What is best way to convert desktop app to web app?
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Thanks kofflerd, I am beginning to think you are right.
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I recomend you take a look at visual webgui. Im not a very experienced programmer, i previously wrote some code for various projects in visual basic, I tried to learn web based technologies includeing ASP.net php etc, but got frustrated with all of them. I have used visual webgui 6.4 now for a couple of months to create a web based data driven application. I have found that i can use the knowledge and undestanding i had of forms based development but create a very powerfull web based application, and still have the familliar visual studio development and debug experiance. I dont need to understand session states etc. The resultant application is very fast and bandwidth friendly and requires no client plugins. I looked at it in earlier versions and it still had issues that meant it wasn't ready for production application deployment. I can say that the number of issues now are small and most can be worked arround. the resultant application is very stable and easy to deploy. the forums are good and any questions get answered very quickly in my experience.
Thanks, Phil! I will definitely look into that.
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well Personally I hate to do more vertical scrolling then absolutely necessary... I'd recommend either a presenter approach (the page reloads with what you want to present) or use a layout similar to what you describe, and use
tags to hide/show just "like" you would be doing in a tabbed document(this makes layout easier and I prefer the
approach because it is a lot more straightforward.) If the wizard is a fundamental part, you may want to treat that as a flash app(however I am not familiar with these approaches), that way you can take control of the entire screen, grey out the background browser, and have a specialized solution just for your wizard. and this would be plug-able into your webapp...so... I meant a one solution with ~3 projectss, a library(or folder of libraries), and 2 UI: winforms & webapp. then if you want to make some kinda mobile app down the road you can just add it to the solution, and add some dependencies and probably reuse a lot more code that way...
I'd blame it on the Brain farts.. But let's be honest, it really is more like a Methane factory between my ears some days then it is anything else...
Cool! Your suggestions are definitely part of the solution to this problem. Isolating the UI from the rest of the logic, still within the desktop app, will make it a lot easier to move everything to a web app. The hurdles I encounter during this process will probably force me to think it through with the web app in mind. (E.g. passing certain parameters along with the call, etc.) Thanks for taking the time to make these suggestions.
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It was the same with me. I avoided web development for a good long time. I'm only just now really getting into it with a new application I'm developing. It's cool - but it ain't the same as WinForms development - not by a long shot. You had better be ready to edit HTML even with .Net 3.5 or 4.0 to get your forms working. It ain't WYSIWYG - and you have to think completely different. Instead of event-driven, you're talking page lifecycle. Smokes the brain for awhile until you get it. -Max
Thanks, Max, Yeah, I can see that some of the friends suggesting an approach such as is provided with visualwebgui would take some of the pain out of the events versus page lifecycle paradigm. Either way, it's a total change of thinking, which all comes from the issue of sending bytes along a wire asynchrounously instead of counting on resources (code) being instantly available to "answer" some event. Actually, I think the whole asynch paradigm is what we will all need to do within the next few years. It might be good practice to use delegates for everything within some sub-project just to get used to it. In fact, (philosophising here) I believe asynch thinking is probably more real-world than what we do now, which is like tugging a string and expecting the other end to move. It's like you have a message, so you put it in a bottle, throw it in the ocean, and then you need 100 people to watch the beach for "if and when" an answer comes back in a bottle. The real world works like that - when you order some product by phone or on a website, it's only when the product arrives at your door that you know you have it. Some truck 1,000 miles away brought it, but you weren't pulling the truck along a wire to make it arrive. Things are inherently disconnected in the real world. The days of quickbasic are gone ha ha ha.
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The discussion is now going beyond the original subject( best way to convert desktop app to web app)... So, The bottom line (about original subject) is "We haven't been there yet!" Is that right? :) I think Webmatrix is good to apply. Not sure that it's sufficent to apply.
Thanks JongchanAhn, I haven't seen any answer yet that seems irrelevant to me, though. And what you say - "We haven't been there yet" is partially true, since we don't have anything yet that works like - say - a phone, where you pick it up and get a dialtone. But what I needed here is exactly what I'm getting - ideas for working toward the goal now instead of waiting for the day when things are as easy as a phone. What do you think - does that sound reasonable?
