Len,
I don't think it's possible to launch a program from a web page. In Windows you can make some arcane activeX voodo rituals that will load your activeX across the net thru the page, but this is not polite nor elegant in my opinion. The web is not the tech to deliver high media clients in my humble opnion. I guess your problem is: "How do I maintain a instalation of 500+ clients up to date.". I think the best way is to go like RevNET, create a launcher stand alone that will query the server to the most up to date version of your stack then load the thing. If you're a Magic Carpet user, check MGCAA, which makes this thing a breeze.
If you're talking about 500 users in lan space, then you can make one cool thing. Install Zeroconf/Rendevouz in all machines (win32, macs and linux), use RevZeroConf to automatically find your server and your clients, not network setup needed, I have three machines in here, all them are ZeroConf enabled, even my iPAQ and my Newton are now zeroconf enabled. All my remote stacks are able to find the server no matter my current net configuration... it's pretty cool.
It's very risky for a machine to allow remote launching of programs, imagine the Virii hell that would be? If you could launch your app from remote, people could load trojans from remote as well (and yes, they can, but their trojans are not Rev made). You say that you're not too sure of how to install something on the user machine without looking like you're installing something, well Len, I think is not polite to install software on user machine without his knowledge. And trully I think it's not possible with current Rev features to do that (may be you could make some .NET remote app summoning thingy), I think the best way is to create a clear instalation process, plain clear, a webpage on a server describing it in a very clear manner and allowing the user to perform the tricks. If you can setup your own server with Rev as CGI then you could do like this:
* Make the CGI probe the OS of the requesting client. * if the client is win32, respond the request with launcher.exe * if the client is MacOS X, respond the request with launcher.dmg
MacOS X will auto mount downloaded DMG files, Windows will ask to run downloaded EXE files. and linux is the wild west, we never know... This way the only thing your users need to do is to try to load the webpage and then accept the download. I think this is as easy as it can get. to create installation EXE files and DMGs you might want to look for InstallGadget from SweatTechnologies, it's a Rev Made app that is very good and very easy to use!
Related URLs: http://www.sweattechnologies.com/InstallGadget/ http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/MagicCarpetCover/default.htm http://www.mindlube.com/developer/revzeroconf/
Cheers andre
On Mar 24, 2005, at 11:40 AM, Len Morgan wrote:
There was a thread about 3 years ago about having a RR that ran within the browser and I'm wondering if anything came of that? The reason I ask is I have a very good chance of getting a big programming contract but one of the customer's top requirements is that it be web based. He wants nothing to be installed on the workstations.
While I could send DHTML, I think we all agree that RR would give a much better experience to the end user and frankly, would be much easier on me. So, is there some way to launch a stand-alone from a web page? I know I can "start using" a stack from a URL so I'd only need a stand-alone to get the process going. I think his concerns are:
1) The "java version problem." A lot of his users have their own programs (by the way, we're talking about 500 connected users) that use one version of java or another and if they upgrade it to be able to use my code, it will break the applications they already have (by the way, I have no intention of doing this in java - I'd rather loose the contract).
2) If changes need to be made, he doesn't want to have to go to 500 machines and install something.
With my own stand-alone, I wouldn't have to worry about versioning problems since I would know when it changed. I could also check for a new version of the stand-alone every time I start it up and get the new version. Since my stand-alone would really do nothing more than download a stack (with the REAL program on it), I doubt that I would need to change it that often (the stacks on the other hand are a different matter but since I can refer to a URL, he'd be ok with that. It's just that I'm not sure how to get the stand-alone on the user machine without looking like I'm installing something.
len morgan _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
-- Andre Alves Garzia 2004 BRAZIL http://studio.soapdog.org
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