSS files

]]> By: ChipX86 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/2008/09/18/djblets-and-review-board-moving-to-jquery/comment-page-1/#comment-42143 ChipX86 Fri, 19 Sep 2008 09:48:29 +0000 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/?p=265#comment-42143 Good to know, oliver. Though, Review Board didn't work in Konqueror with YUI/YUI-Ext before anyway, so at least it's not a regression :) Good to know, oliver. Though, Review Board didn’t work in Konqueror with YUI/YUI-Ext before anyway, so at least it’s not a regression :)

]]> By: oliver http://www.chipx86.com/blog/2008/09/18/djblets-and-review-board-moving-to-jquery/comment-page-1/#comment-42142 oliver Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:31:41 +0000 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/?p=265#comment-42142 Just a note: AFAIK stackoverflow.com uses jQuery as well, and as result some features on that site don't work in Konqueror (I couldn't quite gather where the bug is, but it is there). So extensive tests of your site in Konqueror (and browsers with similar JS engine) might be useful :-) Just a note: AFAIK stackoverflow.com uses jQuery as well, and as result some features on that site don’t work in Konqueror (I couldn’t quite gather where the bug is, but it is there). So extensive tests of your site in Konqueror (and browsers with similar JS engine) might be useful :-)

]]> By: John (J5) Palmieri http://www.chipx86.com/blog/2008/09/18/djblets-and-review-board-moving-to-jquery/comment-page-1/#comment-42141 John (J5) Palmieri Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:26:02 +0000 http://www.chipx86.com/blog/?p=265#comment-42141 jQuery Rocks!!! That's all. jQuery Rocks!!! That’s all.

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