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Silverlight is Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash. You could write applications in it, but ASP.NET is the preferred solution. ASP.NET 3.5 is modern and does have quite a few nice controls. What doesn't exist you can make. You can always buy pre-made custom controls from vendors to save time. If you are familiar with .NET then there will not be much of a learning curve moving to ASP.NET. You should investigate and get familiar with AJAX. AJAX avoids the constant page refreshes and can make a web application feel much more like a desktop app.
Thanks, MatrixDud, I know there must be some benefit in ASP.NET and AJAX. I have glanced at these in the past, but never got up the gumption to wade in. But others are suggesing that Silverlight 4 is the way to go, and I see some pretty nice visuals with that. Regarding pre-made custom controls from vendors - I'm trying to avoid using 3rd party controls, as nice as they are. This is to avoid bugs or version changes in someone else's code causing my customer to get mad at me. So I'm now thinking about RIA, MVVM, and Silverlight 4. Bill Burrows has some pretty impressive tutorials at myVBProf.com. Have you had a look at those yet? I didn't want to become a xaml programmer, which VS2008 seemed to try to make us, but I think I could force myself to do a bit of that. VS2010 seems to provide more UI tools to write the xaml for us.
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All great points... I may point you here[^] for a possible solution. The newer versions DO Offer an Out of the browser experience. I think it started slightly in V3 but has been 'fully' implemented in 4 and is going to be a focus going forward. From here I think the lines between the online and offline experience [platforms is going to start getting blurry.
Ray Cassick wrote:
The newer versions DO Offer an Out of the browser experience.
Interesting. What started with AJAX and developed into SL, may now end up coming full circle back to a desktop app. Now we will need tools to write more plumbing code for us, so when we open VS, and create a new desktop app, a blank form comes up that we drag controls to, double-click on them, and start writing code. I know, I know! Overly simplistic perhaps, but you get my point. For example, something that would help us do asynch and parallel programming without needing a brain 3x the size. Anyone want a used brain? I'm looking to upgrade.
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Thanks,nazmolla. Your suggestion is very useful, since it shows a way to work with the existing desktop application rather than rewriting it for the web. This is not the direction I wanted to explore in the original question, but of course, sometimes we need to look at the bigger picture to evaluate what is the best direction.
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You are most welcome, actually i till a month ago didn't even know about the TS and remoteapp till our VPN connection went down and our ERP stopped working "Microsoft Ax dynamics 2009" then someone at our ISP made this suggestion instead of us buying a new webportal module or an DIA connection with around a thousand dollars monthly to implement the TS for free, and when i read more i found it very useful and now i actually stopped all other VPN connections to our branches and started using this solution, anyway, you are welcome and i am ready to help you if you needed anymore assistance with this regard
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Thanks kofflerd, I am beginning to think you are right.
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if you think this is the direction you want to go this could be your development enviroment Silverlight 4 Entity Framework (Model) RIA/WCF enabled entities MVVM Pattern MVVM Light Toolkit Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) Silverlight Toolkit Telerik Silverlight Controls (if more powerfull controls are needed) Visual Studio 2010 Expression Blend 4 Maybe the "out-of-browser" functionality could be interesting in your scenario also. Daniel
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I work alone, and I have developed a huge desktop app, probably a quarter million lines of code, that has evolved for well over 10 years. I keep thinking it would be nice to convert it to a browser UI, but have watched many technologies go by, like asp, ajax, and now there's webmatrix, and sometimes I wonder whether I should take the leap, or whether it may cost me another 10 years to rewrite it for the web. It uses .NET remoting, and is multithreaded, so wcf and parallel programming come to mind as well. Fear promotes a lack of action, but knowledge defeats fear, so I thought I'd submit this general question to the "big team" out there in the code project universe. :)
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I dont know if anyone has suggested this yet, but have you looked at the Csla[^] Framework? You decouple the presentation from the Business layer and the DataLayer. There are heaps of examples, and the Author describes using a Windows UI, A WPF UI and also a Web Interface. You can even target mobile platforms.
