On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Ricardo Araoz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> I've always had problems with these kind of statements. Web apps are NOT
> OS independent, only the CLIENT part may be OS independent (though you
> have to be careful that you comply with "FireFox, Safari, Opera and IE7"
> and etc., I fail to see what you've gained),

A well-designed, standards-compliant XHTML/CSS/Javascript app will run
on the spectrum of FireFox-Opera-Safari pretty much without tweaks. A
few more to get it to work in IE7. Usually more kludges for IE6 and
you're done. And then it runs on Macs (there are LOTS of Macs these
days) and Windows and Linux boxes. Everybody has the runtime (a
browser) on their machine. Nearly everyone can run javascript. Just as
important as a couple hundred million PCs, it will run on a billion
cellphones. And more! It outputs a well-defined text format that can
be indexed, sorted, cross-referenced and made to be part of a greater
whole.

>  as for the SERVER part you
> must comply to Apache or some other server that runs under a specific OS
> and on top of it your language must be supported in this server.

You know, I hate that all of these need ELECTRONS! I want to write
computers that work with MUONS!

Ricardo, web apps have to run on something. It is a limitation of the
distributed architecture of a client (application) - (web) server that
you have more APIs that you have with a monolithic application.

Apache runs on Windows, Linux, UNIX, Solaris and Mac OS X. Nearly all
the unix-y OSes have many other choices of web server software that
will run on all or nearly all of the unix-y OSes. IIS is Windows-only
and often license-encumbered.

> So I'd rather stay with a desktop app written in a cross OS language. I
> wonder what language would that be.

I hope it's Python. Though there are other pretty good choices. Perl
and Ruby have nearly as many GUI toolkit bindings.

It very much depends on the problem you're solving and the logistics
your customers demand. A heads-down data entry app that needs fast
keystroke responses, immediate connection to a database, and is
targeted at a small audience (one office or one company or dedicated
users who are willing to download it and install it) is still very
reasonably a desktop app. An application you'd like all the world to
run (by finding or getting sent a link to it) that can offer the
customer some immediate benefit is more likely a World-Wide-Web app.

There's room for many solutions to our many challenges.

-- 
Ted Roche
Ted Roche & Associates, LLC
http://www.tedroche.com


_______________________________________________
Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com
Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox
OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech
Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox
This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the 
author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added 
to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.

Reply via email to