In case you missed the button up top, I have another project going on at http://app.sugardave.com/ where I’m testing out using the newly open-sourced Enyo framework version 2.0.

I started it a couple of weeks ago as an experiment to check the feasibility of running a web site written as an application that you would normally find on the more advanced mobile platforms (*ahem*webOS*ahem*). Now that Enyo is open-sourced, the other platforms can get some love.

Why Bootstrap? Well, for one thing, in its current form, Enyo 2.0 provides ZERO UI elements/widgets^*. This is a little problematic when you’re talking about web sites. Who wants to visit a page that has nothing to see but some text? That’s so 20+ years ago. (Yes, I am aware of the irony that there’s not much more than just text here )

Secondly, I feel pretty confident in the Bootstrap developers’ abilities. The new version adds “responsive design” functionality similar to Foundations (another framework by Zurb). I have not added in the new responsive functionality yet, but I will at some point so I can see how it performs across different mobile browsers.

Currently, the application/site is sort of an “about me” system where I’ve added some Badges (Enyo kinds that I have created) that contain information related to topics like “me”, “work”, and “play”.

I am also demonstrating a KindInfo kind, which I can use to showcase any other kind I want and display information about it, such as the source code of the showcased kind. Check out the “me” Badge to see what I’m talking about.

Overall, I am pleased with the simplicity of using Bootstrap and the not-impossibleness of creating Enyo kinds that lay out with it. The experience has left me with the thought that a lot of developers are going to wonder “what’s the point?” because I am still having to manually define the tags that the embedded Controls will output and it looks very much like standard HTML markup anyway. For those developers, I would recommend to not worry about it and check back when we have some UI to mess with. But, for the brave and adventurous, it’s time to start using the core and familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of this exciting framework.

^{*Widgets coming soon.}

UPDATE: You will need a WebKit browser (Chrome, Safari, etc.) to see the application. Once Enyo goes cross-platform, other browsers should work.