Obviel 1.0b

Obviel 1.0b

It's been quiet around Obviel, the client-side web framework that I've been working on. That isn't because there wasn't any activity. The opposite is the case: I've just released Obviel 1.0b with a ton of new goodies. And when I mean a ton I do mean a ton:

• a whole new template language called Obviel Template that supports sub-views & i18n

• gettext-style i18n in JavaScript

• and the most out there new thing: an actual client-side routing library called Traject

For more details, here's the changelog.

Why would you want a client-side web framework like Obviel? More and more web development is happening on the client side, in JavaScript. End users get a more dynamic user interface. Developers get to enjoy a cleaner separation between UI and backend, and various scalability benefits as the burden of rendering the UI has moved to the client. A rich client-side UI isn't something to use for all web sites, but it certainly is a nice thing for the web applications where you can!

jQuery is a very nice library to help build dynamic web UIs, but for larger projects your JavaScript easily grows out of control and becomes a tangled mess. With Obviel you can add structure to your jQuery application, and make each bit more easy to understand and more reusable.

You can get started with Obviel without learning a ton of new things beyond jQuery: learn about the new function .render() that Obviel adds to jQuery, and you're quite far along already. You'll find your client-side code becomes more clean and RESTful.

Obviel is there for you then you need more: templating, internationalization, forms, client-site routing, and more.

Obviel isn't the only client-side framework out there. I do think it offers some unique perspectives on how to do templating, i18n, model/view separation and form generation. Unique for the client-side that is: I've been porting over patterns from advanced server web frameworks that I'm familiar with to JavaScript and the browser to see what happens. And what happens feels good to me. I hope you'll check it out and let me know what you think!