>I am interested in information on third-party frameworks along with their strengths and weaknesses. Anyone who would care to share their knowledge/opinions, I would be quite interested.

You could go on the sites of the framework vendors and get demos of applications that were made with those frameworks. It'll give you a good idea of what's available from those frameworks.

Here's one to get you started. http://www,codemine.com

Be sure to pick the one that's more fitted to your needs.