[Gambas-user] About the Gambas article

[Fabien Bodard]

Le Thursday 06 December 2007 22:02:17 Rob, vous avez écrit :
> On Thursday 06 December 2007 15:02, Fabien Bodard wrote:
> > > Getting a prominent blogger to notice the imminent release of
> > > Gambas 2.0 would probably help, but there's so much more hype
> > > about Ajax and other web technologies nowadays that traditional
> > > desktop development tends to fly under the radar.
> >
> > And in other side this explain the ajax fashion... but ajax, in
> > fact is a pseudo technologie... I don't understand the facination
> > that all people have for that...
>
> You're right, it's not a language or platform or toolkit, just a
> buzzword that can refer to a lot of different techniques.  But
> fundamentally, it's a way to make web applications that are usable by
> people who run any modern OS and are nearly as responsive as desktop
> applications, without relying on awkward, sometimes incompatible
> plugins or applets.
>
> That's why people are fascinated by it, mostly due to Google's very
> visible products (if Gmail or Google Maps didn't get their attention,
> I'm pretty sure Google Docs did.)  But the awkwardness you remove by
> not using Java or Flash comes back to you when you try to write a big
> system using it, something I still hope to simplify one day using
> Gambas.
>
> I already converted a big Access/VB app to a Perl CGI-based Ajax app
> by importing the VB forms into Gambas, and writing a framework (which
> was awkward, slow, and loaded down with one customer's business
> logic) to convert those forms to XHTML, add Javascript event handlers
> for each element, populate them from MySQL, and update the data on
> the server side after each change, transparently to the user.  It
> would also generate PDF, ODT or DOC files of the reports and send
> them down to the browser.  It was a huge pain, but I started it
> before the term Ajax was coined.  There are toolkits available now
> that can help people a lot when they do that sort of thing.
>
> I can convert a VB app to a Gambas app much more easily, but then the
> client has to commit to a Linux desktop.  Maybe they're doing that in
> Europe, but very few American companies are doing that.  A web-based
> application means they can keep using whatever OS they have and not
> have to install an app on each user's machine, just send them a
> bookmark.
>
> There are many apps which aren't well-suited for conversion to the web
> using Ajax, like anything that touches the local machine's hardware
> (specialized backup/burning, multimedia/games, anything that needs
> serial or parallel port access or fine control over keyboard input,
> anything that needs to print directly rather than generating a PDF,
> etc.) and for those I certainly prefer Gambas over anything else.
> But for apps that are primarily data entry and calculations, that
> don't need fancy paper handling or communication with special
> hardware, I think using Ajax techniques has made the browser a lot
> more viable as a platform.
>
I'm sure you're true...
the better will be construct one time, browse everywhere ...

> Rob
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> SF.Net email is sponsored by:
> Check out the new SourceForge.net Marketplace.
> It's the best place to buy or sell services for
> just about anything Open Source.
> http://sourceforge.net/services/buy/index.php
> _______________________________________________
> Gambas-user mailing list
> Gambas-user at lists.sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gambas-user