When you start a new business with a consumer focus, you more than often found that the available budget for software is minimal. With this in mind, when the guys behind Jitsu (who like free and open-source technologies like Apache, Linux, MySql) couldn’t find any open source Ajax frameworks that supported compiled XML and data binding, they decided to build their own, and they released their work under an open source license for the good of the community.

Jitsu contains an integrated set of tools that enable developers to build and deploy sophisticated user interfaces for web applications. It includes an XML markup language, a page compiler, a data binding engine, a JavaScript runtime, a control library, a runtime inspector, an animation engine, a cross-platform library, Ajax, and back button support. Jitsu applications rely on DHTML and run in most modern web browsers.

Jitsu main elements are:

• The Jitsu XML Engine defines UI pages and controls using a mix of XHTML and namespaced XML elements, and also defines application types and datasets in XML.

• The Jitsu Compiler converts XML source markup to a fast JS representation.

• The Jitsu Control Library allows to create flexible controls whose appearance can be customized through markup, without writing code, and includes templated list, card deck, dock panel, date picker, slider, popup, etc.

• The Jitsu Runtime uses a cross-platform JS/DHTML runtime that works in all modern browsers, implements the JSON messaging protocol and wires up controls to data using a full client-side data binding engine that keeps controls and data model in sync.

Jitsu is still in early stages and the code provided is intended for evaluation and feedback only. In its current form, it might not yet be suitable for use in a large-scale project. However, the release of a beta version that will be much more suitable as a building base is foreseen in a near future.

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