On 6/3/2017 6:05 AM, Thierry Nivelet wrote:
[Lots of text snipped out below - trying to get to just key points]
Compared to browser incompatibilities, bizarre rendering that experts
could not figure out, security snafus, and did I mention pathetic
performance
browser incompatibilities
Again, this is from the past; except very advanced HTML5/CSS3
features, all browsers now follow the standard, including IE 10+ or Edge
This is not true in my ACTUAL experience. Even inside an huge
organization that spends 10's or 100's of millions of dollars a year on
internal software development.
And maybe I did not make something clear before: I'm talking about
internal enterprise applications. Not "general public" web pages. This
thread started with someone asking if anyone is even "looking for"
desktop applications any more. And my contention is if users actually
saw "rich client/desktop" applications in action, you better believe
they'd be begging for more (especially for internal enterprise
applications).
bizarre rendering that experts could not figure out
Your experts were in fact amateurs. Rendering is made by an algorithm
based on CSS: the browser’s CSS and your CSS. Each CSS directive has a
priority based on specificity and location in the CSS flow. Items can
either be rendered top-down or left-right (or
And there it is, just like I predicted. Someone would just blame the
developers as being stupid and not doing "HTML/CSS/AJAX/.NET?...."
correctly. They've been doing it for over 2 decades (25+ years),
including big hiring direct out of college where I would think all that
grand HTML/CSS/AJAX/.NET "standard" stuff is taught, yes? So if you
want to call all those people stupid, ok, fine by me. It does not change
the reality of terrible browser-based application results.
pathetic performance
Here is the truism; running a single application, on the single
machine, for a single user, will always be faster that running an
application that is shared across users, reachable through a worldwide
network, through a bunch of protocols. The real question is the
trade-off between: easily access from anywhere using any device
through any browser — desktop and/or handheld without any
installation, almost no training, no on-site maintenance, etc.
deploying on multiple workstations / synchronising databases
I'll reiterate I'm talking about internal enterprise applications. Most
"public" web pages in the world do work pretty well for a specific
purpose such as selling products, information publishing, etc. Internal
business applications that attempt to produce a lot of specialized
"business logic" value are what fails in my experience. And, from what
I've seen, the trend for mobile users IS NOT browser-based any more.
They build "custom" (aka rich-client) apps that run on IOS or Android.
For example, my bank DOES NOT force me to use their web page on my
phone: they created an app for me, as a customer, to use. Why do you
think they did that when they already had web pages built?
Anyway, the main point is, inside an enterprise, where desktop
configurations are tightly controlled, it really is much more logical,
cost-effective, and cheaper to have rich client applications. You can
still access the data "from anywhere" - heck, even the internal company
web pages cannot be accessed unless I log in through VPN, etc.
And you did agree on a key point, but I'll phrase it a little
differently: rich client applications will always perform better than
browser based applications. Even going across the web. Because rich
client applications, by design, require less "traffic through the wire"
- rendering data, script "data", etc. None of that has to be transmitted
and then reinterpreted by some intermediary layer (aka a browser). You
can just pull "raw" data only. Therefore, rich client will always be
faster and yield a better experience to the end user.
And I'm afraid you are wrong regarding "training": the enterprise web
pages I've seen require massive training. In fact, most of my time in my
current company is "helping" people use the <bleeping> web pages.
Surely, you are not saying a hyperlink is "easier to understand" than a
button? Of course, any UI can be poor - it's just I've seen the poorest
designs in web pages.
discussing what alternative desktop dev. language we could choose
instead of VFP. The end decider is always the user. Each year 2.5 %
new users enter the work force (and almost as many retire) — what do
these people expect for the future? That we
To be clear, I am not pushing for VFP in this thread: in fact, since it
is still a closed, proprietary dev tool, I would not recommend it for a
new developer. I'm trying to make the conceptual point that rich client
applications are better for the user, especially when the platform (aka
the PC) is strictly controlled by an enterprise. And it seems quite odd
to me that that same strict control cannot yield a consistent
browser-application experience.
You ask what will users expect? My answer is they will expect trash if
trash is all they ever see. If you show them something responsive and
cool, they'll demand that. <shrug> I'm going to test this theory over
the next couple months.
The really sad thing is all the 'browser pundits' back in the 1990's
promised that web pages would give us "develop once run anywhere"
solutions and solve all distribution nightmares (like MS's dll-hell).
Well, here we are 25+ years later and those promises have not been kept.
We are just now getting close to what we had in the 1990's: that would
be hilarious except I see so many "young" developers claim this stuff is
fantastic advancements.
Last, I am not saying browser-based applications should be thrown away.
They work quite well for some types of needs - selling, publishing, etc:
but, inside an enterprise? They are a waste, and a backwards LEAP, from
my experience. But like most things in the world, the truth does not
really matter much. Gotta go where the "dollars" are. That is a fact I
have to learn to live with. It still does not sit well with me though,
which is why it triggered all this typing.
-Charlie
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