TinyButStrong Alternatives

I spent over a month trying to understand TBS and I am by no means a newbie when it comes to programming.  While I was intrigued by the simplicity of TBS, I found the user manual and instructions to be lacking.  I tried using the forums, but the format of the forum made it difficult to navigate and the replies seemed to be mainly from advanced users who really don't spend much time breaking things down for the beginner (with the exception of a few individuals).

Suffice to say I began searching for an alternative and came across Savant.  I have been using it for about 15 minutes now and already I understand and have achieved more than I did with TBS over the past month.  I am not knocking TBS, I think it's a great engine, but quite honestly it's confusing - the manual needs to be re-written, more examples are required and a normal forum (IPB, V-Bulletin, etc) should be set-up to makes things easier. 

Just my two cents - maybe I will try it again some day, right now I can't be bother trying to figure it out!

Hi Slick,

Thanks for your remarks.
One think that is missing is a "Quick start" or "Getting Started" for TBS.
But until now, quite all users found the Example Page very useful and rich enough to understand the TBS concept.
The manual has been re-writted several times taking account of user remarks and it has now many congratulations.

I don't agree that contributors of the forum don't' break down thinks for the beginners. I usually don't go far on basic Php explanations because it should need a big course of Php programming. But post on the forum about basic TBS and/or PHP usage which can have a quick answer have always a reply.

You might as well not use savant; it's "templates" are php files for as far as I know. Now that isn't a problem I mean, the difference between smarty and savant templates is very little. But it doesn't have the advantages that make tbs so unique.

The reason savant was easier for you to learn is because there was little to learn; the code structure is the same as in php. TBS has a different template structure but it is not that difficult. You should just get the examples and play with those on your own computer. Playing yourself before reading the manual helps a lot!

I agree with Slick on the forum. I am more used to IPB, phpBB or vBulletin and I would like to use one of them more than the TBS forum. However, Skrol would have all the work, so I never asked for it.

I disagree with Slick, where he talks about TBS beginners. The first examples are very easy to understand and the page with all examples is just AWESOME!

I agree with Slick, that TBS becomes very complicated with complicated templates. I had to ask here to find out about the parameter "extend", to understand the difference between "headergrp" and "parentgrp". I took a lot of time to create
http://lamp.clausvb.de/tbs_examples/db_adv.php
from his example "dynamic columns", but I figured it out on my own.

I am working on an english crashcourse, though:
http://lamp.clausvb.de/tbs_mhtml/crashcourse/table_of_content.html

But the german translation, understanding TBS and using it for "dl_stats" (a GPL product of mine) takes a lot more time than I thought in the beginning.

On the other hand TBS uses a different concept than Smarty or vlibTemplate. And Skrol find a solutions to all my problems yet. I think I will ask sooner in the future, so I do not get frustrated and think: "Why didn't I choose vlibTemplate for dl_stats?"

TBS offers features NO template engine has. It's A LOT easier to install than Smarty.
E.g.: TBS supports MySQL and PostgresQL, Smarty does not.
TBS supports date formats like strftime, Smarty does not.

And I think there is more, but I have to fully comprehend things like "onload" and so on, but I did not have the time, right now.

Regards,
Claus