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67

answers:

4

I'm a veteran of C and very new to web design altogether. I've found myself more excited about it recently so I've been researching the technology. I'm open to using just about anything, but as I look around I see the "View" component of MVC type technologies basically being written by hand as layouts of data.

I want to avoid having to write any of this manual View layout or View HTML - I want to be able to drop these user interface elements and arrange them as I would lay out a "standard" GUI. What technology allows this?

+1  A: 

Cappuccino ( http://www.cappuccino.org/ )

Additonally, while using it, you program in quasy javascript (called Objective-J) which frees you from some of the issues which plague javascript.

Maz
+6  A: 

If you're looking for a framework that make web development just like desktop development, asp.net is the closest you'll come. But it is a leaky abstraction, and it has fallen out of favor for good reasons.

You can "create great web apps", and you can use "little to no manual HTML", but it is difficult to do both at the same time. There is no substitute for becoming familiar with the languages & infrastructure of the web.

Edit

My unsolicited advice for how to dive in to web development:

  • Familiarize yourself with one of the MVC frameworks - say, Rails or Asp.Net MVC. Both of them have some support for scaffolding, which will give you somewhere to start from in terms of html.
  • Choose a css framework. These will help you layout your pages cleanly, without needing a PhD in css.
  • Once you're somewhat familiar with the above, pick up jQuery and start mixing in some javascript for more advanced behavior.
Gabe Moothart
What would you say is in favor now?
Nektarios
@Nektarios - writting the html by hand.
Byron Whitlock
The MVC technologies you mention are in favor. They do include plenty of helper methods that generate html, but at a much lower level of abstraction.
Gabe Moothart
+1  A: 

ASP.NET WebForms have been developing in such a way that would be more suitable than ASP.NET MVC. You have drag and drop, quite a lot of controls, some of which are quite powerful, as well as great tooling. You should definitely take a look at that. ASP.NET MVC gives you more control over the HTML output, but that seems to be exactly what you are trying to avoid ;) I am not knowledgeable enough regarding other technologies, but I am sure there will be more answers containing advice regarding those.

Yakimych
+1  A: 

Google Web Toolkit if you dont mind Java.

Just my 0.02

renick