Infusion Framework
What is Infusion?
Infusion is a different kind of JavaScript framework. Built for creating applications that are highly usable and accessible, Infusion provides a rich set of APIs for creating loosely-coupled models and views using a declarative and event-driven style. Infusion is built on top of jQuery, and embraces unobtrusive, functional techniques that promote less code and greater flexibility. Modular and interoperable, everything about Infusion is open: its architecture, source code, and community.
Infusion is...
- A growing collection of user interface components
- An application framework for developing applications with JavaScript and jQuery
- An open and extensible architecture: no black boxes or canned designs here
The Infusion Framework
Models, Views, but no Controllers
Most other model-view-controller Web frameworks require you write a lot of repetitive glue code in the controller layer. Infusion is different: we think it's the job of the framework to take care of the glue, leaving you to focus on the stuff that makes your application tick. Models and Views are are the heart of the Infusion framework, wired together with an event-driven approach that helps take the drudgery out of keeping your data in sync with the DOM.
Unobtrusive Template Rendering
Infusion's client-side template renderer is completely unobtrusive, allowing you to dynamically render your user interface without having to mix up bits of code with your HTML. No code in your templates means more reuse, less chance for mistakes, and an easier job when it comes time to do a redesign.
Fluid Skinning System
Infusion includes a lightweight CSS framework that is built from the ground up to be extensible. The Fluid Skinning System (FSS) lets you mix and match styles to create beautiful and themeable user interfaces, providing pre-baked layouts, widgets and text styles to get you started. In combination with our UI Options component, the FSS lets your users customize the appearance of your application, ensuring that it can accommodate a wide range of user needs.
Usability and Accessibility From the Ground Up
We built Infusion to help designers and developers create better user interfaces. Recognizing that you can't bottle good design, Infusion provides easy-to-adapt components, accessibility plugins, and a variety of extensible themes, giving you all the building blocks you need to create the right user experience for your application. All our designs are tested with a variety of users, and have been carefully crafted by a community of interaction designers and accessibility experts.
An Open, Interoperable Architecture
Infusion's architecture is incredibly open, allowing you to modify and extend our components and framework to suit your needs. Need to use other toolkits, too? We play nice with other JavaScript code, avoiding the conflicts that are common when combining different JavaScript libraries. This makes Infusion particularly well suited to building mashups and portals where you don't control the whole environment.
What you get with Infusion
1. Accessible solutions that work for everyone
2. A growing collection of user interface components that allow you to transform your UI
3. An application framework for developing applications with JavaScript and jQuery
4. An open and extensible architecture: no black boxes or canned designs here
We want interfaces to be easy to use and good interfaces to be easy to build – our solution is an easy-to-learn way of building user interfaces. Infusion allows you to extend, change, and adjust markup, appearance and style. Just plug in your own code and extension points and let our model make sense of it all.
Our CSS is careful and artful, bringing the power of an open, extensible architecture to your interface. Our Javascript is solid and hard working – you can rely on it because we work to safeguard you from Javascript pitfalls. We do the extra work to make sure you don't have to concern yourself with Javascript language weaknesses and cross-browser compatibility issues, while providing a fully accessible solution. Infusion takes on the hard concepts so you don't have to.
Once you're using Infusion, we work to ensure that your production environment is undisturbed by updates to the product. Upgrading is easy with backwards compatibility, support for multiple versions, and solid APIs with thorough documentation.
Climb on our backs and together we'll make great, flexible, user-centered Interfaces.
To see how Infusion can transform your work, take a look at our Demos.
Concepts
Getting Started
- Download the Infusion package
- Try out a few of our Tutorials
- Get tapped into our community
- Build using our components
- Build your own Fluid Infusion component