I am by no means an expert in the various widget-s...

2009-10-07T15:11:01.671-04:00

I am by no means an expert in the various widget-specs or offerings, but I couldn't agree more. I've faced this recently in my organization where we were supposed to create an entire UI using iWidgets. The only interaction between widgets is through events. In and of itself this is not a problem, since widget specific events, custom events if you will, are perfectly valid constructs. The problem, in my opinion, is with the containers themselves - they don't provide a rich enough set of hooks (events, callbacks, etc) to build anything more than disconnected dashboard-y type applications. Contrast that to the Eclipse model where there is a rich set of "container" services (selection, lifecycle - save/close/etc) that editors and views can leverage in order to build truly rich applications. In my mind, views aren't really much different than dashboard widgets. Editors though allow you to build applications with focus on a specific entity (I hesitate to call this a document). So you have the best of both worlds - if you want a dashboard-like application then use views; if you want something more traditional then provide some editors with views decorating the editor.

I'll be interested on where you take Potomac in this regard, since now that you have an extendable, modular platform in place I can see how you could also leverage some of the core Eclipse concepts to allow rich, cohesive applications to be quickly developed.

Comments on Chris Gross: The Problem with Portlets

I am by no means an expert in the various widget-s...