Web programming tools (Dan Shafer)

[Sadhunathan Nadesan]

| In my un-trained ignorance of many of the details of the client-server 
| environment what I think I really want is to develop an application in 
| Metacard, upload my application to a server, and have people run my 
| application "within a standard browser" just like my artists who use 
| Macromedia's Flash for animations are doing. 


Yeah, wouldn't that be nice!  I seem to recall something on metacard.com
about configuring MC as a helper application for a browser but that is not 
really what you mean, and its not as painless as flash.  But if you
can convince your clients (or install it for them) then it could work
potentially something like this, I think ..

	On your web site you have links which are to MC scripts.  Similar
	to how you would have links for images, for example.  The image
	has to download to the client PC over the net and then the browser
	displays it.  When the MC script downloaded, the browser would
	launch it using MC as the application behind it.  Another analogy
	would be PDF files.  They are displayed using Acrobat reader
	which the customers have to download first, and everyone has
	accpeted that.  (Difference is acrobat does come up in a browser
	window and the MC script would be a separate window but ...)

	So the key being, get the customers to install the free MC
	engine.

In another post someone mentioned the ways to escape the browser limits
such as java applets (and that is what NXj that I mentioned does, and
its thin client), python, etc ..    I believe in the world of PostgreSQL
developers, approximately 60-70% are using either java or php for
their web apps.  (my area is database apps so that is of interest to me)

I can think of one other way to escape the browser.  Not
that good, but, one other way.

Someone posted an example called, I think, Hemingway.  Again, it is a link
on their web page and again, a file is downloaded.  In this case it was
a .exe file and if your browswer is configured to ask 'save this file or
launch it' you say launch it, and it just runs.  it's a compiled mc ap.
Wasn't that big.  (right? whoever posted that?) So you started off in the
browser but then the application is in a separate window.  Apologies if
I am not correctly explaining Hemingway, but the idea is still valid.

Might fly for you??  Depends how big your application is?

Disadvantage over the browser helper approch is, you need separate links
for mac vs pc.

I have used this approach also within our company on our intranet for
small applications.    Such as, a calculator for residual costs/discount
schedule on 30 second and 15 seconds spots, class A commercials on
network TV.   That is a painful cost to compute using a paper, pencil,
and the residual schedules in the SAG contract, but takes only a second
with a specialized calculator.  So it's very useful.  But you need a
scrolling region like a spread sheet, and you need some formulas that
would be difficult to express in Excel macros, and that is easy to do in
MC and not very easy in XHTML, so MC was a good choice to devlope it in.
Because of the speed of the internal network people just click a link
and the application launches within a couple seconds, they hardly realize
they have left the browser.  And they never had to 'install' anything.
So I get no complaints.

Another variation on this is the application Sivakatirswami has done
where the 'portal' or small part of the application downloads, and then
it can draw other components off the back end server later as needed.
It gives you the option to save the downloaded parts so you can work
off line.  Actually his app is rather polished and professional so
you might want to take a look at that approach.


Sadhu