AJAX Magazine: ZK is Simple and Rich AJAX and XUL Web framework

ZK is an AJAX/XUL Web framework designed to enable Web applications to have both rich user experiences and a simple programming model. It includes an AJAX-based event-driven engine to automate interactivity and a rich set of XUL-based components.

As the Web reaching our daily lives, the ability of Web applications to communicate with users become more important than ever. As the Web becoming the default platform for applications, the cost to develop Web applications is losing control.
In response to this challenge, ZK is designed to enable Web applications to have both the rich user experiences and the simple programming model. ZK includes an AJAX-based event-driven engine to automate interactivity, and a rich set of XUL-based components to enrich usability.

The live demo of ZK features show a very rich framework with tons of great features such Simple Elements Inputs, Radio buttons, checkboxes ..., Modal dialogs, Layout elements, Toolbar and menus, Listboxes, Trees and much more. ZK is written in JAVA and released under GPL license.

ZK project looks very well organized and documented specially, you can find Quick Start Guide [PDF], and a detailed User Guide [PDF], in addition to essays. The available essay written by Henri Chen, show porting of google.xul to the ZK Framework. Henry explained that he had the porting done in less than an hour, I give it a try as you can see in the screenshot below taken from the live demo page.

ZK includes an AJAX-based mechanism to automate interactivity, a rich set of XUL-based components to enrich usability, and a markup language to simplify development. The AJAX-based mechanism consists of three parts as depicted below: ZK loader, ZK AU Engine and ZK Client Engine.

http://ajax.phpmagazine.net/upload/2005/12/zk-framework-thumb.png

Very interesting project for the JAVA developers, that could be very helpful to develop advanced AJAX applications, and the use of XUL make it much more powerful in my opinion. To get started Download ZK Framework and follow instructions in the Quick Start Guide.

The ZK project just demostrated how to integrate a javascript component into a ZK component in simple four(4) steps. Here is the essay that talks about how to integrate the FCKeditor as an ZK compnent.

essay: http://zk1.sourceforge.net/essays/fckez/fckez.html
demo: http://www.potix.com/zkdemo/test/fckeditor.zul

Another integration is done, too. The dojo's fisheyelist menu. Here is the demo:

http://www.potix.com/zkdemo/test/dojo/dojo.zul

The source code of both integrations are at ZK's download, see ZKForge parts.

Posted by henrichen | January 4, 2006 4:05 AM | Reply