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Posted by lawrence k on 12/23/06 00:33
lawrence k wrote:
> I work mostly in PHP, but at the web design firm where I work we are
> thinking of switching to Ruby on Rails. Our lead designer recently
> installed Typo on a client's site and he said to us, with surprise,
> "All Ruby On Rails software has the same directory layout?" That was a
> revelation to him. He was used to the PHP scene, where diversity is the
> rule.
As a follow up question, I might ask whether any one knows of designer
experiences with any of the PHP frameworks. In our shop, the designers
have had a positive experience with Ruby On Rails. They've had negative
experiences with a number of PHP software projects, such as Phorum and
phpBoard and some eccomerce suites.
The criticism of the PHP software projects tends to include two points:
1.) either the HTML includes tables
2.) the template system is difficult to figure out.
With Ruby On Rails, I've heard our designers say 3 positive things
about:
1.) all software packages have the same directory structure
2.) The template language is easy to read and intuitive
3.) Conditional statements are in the template, so the designer can
easily figure out what conditions effect what partials get rendered.
Of these, #3 was the biggest surprise to me. I did not think designers
would enjoy seeing conditional statements, but apparently the enjoy it
much more than they enjoy this:
<?php include($theFile); ?>
If they have to modify the file that is referenced by the variable
$theFile, the above line presents them with a headache, as they do not
necessarily know what sorts of conditions set the variable $theFile
with what value. It is too much for them to figure out. Surprisingly,
they prefer to see this:
if ($_GET["category"] == "hammers") {
include("hammers.htm");
} else {
include("saws.htm");
}
Throughout the web design industry computer programmers are often
valued more than designers. Although top designers are usually paid as
much as computer programmers, production assisstants, who do lower
level build out and CSS work, get paid much less, on average. So, for
economic reasons, it's important to find a framework that shifts as
much work as possible from the programmers to the production
assisstants. I imagine most professional web design shops face the same
situation (a fact which causes me to wonder why a single framework
hasn't become standard for PHP web design).
It is curious that Ruby on the web is synonymous with a single
framework, whereas in the world of PHP, no framework has managed to
gain much market share. I wonder why that is? It helps that Ruby on
Rails was so perfectly done and contains so many best practices (no
HTML embedded in the code, for instance). I think it is probably also
helped by being new. Some of the worst things that people associate
with PHP (the use of HTML tables in templates) is merely a product of
the age of some of PHP's better known software products (newer
projects, like WordPress, don't suffer the same flaws).
I guess the Zend project was probably started as a PHP alternative to
Ruby on Rails?
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