Friday, March 07, 2008

Exhibit 2.0 - Javascript web framework

I just discovered Exhibit and I'm amazed by its simplicity. Exhibit is a web framework written in Javascript that you can use to display data. It's not a general purpose framework. It's focused on displaying data in several formats, like interactive tables, maps, graphs, etc.
What I like about Exhibit is how simple it is to use. Everything is done in a simple HTML file! You heard me right, just HTML. The framework is done in Javascript, and it does all the data manipulation. You just have to add some special attributes to the HTML tags in order to specify how data is going to be shown. That's the presentation part of the framework. The data itself has to be in JSON format. Just add a link tag pointing at the js file with your data structure and you're all set. This is actually very flexible. In a simple case you can point to a static js file. But you can also point to an URL that dynamically generates your JSON data.
Exhibit then gives you a few presentation choices. One of them is trough Google Maps. This way you can create mash ups quite easily. Interactive tables that allow filtering and sorting also look nice.
Exhibit is part of SIMILE project, a joint effort conducted by the MIT Libraries and MIT CSAIL. So simple, but it can be quite useful...and pretty cool.

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