Jeff, will your application be deployed in an intranet or internet environment? This
might make a difference in the solutions that
are available. Just for your information, I faced as similar situation in the
development of a Network Management System used to
control and manage fiber optic communications equipment that we manufacture.
I needed a robust and complex gui with things such as greying out fields depending on
the selections of other fields, validation on
fields as they are entered, indicating to a user a field has been changed, etc. These
needed to be done on the client side. I
looked at a few possibilities, namely JavaScript or Java applets. At the time Sun's
Jump Start was not available. I chose to use
Swing based Java applets. To get around the differences in browsers, I chose to use
the Java Plugin to provide this stable (fairly)
environment. In addition, in the back end we are using Tomcat with servlets, JSP
pages, and XML as the communications between our
Java applets and the backend. I chose Java over JavaScript because of the
complexities involved in managing browser specific within
JavaScript and also because of the better development and debugging environment I had
in Java.
Using a packaging tool that produces Jar files with the absolute minimum need for the
applet, we are able to keep out applet size
down to between 250k and 350k. Once downloaded the applets are cached, so this is
pretty much a one time hit. Our applications are
quite responsive and have the gui needed.
Just to let you know what we did.
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2001 12:54 PM
Subject: Re: Limits of Web
>
> I asked for help w/technical issues not advice on how to manage clients.
> Please limit the answers to such. Nobody's trying to get sympathy or pity;
> just trying to do our jobs.
>
>
>
> Pae Choi
> <paechoi@eart To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> hlink.net> cc:
> Subject: Re: Limits of Web
> 09/24/01
> 11:12 AM
> Please
> respond to
> tomcat-user
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Then, they need to get help by getting professionals.
>
> One would be the architect who can help you folks at least
> understand what is the difference between the thin and thick
> clients.
>
> Second would be the security speciality who can help you
> folks understand that the security is not a joke like anyone
> suddenly realized and think they can grab and use it like
> a plugable COTS.
>
> I've seen many folks use the terms like "client", "customer",
> "boss", etc just to win the battle and get some sympathy or pity.
> You need to know how to manage the customer expectaton
> as well as teach your stakeholders learn that they will not
> get over night whatever they want and demand just because
> they think they can piss around you.
>
>
> Pae
>
> >
> > When we started with this app it we did not have the skills needed to
> > develop Swing applets. Now the problem appears to be the speed of these
> > applets. They are way to slow. They also expect it to be as fast as
> their
> > Client Server Applications. Plus the company I work for is paranoid
> about
> > security to the point of irrationality. If they ever got wind of the
> > security problems involved in applets they would shut development down.
> >
>
>
>
>
