topic Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib in Alfresco Archive

Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

jpfi — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:40:12 GMT

Hi,Along with a colleague I played around with Web Scripts and extjs (a fabulous ajax lib).After a couple of days we've finished a first prototype of a ajax-based Alfresco repository browser - we named it opsoro.feature overview:- ria-feeling (sortable & movable columns, view/hide components, as

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

xerox — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:16:27 GMT

Nice layout,features….
very impressive…

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

paulhh — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:32:07 GMT

Very cool, very impressive!

Our hope was that Web Scripts would make it much easier for people to build their own apps or customise ours. I think this is one of the best demonstrations of that.

Cheers
Paul.

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

paulhh — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:09:32 GMT

How long did it take you to develop this?

Extjs would not be an easy library for us to use ourselves because of licensing, but there are other toolkits such as Tibco's GI toolkit that is BSD/Apache.

Cheers
Paul.

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

jpfi — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 13:47:34 GMT

Hi,
first of all: Thank you for the complement.

Well, we started from scratch in both technologies (Alfresco WebScripts and extjs).
If I draw-off some days because of the learning curve of the technologies I would estimate ~10 days.

The client side only consists of ~1000 lines of custom javascript + Icons, CSS & some html.

On the server side we were able to reuse some builtin webscripts. So, the server side consists of 7 custom WebScripts with.

Extjs has an extremely impressive api and widget collection. I don't know if Tibco's GI toolkit can compete here.

We also take a look at the eclipse RAP Project (http://www.eclipse.org/rap) and qooxdoo (http://qooxdoo.org). I'll invest some time in the next few weeks to develop a similar client using Eclipse RAP (I'm a total fan of this OSGi stuff ;-)).
Cheers,
jpfi

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

simon — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 14:53:25 GMT

Impressive… Any idea about the performance of this approach, is it slower than the native interface?

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

jpfi — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 20:01:30 GMT

Hi Simon,

Thanks!
I think it is rather faster than slower.
Thru the WebScript Architecture you get a web-style scalability.
Even though there is a lot of javascript on the client-side a modern browser seems to be performant enough.
The screencam was taken on 2 GHz Laptop with 2 GB RAM running Alfresco 2.9B. There are ~5GB and ~5000 docs in the repo. Firebug reports ~50-150 ms for an AJAX-request and extjs seems to be very fast handling the response (it's all JSON) and updating the GUI.
But we didn't any deeper performance tests yet.
Cheers,
Jan

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

rscheele — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:57:56 GMT

great interface.. are you going to share this with the community?

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

jpfi — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 09:17:23 GMT

Hi Rob,

We are somewhat surprised of the positive response to our prototype.
We are currently discussing in what manner we will do further development of this prototype. There are several options, one is to set up a forge project.
I'll post the result of this discussion as soon as possible.
Cheers,

Jan

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

dmatejka — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:01:31 GMT

hi jpfi,
I want to add want more congratulation.. it is really the way we would love to develope our front end for our employees.

Would be awsome if you set up a forge project for this.. please inform of any result.. we will wait… :wink:

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

rscheele — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:23:21 GMT

Yes, please forge, this is the true power of open source and open standards.
What is Alfresco's point of view (especially gui designers) of the opsoro project?

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

mikeh — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:06:49 GMT

What is Alfresco's point of view (especially gui designers) of the opsoro project?

We like it for a number of reasons:
- it shows how quickly completely new and exciting user interfaces can be created using webscripts and third party Javascript libraries
- it shows how our "out of the box" webscripts and UI elements can be re-used in completely new environments
- it shows that the direction we're heading in for our future UI development (more AJAX, and other "Web 2.0" paradigms) is the correct one, and one which Community members are excited about

And finally, we're encouraged that people are spending the time and effort creating these innovative user interfaces using Alfresco!

Thanks,
Mike

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

maxtsai — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 07:03:17 GMT

perhaps that Alfresco can consider include this UI in the future release ..

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

protenus — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:35:20 GMT

Yes, please forge, this is the true power of open source and open standards.
What is Alfresco's point of view (especially gui designers) of the opsoro project?

Would be great to see that on forge. We are working on similar interfaces, and would love to be able to contribute.

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

jpfi — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:11:16 GMT

Hi,

the decision is made, opsoro will follow its own name "OPen SOurce ROcks" –> It's Open Source.
We'll contribute opsoro as an forge project soon. We'll also set up a a dedicated project site (opsoro.com).
I'm not so far to communicate a fix first release date, but two or three weeks sounds realistic, I'm just back from holiday 😉
I'm confident that we're able together with the community to deliver a nice alternative approach using alfresco.

Stay tuned!

Jan

PS: I'll be in Barcelona: http://www.alfresco.com/about/events/2008/04/cc-emea-0408/

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

dmatejka — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:05:01 GMT

happy to hear that.. it is really value added to the alfresco as a project…

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

jpfi — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 20:20:55 GMT

Hi,
There is no a Alfresco Forge Project: http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/opsoro/.
I have also released a first version opsoro 0.1 Beta here: http://forge.alfresco.com/frs/download.php/357/opsoro.zip.

Install instructions: Downlaod zip and extract the three contained file somewhere:

opsoro_AMP.amp: AMP File which patches missing cropContent-Method in ftl-files. Install this using Alfresco Module Manager

opsoro_WebScripts.zip: contains the opsoro webScript bundle. Install them: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Web_Scripts#Step_2:_Storing_a_Web_Script

opsoro_WebApp.zip: contains opsoro client. simply extract it to tomcats webapps directory.

So…Have Fun!

Please contact me if you'd like to contribute or perhaps sponsor the project in some way.
We're currently preparing and discussing the further roadmap of opsoro. There are some really nice options like:

upload content

categorize documents

edit properties

checkout checkin

advanced search

IE only: edit office files inline using webDav

support actions: start workflow, transform…

We're also considering to support Adobe AIR and implement features like these:

drag'n drop from and to system (e.g. explorer)

offline access. Make folders markable as offline folders and sync the containing files and some core meta data to AIRÂ´s local SQLite DB.

Cheers, Jan

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

jpfi — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:20:32 GMT

Hi,
I just recognized that there are two little bugs:

live search result window disappears

property grid columns not correctly shown (IE only)

There is also a issue with Enterprise 2.2.0Beta, because tag-root classification isn't added during first bootstrap…

Cheers,
Jan

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

mikeh — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:30:17 GMT

There is also a issue with Enterprise 2.2.0Beta, because tag-root classification isn't added during first bootstrap…

That's correct - the tagging extension to the category tree is only being applied to the 2.9 branch and later.

It should be possible to take the relevant parts from the 2.9 bootstrap and patch them into v2.2E via an AMP, but this would be unsupported by us.

Thanks,
Mike

Re: Prototype: Alfresco Web Scripts + extjs ajax lib

dmatejka — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:41:54 GMT

Hi Jan,
thank you for your beautifol forge project. We are trying to try it, but.. which alfresco version we should use?.. We have tryied it on the latest build 2008-3-31 but still no luck.

Is there a possiblity we are just running "wrong" version of alfresco?.. or we are missing somethnig completelly diferent? (e.g. brain? )

thanx