In mid-1999, Tennessee rivers were low, but the Ocoee River was flowing well. As I approached a rapid called Hell Hole, I could see the other tourists shudder with fear, but I wasn't worried. In this massive raft, we had nothing to worry about. In fact, up ahead, a kayaker was playing in the hole, and his body slowly slid down, as if he were on an elevator. We passed over, and he came right back up, still surfing the hole. Strange and wonderful.
My raft might be bigger and safer, but there were things it just couldn't do. In his tiny kayak (called a playboat) he could surf the waters beneath the surface to do things seeming alien to those of us in the raft. The Seaside framework is like that. You wouldn't use it for all Web development, but under these circumstances, you might give it a try:
* You have sophisticated work flow and want to manage flow from one simple program.
* You don't want to stay with a safe, conservative language, like the Java™ programming language.
* You like Smalltalk or one of the Smalltalk dialects.
* You have a start-up company in which picking a productive technology is much more important than picking a fast one.
This article gives a high-level tour of Seaside. If you like what you see, you'll have enough information to dive deeper.