From: Edd Dumbill (edd@usefulinc.com)
Date: Thu Apr 27 2000 - 16:58:54 PDT
[de-lurking, hoping at least some info herein is of use]
On Thu, Apr 27, 2000 at 02:04:50PM -0700, Tom Whore wrote:
> Finaly had a chance to play with Zop in the office. Not bad, not bad at
> all. Some of the products they have are just what im looking for.
>
> Anyone else playing with it (www.zope.com)
Been using it on and off for a few months now. The learning curve is quite
steep but I love the idea of being able to drop in "products" to add in
functionality to web sites. Some of the cooler products include Squishdot
<http://www.zope.org/Members/butchland/Squishdot>, which turns your Zope
site into Slashdot and ZWiki <http://www.zope.org/Members/simon/ZWiki>,
as well as other ones with slightly narrower applicability like the
ZNavigator <http://www.zope.org/Members/jonas/ZNavigator> which'll
handle site navigation for you, polls, surveys, FAQ managers, discussion
forums, etc.
It appeals to me because it provides a component-based attitude to
building sites that's missing from the more conventional template-based
approach using something like ASP or PHP. Because of this, people who
write Zope products are aware that they're delivering functionality, and
that appearance should be customizable -- this sets Zope products apart
from most open source pre-baked libraries for doing things like forums,
etc.
Zope's weak spot currently is documentation, which they are addressing,
I believe. There's also a nifty project underway to integrate it with
Mozilla <http://www.zope.org/Resources/Mozilla/index_html> which might
result in a more convenient management interface.
I've not had nearly as much time with Zope as I'd like yet, but it's got
me hooked. When I've got enough of my common building-blocks moved into
being Zope products, it'll be a lot easier to do the things I want to do
with it. I wanted to use it for XMLhack.com, but when it came to
convenience and time-efficiency, I stuck with what I knew and did it in
PHP.
A related bit: Slashdot's interview with Philip Greenspun today
<http://slashdot.org/interviews/00/04/27/107235.shtml>
mentions Zope. Greenspun seems to like it but takes the view that they
spent too much time building the lower levels (like the DB layer, for
instance) so never quite got around to building some of the more useful
layers for site builders, such as calendar, commenting etc. that his
ArsDigita Community System
<http://www.photo.net/building-community/infrastructure.adp> includes.
That looks to be changing now as more people write "products" for it.
And, for better or for worse, Python sounds a bit more trendy than Tcl.
Zope has me hooked, anyway.
-- Edd
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