Direct To Web

Posted on by david

At WOWODC this weekend I gave a talk on Direct To Web that spurred a lot of interest which I was thrilled to see.

Getting started with D2W is not an easy task and I owe a massive debt to the two chapters in the Wrox book: Professional WebObjects 5.0 with Java which is sadly out of print. The book was a team effort but I believe that Jim Roepcke wrote those two chapters and is still involved in the WebObjects community. I would like to send a big thanks his way.

5 thoughts on “Direct To Web”

  1. Thanks David! It’s cool and sad that those are still probably the best material out there for D2W.

    But to set the record straight, while Ch. 11 is all my writing, Ch. 10 is half my writing and half that of another author, but I don’t remember whose, unfortunately.

    Seeing the interest in this today at WOWODC reminds me I need to talk to WROX about releasing it online somehow.

  2. David, awesome presentation. You definitely got the excitement going for D2W, so much so that I cannot stop thinking about D2W. I have been watching old D2W videos and I dusted off the WROX book and I am currently reading those chapters again, which make much more sense now than they did about 6 years ago when I bought it! BTW, IIRC, you mentioned that the Web Assistant did not work anymore. What exactly did the Web Assistant do? Did it just change rules?

  3. Thanks Kieran, Jim.

    I received a lot of positive feed back on the presentation which was nice. I worked hard on it so I’m glad it was appreciated.

    The Web Assistant was a java applet that launched in the browser and gave you a wizard for editing a subset of the available rules. It made rule editing easier because it suggested keys for you but it was kinda tied to the old templates and the rules it created were a nightmare.

    Just as I prefer to edit css and html by hand, I think it is much better to learn how to create you own rules – at least then you’re forced to think about what you’re doing – so I don’t miss it.

  4. Hi David,

    Thanks for making this screencast available – it is very clear. I’m looking forward to buying the full set of screencaass from WOWODC 2009 – those from 2008 were great viewing.

    BTW, what did you use to do the screencast? I liked how it could zoom in and out so seamlessly.

    Rule-driven development like DTW is so obviously a great idea. It’s staggering to me that so few developers recognize the need for it.

    Also, BTW, you might be interested to see what IBM are releasing as the apex in Lotus Domino web development – features WO Builder had for at least a decade or more (http://xpagesblog.com/blog/tag/screencast ). In fact, from the screencast it’s not even clear that the development tools even allow one to dig down into keys and paths the way WebObjects Builder did.

    One of the few things I see that’s pushing the envelope as far as WO is concerned is Seaside (with the ability to debug server-side apps within the browser – http://www.seaside.st/documentation/debugging). Of course, the developer behing Seaside decided that WO had set the high water mark and he wanted to take things from there.

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