[Offtopic] Framework to create an windows looking application.

[Danielo Rodríguez]

Hello everyone,

Sorry for asking a question so out of the TW scope, but I know that here are some very good experts and this is the most friendly community that I know. For example, if I ask this on StackOverFlow probably I will loose some "points" :P

Here is the scenario: I want to create a SOAP client for use inside my company. I have already an early version working with a small set of libraries that I have used before:  jquerymy and JquerySoap. The prototype is perfectly fine and works as I expected. Now I want to extend it with some more functionalities and give it a more native look and feel: I want a windows application built with HTML5.

I have been searching for some frameworks, and I found some awesome ones, but all of them seem very complex. So, using any of them will take some time to learn how to do it properly, so I want to make the right decission.

Here is the list of the ones I gathered:

• qooxdoo: 
• Good
• Absolutely awesome and free. 
• Does not have  big adoption. This is the main drawback
• The look and feel is fantastic, take a look here: http://qooxdoo.org/demos/tools#demobrowser
• Understands JSON natively (load sets of data and so on)
• Bad for me:
• It uses python to "compile" the app.
• Seems to be focused on communication with some kind of backend
• No local storage support by default
• DHTMLX
  
• Good
• As good as the previous one, maybe better.
• I don't know about adoption.
• Also fantastic look and feel.
• It has an online GUI builder
• Bad for me:
• Some of the widgets are "premium" so you have to pay for them if you want to use them.
• Not allowed free comercial use. Since I am not going to sell it, I am going to use it inside of my company, so maybe a problem.
• For "loading data" (default values, ask from the server) you have to use xml
• DOJO
  
• Good
• This looks similar to ExtJS, but I heard so bad things about EXTJS that I looked for an alternative
• Very good adoption.
  
• Bad for me:
• Not bad Native look and feel, but seems that this is not the focus of the library.
• Seems hard to do "non standard usage" or customize.

After my research I'm starting to think that I am going to a too complex approach. I just want to "abstract" from the DOM and CSS. I want to do something like "create container,create menu,create tab,create a table, put this info on the table, give the info of the table".

Also is important for me to be able to use a third party library easily. Wit jquerymy I just include the other library and use it, I don't know if it will be the same with dojo or qooxdoo.

My plan is to ship the app as a chrome app that works without "downloading" any resource from the web. Something like TW does.

If any of you have any experience about that, or want to give me any advise, I will love you (even more).

Many Regards.