Here is my view on the topic: There are 2 kinds of potential customers, 4D programmers who want to add web functionality to their 4D apps and web programmers, who are looking for something that is easier to implement and maintain than programming their own stuff in php/mysql, but more flexible than just customizing open source cms or e-commerce systems.
The later are harder to get onto the 4D/A4D train. Web hosting is usually done on Linux and there is no 4D version running on Linux. As other's have mentioned, 4D-server licensing is far from ideal for developers selling to small companies. Hosting 4D-Desktop with NTK/A4D on Windows could be an alternative but IMHO 4D-Client is a powerful and extremely flexible backend-client, which I prefer vastly over any web-client. You loose that option with 4D-Desktop running on a remote machine. The better way to drive a4d sales is to encourage 4D programmers to use A4D for their web-extensions instead of the build-in 4D web functionality or 4D's Wakanda. They are far less than web programmers but they have also far less alternatives and usually don't have to fight with platform issues, licensing fees etc. as they already have a running 4D ecosystem. And here lies the problem: Your "do a shopping application in 5 minutes" is a great appetizer but what comes after that? Let's face it, you recommend everyone to use Fusebox in A4D for any real work. And you are right, the combination of 4D/A4D/Fusebox empowers you to build complex, dynamic sites in almost no time compared to do this with php/mysql. But you don't mention Fusebox in your screencast and probably for a good reason. The only documentation are two more than 10 year old books, written for ASP and almost impossible to get nowadays at least in Europe. Most links to Fusebox resources end in broken links as these websites don't exist any more for quite some years. That doesn't make someone thrown into the new world of A4D/Fusebox feel very comfortable. Installing the demo is the next hurdle you have to take. I don't remember what it was, but it took me longer the first time than I had expected. And the number of questions about the first installation on this list shows, that it is not trivial. Next the demo itself. Don't get me wrong, it covers a lot of examples, what you can do with A4D and it helped me a lot at the beginning. But what a lot of beginners probably would love to have, is a basic framework of the two likely most requested applications for the web, an e-commerce solution and a CMS system, to build on and customize to their own needs. Accompanied by a manual (describing the logic of the apps and including the Fusebox basics as far as needed) and probably a screencast (for the cineastes), this would give people an easier startup. A few modification in the A4D Fusebox-model could make it easier for beginners to add plugin-like content in different areas of a website, but that's a topic for another thread. Would it be worth the effort? No one can say. Regards Peter _______________________________________________ Active4D-dev mailing list [email protected] http://list.aparajitaworld.com/listinfo/active4d-dev Archives: http://active4d-nabble.aparajitaworld.com/
