Why the Wonky Wheel?
If you are new to this blog, here is what I plan for my application named Charlie:
“Charlie is a web-based application that simplifies the creation, maintenance, and use of websites. For a website developer, Charlie simplifies the process of creating and updating a website. For a website owner, Charlie simplifies the process of maintaining and editing a website. For a website user, Charlie simplifies the process of navigating and using a website.”
It is reasonable to ask why I have decided to build Charlie from scratch when there are existing solutions that purport to do the same thing. For ASP.NET, a popular open-source solution is DotNetNuke. Why am I not using DotNetNuke? Because I hate DotNetNuke.
First, I am a designer by trade, and I find DotNetNuke websites to be among the most sinfully ugly websites ever created. I have little interest in a framework that is trying to pull my websites in the direction of ugly, while I must use its skinning capability to pull the websites in the direction of beauty. The framework should be helping me, not playing a game of tug-a-war against me. Sorry, but DotNetNuke is just too damn ugly.
Second, I find DotNetNuke websites to be among the slowest websites anywhere. Far too many DotNetNuke websites time out. The HTML payload of DotNetNuke sites is comical. The Media Releases page for DotNetNuke weighs in at 35kb, of which only 8.5kb is viewable content (a 25% content to HTML ratio). If we include image, script, and stylesheet files, the media releases page for DotNetNuke weighs in at a staggering 177kb (a 5% content ratio). The CSS page for A List Apart weighs in at 13kb, of which 5.6kb is viewable content (a 44% content to HTML ratio). If we include image, script, and stylesheet files, the CSS page weighs in at 53kb (a 10% content ratio). So while the DotNetNuke page provides 50% more content than the A List Apart page, its uses 300% more HTML than the A List Apart page. Sorry, but DotNetNuke is just too damn bloated and too damn slow.
Third, DotNetNuke produces highly invalid HTML. The homepage for DotNetNuke produces 133 HTML errors, 62 CSS errors and 47 CSS warnings, and fails 508 and WCAG compliance. Sorry, but DotNetNuke is just too damn invalid.
Fourth, DotNetNuke is apparently very hard to use. I am a moderator of the forums on www.asp.net, and I have seen users struggle to get DotNetNuke to do the simplest of things. There are almost 20,000 threads in the DotNetNuke forums, most of them started by users who cannot get DotNetNuke to do what they need. Sorry, but DotNetNuke is just too damn hard to use.
There are other things too that I dislike about DotNetNuke; but I will not go on. The point of this blog entry is not to bash DotNetNuke—it is loved by many developers. The point of this blog entry is to state why it is that I am building what others may say has already been built.
by Alister Jones | Next up: Providing Charlie with an Extended Framework →
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Couldn't agree more on DotNetNuke. That about sums it up for me.
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