The webmail application I work on is very different than many other Web 2.0 applications, which is why most of the existing frameworks don’t work for us.

• There are no page refreshes and therefore:
  • Most drawing is done by Javascript
  • All data transfered is JSON encoded
• Email, Calendar, Tasks, Contacts, Settings are all combined into 1 application which means:
  • Large memory footprint
  • Javascript performance very important
  • On the fly loading of HTML, Javascript, and CSS is a must

For the past few months, I have been thinking about what I really need in a web framework. Just like Rails, an MVC framework would need to be the base. In Part 1, I will just talk about the MVC foundation for this framework.

Model

An ActiveRecord type object would provide the MySQL data abstraction. I have mentioned that I have been working on my own implementation for a while, so I won’t go into too much detail on this. Basically, for a complicated web application, most existing model abstractions don’t work very well. With complicated JOIN’s, WHERE’s, and subquerys, something different must be used.

View

A templating mechanism must exist to have a complete web framework. Current view abstractions won’t work in webmail. Since webmail never refreshes, going to the server every time we need to populate a template is troublesome. The templating mechanism in the better web framework would allow a template to be used in PHP or in Javascript.

If a template is used in Javascript, once it is downloaded once, it wouldn’t have to be downloaded again. The hard part about a Javascript template is the inability to have loops and the need for slow regular expression parsing.

If a template request in Javascript has to make a server request every time a template needs to be populated, speed becomes an issue. This is fine for large templates, but what about small widget templates? Making a server request for a small element increases 1. latency and 2. server load which in turn increases latency even more.

Controller

Controllers are the backbone of a web framework. I like how Rail works with a controller class where each data request is mapped to a function call. This seems effective to me and needs little modification.

Conclusion

I know what you must be thinking: Your MVC design isn’t that much different than Rails. Well, that’s true, but remember this is part 1. The MVC design is just the foundation of a better web framework. Rails is popular because it is useful, so it is definitely a good starting point for developing a new framework.

Shout out to Mike for his work on Javascript templates.

Fortunately, I ran across the table-layout: fixed property on the W3 website. This changes the table algorithm to just take into account the table cell width. All that is required is the table have a width defined. As with most great web development breakthroughs, it isn’t fully supported in IE.

In order to get IE to work, there is one small trick that must be used. All data inside the table cells must have all spaces converted to  . This will prevent a nasty IE bug of wrapping even though the nowrap property was used.

Thanks to this article for helping me figure out how to put all the CSS together.