Not so long ago people complained about writing web applications being boring, not fun, or cumbersome. Though there is enough to complain about the Swing API (at least according to those that complain), it is generally considered to be a well thought out API.
So it is especially noteworthy when someone returns to Swing programming and longs for his web framework API. Ryan Sonnek writes:
I do miss Wicket quite a bit though. There are a lot of similarities between Wicket and Swing, but I think the Wicket API is much nicer.
In my opinion the message here is not that Swing has a bad API, or Wicket’s API is much better (this is merely the opinion of one coder), but rather that web development has come a long way, at least when you use Wicket.
Thanks for the reference Martijn. What I think is particularly compelling about developing with Wicket is the true “separation of concerns”. It’s the “holy grail” of *any* development framework or API. Keep presentation and logic/behavior separate.
HTML and CSS have come to rule the presentation layer, and Wicket does an *amazing* job of keeping logic out of the view layer. unlike some other frameworks *cough* JSP *cough*…
If Swing (or some other framework) could get rid of Java for layout/presentation, and use Java for what it was intended for, behavior and logic, we’d be one step closer to great client side development API’s.
Have you tried Click?
http://click.sourceforge.net/
It’s incredibly simple than Wicket… no nested inner classes… Uses Velocity for the ‘view’…
Yes I believe you when you claim it is incredibly more simple than Wicket. That is why I use Wicket, because it solves my problems with state management, back button support, Ajax components, creating reusable components, fine-grained component level security, large community, scripting less templates (i.e. *NO* Velocity which is a BIG plus), and more.
If you can’t manage inner classes, then yes, probably Click clicks with you.