L'approche évènementielle pour concevoir des applications web est un aspect qui me tourmente en ce moment car c'est ce que j'implémente partiellement au sein de mon dernier développement et ce vers quoi je veux tendre dans mes développements futurs. Mais voilà, c'est une approche totalement différente de ce que tout (bon) développeur web rencontre au quotidien, tant au niveau de la méthodologie que de l'aspect programmation.

Pour plus de lecture, allez faire un saut chez Clochix puis chez Christian Heilmann dont voici un passage qui provoquera des hochements de têtes aux plus anciens (à lire les lignes suivantes, j'ai dû ressembler à ces chiens que l'on pose - ou pas - sur les plages arrières des voitures, c'est vous dire...) :

  • When we created the first web applications connection speeds were slow and being connected to the internet cost us money by the minute.
  • Therefore we used frames to only load what has changed in the app. This led to the problem that if one frame didn't load properly the app didn't work and users were forced to reload the parent page.
  • The next problem was that browsers didn't support CSS and we used tables and font tags to define the look and feel which made it hard to change them and the documents themselves rather heavy.
  • When CSS support became more consistent and usable, we were able to get rid of the extra HTML, documents got lighter and we could get rid of the frames again.
  • The next problem we encountered was that mixing backend logic and HTML output was problematic for maintenance (maintainers needed both skills). As a result, we came up with templating languages that allowed for separation of server-side logic and the structure of the interface.
  • Right now we still see the browser or the framework capabilities as the boundary of our applications. This is a pragmatic approach but limits us in our creativity and binds the application planning and documentation to browsers as the means of display.
  • However, if we take events — including both DOM events and Custom Events — as the main consideration when planning the application we can free ourselves of these limitations and become a lot more independent of the technology in use.
  • An application developed with an underlying Event Plan could be easily shifted to another technology like Flash or become a plug-in for thick clients like instant messengers or even operating systems.