Design philosophy and technical choices

The framework's primary goal is to be multi-device. This has implications on most design decisions. The first releases of the framework will focus on having on the number of adapters, not the number or complexity of the UI Elements. This makes the framework currently optimal for multi-device media/content apps.

Another goal of the framework is also to avoid bothering developers. The framework won't impose a crazy IDE, a specific MVC pattern/library or a database choice. Developers should be free to continue using the tools and libraries they love. That said, the framework also bundles a selection of great libraries that are mostly not mandatory but are quite standard in their domains, to avoid reinventing the wheel.

Impose what really matters

In order to be multi-device, there are only two patterns that need to be used by the developers:

Let developers stay in their comfort zone for the rest

Title says all. You are pretty much free to use whatever ORM, Template engine, API library, CSS framework, CoffeeScript clone, Webserver framework, ... you want. Some tools may restrict the number of devices your application can be ported on but this will just depend on you.

Stand on the shoulders of giants

Joshfire bundles a number of popular libraries that solve common issues or provide interesting features. You may however not use them at all or replace them by your own.