The problem with straight PHP frameworks is that they’re generally quite complex, requiring me to learn an abstraction layer that makes my life more complex than just programming in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, the scaffolding in CakePHP is great. But once you’ve scaffolded, then what? Better jump into the API. And it’s not (or it is) as easy as it looks.

And so I’m trying to move up the value chain and realise, surely there’s someone smarter than me that has already invented better web controls than what I could do.

Enter some of these RIA frameworks. A couple I’m looking at are ZK and Laszlo. Some of the bigger name ones are Silverlight and Adobe AIR. I’m focusing on the ones that has the minimum amount of programming required to create Resourcer.

ZK has a really good Live Demo that comes as a WAR file that you’d deploy in a Web Container like Tomcat. Here are some more ZK Demos.

I’ll keep you in the loop with how it goes.