Web programming tools

[Chipp Walters]

Dan,

Some thoughts on Web Application Design...

I've been working for over two years building the Altuit Hemingway Content
Management System. Because the main GUI had to work on virtually all
browsers, we kept the interface pretty simple. Tried to do as much with CSS
as possible for the App. (BTW, Hemingway renders all types of templated
content, including building your own templates with tables & CSS. I believe
you need to support tables to create great looking templates -- can't do it
all with CSS).

45 days ago I started building Hemingway 2.0 using a RR front end instead of
a browser. Fascinating experience....browser GUI vs regualar App GUI. The RR
front end makes things SO very much easier...plus it has a plugin
architecture which updates itself and provides for Image Editing, File
Upload Management and custom HTML / forms wizards. The product is still in
beta, but can be found at the bottom of page:

http://www.altuit.com/webs/hemingway/Support/Support.htm
(you'll have to sign up for a free trial...not all features work in the demo
version..WinXP only at this time ...also I don't have much documentation
other than help buttons at this time)

When I'm done, I plan on doing a whitepaper comparing both approaches.
Frankly, the speed with which I can add features using RR is incredible --
not to mention the capabilities are far beyond that of a browser based
application. Who ever heard of clicking a button and instantly editing an
image (screen capture or import, crop, resize, mulit-layer compositions, add
Text layers with drop shadows, add alpha effects to name a few) directly in
a webpage? I've seen some JAVA applets which do some of this, but not very
well. Anyway, I'm sold on this approach.

Furthermore, using our altBrowser.dll (thanks to Tuviah Snyder for helping
here) we can view webpages directly inside RR/MC. Pretty cool.
http://www.altuit.com/webs/leo/LEOBrowser/default.htm

(I plan on releasing it soon, and still need beta testers!)

best,

Chipp