I have been searching for a good Web UI framework and i found it: its Vaadin,
It’s powerfull but also it’s natural and easy to use for a Java developer.
Previously i have been working a couple of years with Flex and jQuery, and lately i tested ZK. This are all good frameworks but i am more confortable with Vaadin.
One of the thigs i love in Vaadin is simplicity. These days even the simplest depvelopment soon becomes complex due to the variety and the comlexity of the tools.
Tools shoud be simple even if the underlying technologies are complex and powerfull. Vaadin does the job.
A trivial sample: you have a setMargins(boolean) method. That’s right. I don’t want to stablish the margin sizes in all the UI. I want a standard margin size and the posibility of change it in a single component of the UI if needed.
The API is very natural for me. I find the properties and methods as i expected to.
Also i am very pleased with the layout posibilities. It’s the only JS framework (Flex also do it right) that have a decent mangement of percentage and full viewport sizes. And Vaadin also has the fundamental layouts that one uses in the 90% of the UI: VerticalLayout and HorizontalLayout.
The only drawbak of Vaadin is the lack of a declarative way to define the UI like XML or DSL. I miss this specially when creating complex forms but i can live without it.
God job. Greetings and… keep it simple!!!
Oscar Castro
Freelance Software Engineer
