I find CGI approach wonderfully limiting

Post #37,362 by tseliot 5/3/02 2:28:33 PM Reply	I find CGI approach wonderfully limiting What do you mean by "all that rot"? Those are what makes GUI's powerful and relatively simple. An event can change anything anywhere in the app display without worrying about recreating state or sending a complete new copy or what-not. Writing web apps means essentially breaking your app into the classic MVC categories. The only thing that should "recreate state" is server-side data; you use CGI for this. Everything else should be either static, or client-side-modified; you use JS+DOM+HTML for this. Now, although I agree with you that JDH is not as "powerful" as a GUI, I find that not to be a significant limitation in my work. Instead, it forces me to think about bandwidth and workflow much more intentionally, separating out those bits which need to be passed from client to server (or vice-versa) and which don't. Therefore, my apps are much cleaner and network-optimized than most GUI apps, both ones I've built and others I have used. Just my 2 cents. --------------------------------- Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance - Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation. BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
Post #37,368 by ChrisR 5/3/02 3:15:02 PM Reply	Agree for the most part... ...but I sure wish that they'd do a little more work on the input side of things. A combo-box would be nice. (also be nice if the drop down lists were not restricted to a single character lookup). A standard drop-down and popup menu would be nice. Maybe even throw in an input Grid for grins. I find that the later versions of HTML give me a great deal of control over drawing but I get the impression that the input controls have not really changed since V1.0 (other than adding events). It would also be nice if the standards committee hadn't leaned towards deprecating Tables. Although divs and spans can emulate the table technique, it's more involved and time consuming. They give you greater control in that it is tree based, but a lot of times you just want a rectangular two-dimensional array to start dumping stuff. That said, I don't want a bunch of subthreads going back and forth on every page - loading and unloading things on the fly. I'd rather they just standardize the browsers (we're getting much closer) and then maybe enhance the input features a bit.
Post #37,542 by tablizer 5/4/02 11:54:32 PM Reply	Spank-A-Matic ? (* Now, although I agree with you that JDH is not as "powerful" as a GUI, I find that not to be a significant limitation in my work. ) What I find is that managers keep wanting weblications to resemble VB-like GUI apps. JDH-CGI is crappy for that. The same app would be roughly about 1/2 to 1/3 as much code in a C/S GUI tool, be more natural UI-wize, and quicker to develop. I don't like funky paradigms to get in the way of my vision of how I want the interface to be. I want to conduct a symphony with whatever instrument I feel like, within reason. I will have more to post about this soon. ( it forces me to think about bandwidth and workflow much more intentionally, *) You like it because it herds and punishes you? Leave S&M to the hookers. Just don't use bound countrols in C/S tools and filter large search lists/grids at the server stage, not on the client, and you shouldn't have that many bandwidth problems. ________________ oop.ismad.com
Post #37,637 by tseliot 5/6/02 12:42:07 PM Reply	Sorry, I misunderstood. What I find is that managers keep wanting weblications to resemble VB-like GUI apps.... <snip> Just don't use bound countrols in C/S tools and filter large search lists/grids at the server stage, not on the client, and you shouldn't have that many bandwidth problems. I continue to be under the assumption that bound controls and filtering on the client are the essence of VB-like GUI apps. If this isn't the case for you, then what do "VB-like GUI apps" entail that's different from web apps? Comboboxes? --------------------------------- Many fears are born of stupidity and ignorance - Which you should be feeding with rumour and generalisation. BOfH, 2002 "Episode" 10
Post #37,865 by tablizer 5/7/02 8:22:27 PM Reply	The pudding is not even in alpha I continue to be under the assumption that bound controls and filtering on the client are the essence of VB-like GUI apps. If this isn't the case for you, then what do "VB-like GUI apps" entail that's different from web apps? Comboboxes? You can change just about anything anywhere on any screen at any time (within the app). If web apps are (or can be) so similar to C/S GUI apps, then how come there are no VB/Delphi/PB-like IDE's for developing them? (The closest thing I know of is the Oracle Forms using it's Java-applet-based "GUI Browser". But Oracle Forms stinks to high heck. It has a certain "personality" that you have to negotiate with. It does not easily allow "changing anything anywhere on any screen at any time" and forces outdated Windows-3x-like conventions on you. If their GUI Browser was only an open standard or OSS, then it might go further.) ________________ oop.ismad.com

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