Vaadin vs. Bootstrap

Question

I am planning to make an application that has views with complex forms and logical validation on the client side. I plan to use AJAX for submits and have some visual appeal.

Answer 1

I would go with Rails 3.2 + Bootstrap + Backbone.js, the stack we use here.

• Rails: Nice community, solid platform, very easy to develop for, can deploy to Heroku (God bless Heroku).
• Bootstrap 2.0: HTML5-compliant, nice out-of-the-box features, good community (just look at their github page), sensible js plugins.
• Backbone.js: Very nice for client-heavy applications, plays nice with the rest of the stack (specially jQuery), provides a good user experience when used right, unobstrusive. Specially good for dynamic forms since you can refactor a lot of code using specialized views (autocompletes, tables with multiple items, related select boxes, etc.).

As for documentation, both Rails's and Bootstrap's are top notch and you can find a lot of books about them. Backbone.js, despite its large user base, is more specialized, but you can still find a lot of good screencasts and e-books in the Net (I recommend the works of peepcode and thoughtbot).

Good luck with your app!

PS: Another good point of using Rails is the set of gems and addons you can use. Full text search? Sunspot. Audit and Versioning? PaperTrail. BDD? Cucumber. I suggest you checkout the Ruby Toolbox site.