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This is a complete newb question but I'm trying to run through the Lift-in-Action book by Tim Perrett. Maybe I'm wrong but does lift require a better understanding of CSS/Javascript than, say, Rails because of its View-first philosophy?

Or am I completely misunderstanding something. If so i'd appreciate an explanation of what I'm missing.

Ramy
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    IMHO you need to understand CSS and javascript (and just in case may I add HTML and HTTP) regardless of the web framework and platform you use. – Mauricio Scheffer Feb 04 '12 at 05:34
  • The following has a comparison of Lift and Rails. Required understanding of CSS/JS isn't any different. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/957795/is-the-lift-framework-as-easy-as-ruby-on-rails-or-django – Jeow Li Huan Feb 04 '12 at 05:38
  • Well "understanding" isn't binary here. I have an understanding of all those technologies and didn't have as much trouble building an application in rails. – Ramy Feb 04 '12 at 05:38
  • @Ramy is there some feature of Rails that autogenerates CSS or JS for you? Otherwise I'm not sure what CSS/JS has to do with ease of building an app on Rails vs Lift. – Dan Burton Feb 04 '12 at 07:48
  • @Dan Burton, No but in my limited experience with lift it seems that because I have access to a templating language I can muck around with what's displayed a bit more. Maybe it's just as easy in lift to do this but it seems like (and I could be wrong - which is why i bring this up at all) i have to directly manipulate html to get what I want out of lift. – Ramy Feb 05 '12 at 15:05

2 Answers2

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View first does not mean do the html/css pages first and then connect that to scala code. What it means is that one page can be divided into several logic components, called snippets in lift talk. This is in contrast to MVC frameworks, where the main idea is that one page has one main topic.

You can find more details on this post

fmpwizard
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Lift is a world apart from Rails. It more close to JSF and ASP.Net but just conceptually. It isn't exactly a component based framework as JSF and ASP, but view controls what gets executed initially(view first). There are ways to bypass this.

If you try to compare it with other frameworks and get the hang of it, it will be difficult as it will get you more confused. I think a good grasp of scala is neccessary to start lift and even Lift In Action.

Lift in Action has an unnatural sequence for In Depth Chapters. You will need to read the book twice for a good understanding.

Khurram Ijaz
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