Yesterday i stumbled upon SmartClient, which is yet another of those AJAX frameworks filled with neat custom controls. SmartClient has recently been Open Source’d, and is now available for licensing under the LGPL.

Like OpenLaszlo, SmartClient allows you to define your interface in XML using a set of tags representing the various controls. Although this seems to be an afterthought as i could only find one example in the Demo’s which actually used this.

Another similarity with OpenLaszlo – and even Dojo now i think of it – is that it implements its own Layout system. I guess normal HTML layout simply is not enough nowadays.

Apart from that, it’s just about like any other modern-day fully-fledged AJAX framework. You can use custom controls, do dynamic requests, use silly animations, and bind data.

However there are a few snags with SmartClient.

In order to download the LGPL version, you must register on SmartClient’s website. In addition to get some of the most useful features such as the “Java server” and the “Visual builder”, you must purchase the “full-featured” version. Which is fair enough, i guess – after all they have to make money somehow!

So to sum it up, while SmartClient may be an interesting AJAX framework, i don’t think i will be using it in the future.