[Q] In-Browser technology
Cameron Laird
claird at starbase.neosoft.com
Mon Jul 19 20:30:27 EDT 1999
In article <932337314.611.103 at news.remarQ.com>,
Vladik <reason at shadow.net> wrote:
>Hello,
>Sorry for cross-posting, but
>my question is really to the people on the news groups
>who know about Eiffel, Python and Perl.
>
>Basically,
>We are to develop a web client (a program that
>can be ran witting a web browser) for our otherwise n-tier
>cross-platform system, our research department gave the
>recommendation and actually a prototype of the client
>in MS ASP (active server pages) and, I think but not
>sure, blended with Visual Basic. Talk about bias...
>But this means that it can only run in MS IE and not
>in Netscape, also it limits the number of platforms not only
>for the client on which web browser runs, but also for
>the web server (MS platforms only, because web server with
>active pages can only run there)
>There is some talk about Java, but our web client
>will also be ran via Serial links (not T1 connections)
>on relatively inexpensive systems -- therefore Java is
>something to look into but it may be slow.
>So I am set on a quest to find something
>that
>a) can be executed within IE or Netscape,
>b) be faster and overall more resource friendly then JavaScript technology
>c) supports OO programming
>d) does not depend on the platform on which web server is running.( if the
>web server is running NT or UNIX (sun, linux)
>
>I have found one thing that almost satisfies the requirements:
>it is based on Oberon-2 programming language and so far sounds
>VERY promising.
> The reason why I am still looking is because
>there are more books and internet support for Python,Perl and Eiffel
>then for Oberon (this will be a factor when presenting the proposal
>to the management). The other problem is that there is plugin
>for this technology available for NT and Mac platforms (for both
>IE and Netscape) and is not available for UNIX platforms (which means that a
>web browser can not be ran on UNIX). There is source code,
>though.
>If interested: http://caesar.ics.uci.edu/juice/
>
>So, finally, my question is is there a technology
>I am looking for available for either Perl or Eiffel or Python
.
.
.
No.
That's the short answer. Slightly longer is this: I
don't understand--although I'm sufficiently intrigued
to answer.
Let's first dispose of the part of my reply where I
pick nits from your description:
1. "We are to develop a web client (a
program that can be ran witting a
web browser) ..." evokes to me a
plugin. Is a plugin (supposing a
sufficiently potent one exists)
exactly what meets your require-
ments, or is there a point I'm
missing?
2. "... a prototype of the client
in MS ASP (active server pages)
and, I think but not sure, blended
with Visual Basic ..." I have no
definite idea of what you're say-
ing here. Is it that your
customer has a picture of the
visual appearance of the desired
deliverable? What is there about
the ASP prototype that does *not*
meet the requirements? Is VB
blended on the server or client
side? Does it matter? Is it really
VB, or VBScript?
3. Are you aware that *lots* of browsers
read pages served as ASP? You can
use ASP without requiring IE.
4. "... Java ... may be slow." Lots of
things may be slow. The market-lead-
ing browsers are definitely pigs, by
my standards, but they've already
been mandated, according to your
description.
Technical point: Java applets work
well for me. Invariably, when I hear
people complain about the size of
Java applets, they're really com-
plaining about ancillary images.
Java executable classes themselves
are admirably compact, in my experi-
ence.
5. Of what resource is JavaScript not
sufficiently conservative? Do you
seriously have performance problems
with it? There are plenty of aspects
of JavaScript that deserve scorn,
but, unless I have a specific issue,
I happily use it to accomplish real
work on the client side.
6. How much client-side programming are
you doing? Why does object-orienta-
tion there matter to you?
7. What technologies do you want that
*do* link client and server platform
compatibility? I can't make this
constraint informative in the context
of everything else you've written.
8. What's the part about Juice that you
like--is it the promise of superior
performance? Do Franz and Kistler
truly make source available? I
hadn't noticed that. In any case, if
I thought it'd help with one of my
projects, I'd write them directly.
I'm fond of Oberon, and I wish Juice
well. I don't understand your inter-
est in it.
It sounds as though you're involved in quite an ambi-
tious project, of the sort I like. I wish you well.
I suspect you'll do well to clarify several of your
requirements; this will make it much more inviting for
comp.lang.* readers to help you.
--
Cameron Laird http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html
claird at NeoSoft.com +1 281 996 8546 FAX
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