To pull it off, two things are true... first, it is IE only. This is because of the secone: they are very heavily JavaScript, Dynamic HTML and CSS-based GUIs.
It *IS* possibly to do this type of thing in a cross-browser fashion, but I think it's fair to say it is considerably harder, and certainly more time-consuming. Standardizing on IE for us was easy because it's already the corporate standard, and is for 99% of our clients (the other 1% we simply tell they either use IE for at least our apps our they don't use the apps... not too nice in my mind, but it's been accepted thus far).
Whether you try to do it cross-browser or not, most of your time will be spent doing scripting. You can do some truly amazing things that will make you forget your looking at a web-based app, for the most part. You can also in many cases get much better performance because the more you do on the client (assuming it's not processor-intensive since your talking about an interpreted scripting language), the better PERCIEVED performance the app can have in many cases. A good example is one application where I sort a returned list of search results on the browser as a result of a click of a column header in an iFrame, which makes it work just like a grid in Windows. People love that, and so do the server admins since I'm not having the server sort search results.
There are absolutely trade-offs you have to be aware of along the way, but this is the way I'm pulling it off, and the way I think most people are, without resorting to plug-ins, Flash, Applets, ActiveX and all that sort of stuff. Pure HTML and JavaScript (well, as pure as you can get when it's IE-only!), and you get what you want without most of the headaches.
The other big thing to consider is that you VERY quickly break "proper" application architecture, i.e., separation of layers. It's almost unavoidable when your doing something like this unless you are exceptionally careful. I've done three huge applications along these lines over the past four years, the first two were pretty poor in terms of separation, the third is actually very good, but I learned a lot of lessons from the first two, and even still there are things done that probably shouldn't be. If this isn't your biggest concern (as it's not here since fulfilling client requests always trumps proper application development, bad as that may be in theory!), then it's fine. If your an absolute architecture purist (i.e., if your a Ph.D, which we have way too many of these days!), then you'll probably fight such an approach tooth and nail, and continue to either (a) have trouble with how your applications work or (b) develop less powerful interfaces because your more concerned with the structure of an application than what it looks like and feels like and works like for an end user.
Now that I've opened a theological nightmare here... ;)
Frank
From: "Wennberg, Mathias" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: "Struts Users Mailing List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [OT] thick client functionality in the browser Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2004 10:25:41 -0500
We're currently running a swing java webstart app but issues with clients jvm
versions and permissions to install/update programs on their workstations are
making us look into alternatives.
What are people out there using to get thick client functionality in the
browser? Ultimately it would work without any plug-ins and on all browsers,
but it's not necessary as long as it works on IE and doesn't use activeX.
I'm also looking for comments and feedback on thinlets and canoo.
Thanks.
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