resources

There has been some recent activity in the Xaraya camp, with Aruba and Jamaica, including the xd2xt template scenario (converting all templates to the .xt extension) and the ajax scenario.

From our point of view, while we have a long way to go, we are aiming at three key development principles in xarigami. We feel that use of these can help future proof the code making it easier to change and adapt to quicky changing and evolving formal and non-formal standards in application design and development on the world wide web.

1. Separating function from design and mark up as much as possible in the system templates. This provides for much easier maintenance and upgrading of sites, while leaving the themes the domain of the designer and website developer who still have the option of using all the bells and whistles available with Block Layout and rapid application development.
2. Unobtrusive javascript throughout
3. Progressive enhancement of existing templates through use of HIJAX

We already have the code in place. Using the above approaches we should be able to easily continue adding functionality to xarigami, as well as add enhancements and fancy features without affecting usability and loss of accessibility that is often the case with AJAX implementations. At the same time it future proofs the code and will also hopefully enable us to retain a certain level of compatibility with upstream xaraya modules and themes.

Xaraya aruba development seems "busy" in terms of the xd to xt scenario and ajax scenario, which has made us start thinking about whether we will also merge these scenarios to xarigami.

While the xd to xt scenario may bring some performance enhancement (no testing done as far as we know on the aruba front), we're not sure if the benefits, or at least the work involved, merits the merge at this stage unless we want to spend more time keeping ourselves busier, too. In the meantime we are working on finalizing our own exceptions scenario bringing new exception functionality to xarigami (based on MrB's  RFC 00054), along with friendlier error handling for users (404s etc).

As to the Ajax scenrio, we will wait to see the final implementation. Right now it is not necessarily going the way we had envisioned but who knows.