I don't speak Idiot - please talk slowly and clearly 'This space for rent' Driven to the arms of Heineken by the wife
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I work alone, and I have developed a huge desktop app, probably a quarter million lines of code, that has evolved for well over 10 years. I keep thinking it would be nice to convert it to a browser UI, but have watched many technologies go by, like asp, ajax, and now there's webmatrix, and sometimes I wonder whether I should take the leap, or whether it may cost me another 10 years to rewrite it for the web. It uses .NET remoting, and is multithreaded, so wcf and parallel programming come to mind as well. Fear promotes a lack of action, but knowledge defeats fear, so I thought I'd submit this general question to the "big team" out there in the code project universe. :)
____________________________________________________________________________________ The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible.
Hi BobishKindaGuy, What an excellent discussion you have set off, thanks. My personal opinion is that we are in a time of a great "flux" of technologies converging on bridging what have been the disparate worlds of "desktop applications" (control intensive, data intensive) and web-sites (content intensive, navigation intensive). Having a substantial investment in C# and WinForms, I have of course considered moving to ASP.NET and its recent MVC MVVM flavours with Ajax : but when you look at what a dog Ajax turned out to be, and the current ubiquitous adoption of JavaScript libraries like jQuery by MS, I'm tempted to follow the lead of a world-class .NET developer I know and just "jump ship" for PhP, using jQuery for interface. Of course I want the "deeper" graphics object/model of WPF, of course I want the more sophisticated event model of WPF, and the powerful binding concepts of WPF, but going back and forth between XAML and C# is, for me, a trip back to the stone age. But I also want to use the great 3rd. party WinForm controls I've invested in learning how to use well. It says "acres" to me about SilverLight that on my .NET development machine here (Win Vista, using IE8) with all the latest updates installed for everything related to .NET, SilverLight, etc. that going to the myVBProf page you mention starts a full-screen SilverLight app which loads 100% but never plays with a JavaScript error: Webpage error details User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.0; Trident/4.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E) Timestamp: Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:35:59 UTC Message: '_gat' is undefined Line: 113 Char: 9 Code: 0 URI: http://www.myvbprof.com/MainSite/index.aspx imho it's far from clear that WPF and SilverLight are here for the "long run," and the upcoming HTML 5 standard, and possibly an "ex-Flash" era, coupled with the surge toward applications that can be viewed on small/mobile devices is going to change the game. I haven't yet really taken a look at Adobe's Air, and the current incarnations of DreamWeaver, etc., and how they play together with Flash. All kinds of strange, mutant technologies are springing up trying to bridge web and desktop application paradigms ... Aptana Studio (Aptana ... okay, it's an IDE, not really that strange) and Alpha 5 (AlphaSoftware) come to mind) ... as well as what are, imho, "grandiose" attempts, like Titanium (Appcellerator), to cross not only platfor
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I work alone, and I have developed a huge desktop app, probably a quarter million lines of code, that has evolved for well over 10 years. I keep thinking it would be nice to convert it to a browser UI, but have watched many technologies go by, like asp, ajax, and now there's webmatrix, and sometimes I wonder whether I should take the leap, or whether it may cost me another 10 years to rewrite it for the web. It uses .NET remoting, and is multithreaded, so wcf and parallel programming come to mind as well. Fear promotes a lack of action, but knowledge defeats fear, so I thought I'd submit this general question to the "big team" out there in the code project universe. :)
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Silverlight and WCF would seem to be a natural fit. /ravi
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I work alone, and I have developed a huge desktop app, probably a quarter million lines of code, that has evolved for well over 10 years. I keep thinking it would be nice to convert it to a browser UI, but have watched many technologies go by, like asp, ajax, and now there's webmatrix, and sometimes I wonder whether I should take the leap, or whether it may cost me another 10 years to rewrite it for the web. It uses .NET remoting, and is multithreaded, so wcf and parallel programming come to mind as well. Fear promotes a lack of action, but knowledge defeats fear, so I thought I'd submit this general question to the "big team" out there in the code project universe. :)
____________________________________________________________________________________ The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible.
Hi, I might not be 100% objective as I am associated with Visual WebGui, but I am feeling that I have to jump in this discussion as it seems that it is the best fit for your needs. Due to its "on-server web" architecture Visual WebGui is based on desktop methodologies and concepts so it naturally provides the best starting point for any conversion from desktop to web and in particular to that of a Windows Forms which can be as easy as copy/paste your code and only changing a few namespaces. You can check out some of our migration resources on the VWG Knowledge Base