I was looking to see if there were any frameworks for HTML 5 and came across SproutCore. It’s an MVC framework and has some similarity to GWT in that it compiles all the code into HTML/JS/CSS that should work across browsers without plug-ins. Also like GWT, it has a bunch of panels, buttons, and controls and makes it easy to work with events like button-click, etc. It seems to have some features that I’m not sure are available with GWT –
1. Datastore: Takes advantage of HTML 5 local storage which can hook into a backend server datastore
2. Server push: The datastore also supports pushing data from server to clients. Have no idea of how this works (like can you push to specific clients or is it just a broadcast?) but seems interesting.
3. Databinding and property observation – you can register components to observe changes in data object properties. So if the server pushes data or if there is a user initiated change, the component would be notified and act accordingly.
4. Server is language agnosttic, so we could hook into PHP server code that serves up JSON.
It’s currently being used to develop Apple’s MobileMe apps which is why it has some buzz right now.
This might be an easy way to make mobile applications available beyond the core platforms (Android, iPhone) they are developed for with a lower degree of effort.
