I have been asked to look into dynamic web page development, and there appears to be several different ways to approach the subject. Some of the higher profile frameworks is ASP.Net with SQL Server, Apache + PHP + MySQL with a JS front end, and a few others I have only heard about like Ruby on Rails, with optional components like Cold-Fusion, Flash, Shockwave, etc.
With that said, one of the requirements is be able to build “custom controls” for design of the page. I am familiar with .Net in how this works, (basicly extend and composite a combination of base controls offered by Microsoft .Net Framework). This is my only point of reference I have. What other methods are out there for building custom controls on a LAMP setup, or any other framework?
Although I favor familiarity with the .Net Framework, I do have to give a cross comparison of pros and cons (one obvious con with .Net is cost). I am just looking for a good source on the topic to go off of. Please forgive me and my ignorance on the overall topic.
To give any idea of what I mean by custom controls, here a few sites:
http://www.soundcloud.com – audio playback conrotrol,
http://www.facebook.com – ticker,
http://www.yahoo.com – in browser chat
I would look at EXT.JS. It’s a client-side JavaScript framework that has numerous custom controls. It lives and breathes XML/JSON for data storage. It has been designed to be extendible and comes with full JS source code so you can modify it to suit your own needs. I’ve been working with it for many months now and it seems like these guys GOT IT RIGHT.
On top of that, it has its own graphing and visualization engine that renders to SVG, Canvas, and supports HTML5 and mobile with virtually zero effort. $595 and worth every penny.