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I'm looking for a set of Javascript based UI components for a web app I'm building and have found that many of the best looking web apps were built with the Capuccino framework; see http://www.getflow.com/, http://www.picsengine.com/home/ and http://timetableapp.com/ for examples.

However, I'm not a Cocoa developer and have no interest in learning Objective-J. Ideally, I'd find a set of components that provide the visual end result of Capuccino apps without the underlying weight of the framework.

I have seen the Aristo jQuery UI them (http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/482577430/introducing-aristo-a-jquery-ui-theme), but jQuery UI just doesn't seem to have the depth of components available in Capuccino.

I realize this may be a long shot, but I figured it can't hurt to ask. :)

Thanks.

evanmcd
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    Remember that no matter how you choose to write a complex modern app, there'll be a learning curve. With Cappuccino at least you only have to learn one thing (Objective-J) and not a combination of CSS, CSS3, HTML, various JS frameworks, canvas, XMLHttpRequests, different UI kits... It might not look like it at first glance but you might actually save learning time with Cappuccino. – Alexander Ljungberg Jun 06 '11 at 16:33

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As another option, there is jQuery UI: nice if you are already familiar with jQuery, with the plus side of not being too heavyweight, but may not have all the components you need pre-defined. A nice thing is that it encourages to write the HTML in a way that degrades gracefully when your application in older browsers.

Adrian Perez
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Maybe sproutcore is an alternative for you, although it requires you to hand-code everything in javascript from scratch. It offers most basic components and is easily adjustable to your personal design goals. Sproutcore is used in Apples Mobile Me and in some other big projects.

Another possibility might by vaadin which offers a rich set of prebuild controls and is based on Googles GWT javascript compiler. But it only makes sense if you are developing in a java environment.

Steffen
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    I suggest you look at the future of Sproutcore (2.0) before you choose it. The entier UI layer is being scrapped and you'll end up writing all your components yourself. – Me1000 Jun 05 '11 at 16:59
  • Thanks @Steffan, I have looked at SproutCore, but 1) didn't feel like the example components were quite up to par with Cappuccino's (guessing Apple's UI folks did most of the beautifying for MobileMe only) and 2) as @Me1000 notes, I'm a bit unclear about it's future. – evanmcd Jun 05 '11 at 19:36
  • In my opinion sproutcore will have a future. It might be a litte confusing at the moment which version to use. If you plan you want to use predefined components you should use 1.6 and not 2.0 since the components are not available for 2.0 yet. 2.0 is an early developer preview if you want to enhance existing applications with sproutcore. If you build from scratch use 1.6 with the desktop toolkit. – Steffen Jun 05 '11 at 20:57
  • Thanks for the info. It seems to me, though, that SproutCore has as much overhead from the framework as does Cappuccino. My goal is to find a set of components that is separated from a larger framework. – evanmcd Jun 07 '11 at 13:05
  • SC's UI layer isn't being scrapped, but porting it is second in priority to finishing the MVC portion of the framework. – arbales Jul 19 '11 at 19:00