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# Cappuccino vs jQuery

tl;dr:

- Tried to make YPassword in jQuery and with Cappuccino.
- Cappuccino nice in desktop browser but 1.4MB, not compatible with iPhone.
- jQuery not as nice as the Cappuccino version but 106KB. iPhone compatible.
- I’ll give a try to Dashcode 3.

Before start, I must say I know Cappuccino and jQuery are no more comparable than Cocoa and the C++ standard library. One is oriented for user interface while the other is and helper for low level programming. Nonetheless I used these two to make the same web application. This is why I compare the experience I had with each of them for this specific task.

I made a web version of my dashboard widget YPassword. It is a simple widget to manage your online password with a strong security and with a totally portable way. It is not intended to replace a keychain. It is more a password generator.

The first was made from the code of my dashboard widget and with some jQuery. You can try it here. I then made a second version with the Cappuccino. You can try it here.

## What this widget do?

If you don’t mind about what does my widget and just want to know how the two frameworkcompare, you should go directly to the next part.

I manage my password on many site with a simple method. I remember a strong master password. And my password is mainly `hash(masterPassword+domainName)`

In reality I need a bit more informations to create a password:

- A master password,
- an URL,
- a maximal password length,
- the kind of output base64 or hexadecimal,
- how many times my password could have leaked.

The result password is this:

    domainName=domaine_Name_Of_URL(url)
    hash=sha1( masterPassword + leakedTimes + domainName )
    if ( kind == 'base64' )
        hash=base64(hash)
    end
    return hash[0..maxlength]

In fact depending of websites, some give some strange constraint to your password:

- minimal length,
- maximal length,
- must not contain a special character,
- must contain a special character,
- etc…

And if you want to change your password the leak number is here for that. All informations such as user name, maximal length can be stored in a public file. The only real secret is the master password.

If you want to know even more details you can always look at some of my old blog entries:

- simple portable password management
- base64
- change your password

## Cappuccino

First, I’d like to say Cappuccino applications look simply awesome. It is like having a Cocoa application in your web browser. And this is great.

I also must admit I enjoyed making my application with Cappuccino. It is like programming for an iPhone application. If you are a bit familiar with Cocoa, you feel at home. If you don’t know anything about Cocoa, I suggest you to look at it. This is a really great framework to make User Interface. I am not a specialist, but I have done some MFC, java Swing1 and WXWindows User Interfaces (some years ago). And I must say, Cocoa is far better than those.

Cappuccino is a great web application oriented development. But there was also some drawbacks

Things I liked:

- It looks great
- It was fun to program
- It was like programming a Mac application
- I could have done the User Interface using Interface Builder.

Some things I didn’t like:

- I made some time to understand how to handle the `onChange` on the text fields.
- Documentation lacked a bit of organisation.
- It doesn’t work on iPhone.
- It weighted 11MB to deploy.
- It weight 1.3MB to load.

I didn’t use bindings because I believe they are not ready by now.

## jQuery

The jQuery version of YPassword is not as finished as the Cappuccino one. Because, there is no slider directly with jQuery. I’d have to use jQueryUI. And I believe, using it will make the application weight far more than the today 106KB.

To make this version I simply copied my widget source code and adapted it. It was straightforward. But jQuery is not an application oriented framework. It is more a “dark side javascript animation framework”2.

I don’t have too much to say about the jQuery version. But this was way more low level programming than Cappuccino.

## My conclusion

If you want to make an iPhone compatible web application just don’t use Cappuccino yet. If you want to make simple application like mine, I also believe, Cappuccino is a bit too much.

If you want to make a complex web oriented application, Cappuccino is a great choice. But you may have some difficulties to begin programming with it.

Finally, to terminate my web version of my widget, I’ll give a try to Dashcode 3. It seems to be a good alternative to create web widgets. I don’t know if Dashcode 3 is portable on non webkit browser. But if it is, it could be the end of projects like Cappuccino and Sproutcore.

1. If you are interested you can take a look at SEDiL. I am proud of the tree drawing view made from scratch.↩

2. I don’t want to feel like a troll I use jQuery to make some dark side animation on this blog. But the javascript on my blog is not needed except for commenting.↩

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Published on 2010-07-05
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Yann Esposito©
Done with Vim spacemacs & nanoc Hakyll

ADA: `DdzFFzCqrhtAvdkmATx5Fm8NPJViDy85ZBw13p4XcNzVzvQg8e3vWLXq23JQWFxPEXK6Kvhaxxe7oJt4VMYHxpA2vtCFiP8fziohN6Yp`