Is web software beneficial for me? find out ...

WebSoftware Blog

Getting sick of all these desktop applications which need to be updated every time. With websoftware updating is not a user task anymore but rather a developer task, there where it should be. Read about the pro's and con's of using websoftware, THE FUTURE of software.

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Flexwerkkracht.nl nieuwe functies V0.2

Met de eerste release van Flexwerkkracht.nl V0.1 website (ongeveer drie weken geleden) hebben we een minimale functionaliteit vrijgegeven om direct te kunnen beginnen met het verspreiden van Vacatures en CVs en het aantrekken van werkgevers voor het gratis uploaden van Vacatures en voor werk zoekenden het gratis uploaden van CVs.

Dit heeft zo z'n uitwerking gehad en we hebben diverse Vacatures online weten te zetten, dit gebeurde altijd nog handmatig door onszelf. Met de vrijgave van deze release bieden wij werkgevers de mogelijkheid om direct en gratis Vacatures te plaatsen ZONDER registratie. De ingevoerde gegevens worden natuurlijk automatisch gecontroleerd en een bevestiging wordt per email terug gestuurd naar de opdrachtgever op het ingevoerde email adres.
Via die email is het vervolgens heel eenvoudig om het profiel compleet te maken en geeft je direct het voordeel om de geplaatste vacature(s) online te beheren.

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Open source web based software

Web based software as we know is written in web programming languages list PHP / Javascript / HTML / CSS / DotNET and is in most cases just plain text. By supplying a client with such software you basically have to submit the source code as well in order to install and run it on their (web) server of choice. Although some languages can be pre-compiled and run on the server personally I see it as a benefit to have the source code available on the server as well as that allows you to easily access and alter the web application from any place in the world whereas an internet connection is possible.
Clearly editing source code is Windows notepad is not the most convenient but in case of emergency you can at least do something.

So you actually have made the source code already available to the client which in fact could alter it as they wish. This is obviously totally different from making a web application open source as than you publish it to the world allowing them to use and alter the software (under a lisence like GPL). With that you allow people to make alterations and supply you with their changes.

The is what we at websoftware recently have done with our Job Tracking System and placed it on SourceForge. From there we are able to inform clients and other interesting parties about changes but also allow other developers to get involved.

About Open Source:

Of benefit to users, Open Source software is licensed so you can download and use the software free-of-charge. The source code for this software is made available free-of-charge, you (or a programmer you hire) can make changes to this software to better meet your needs, and you can release your changed code back to the community passing the benefit on to other users.

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How web applications come to life.

As the internet and user computer working in server – client environment writing information to the internet is for safety reasons not possible. Also as you know do internet web browsers download an internet page once and leave it like that until the user clicks a link or does some other action. In other words there's no real live data showing on the website. Further, to change content on a web page it as to be reloaded which takes time and is annoying for the viewer.
All that together does the internet not make very usable for an application environment. To overcome this there is something called
AJAX which is short for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML which has been a real hype a few years ago (2004-2005). What AJAX basically does is retrieving data from in the internet server without the user's interaction. This together with JavaScript DOM programming it is possible to update parts of the visible web page without refreshing the whole page.

For example our new development the
Interactive Reliever Placement Software uses a lot of AJAX. When some user changes for example the availability of a user it would not get updated under normal circumstances, however the user who changes the availability automatically records this change in the back-end database. On the other user's computers a background process automatically checks if updates were made every 30 seconds (configurable) by reading from the database. If a change has been detected a front-end script will run (if conditions apply) and update the information shown to the user.

This makes the whole application come to life as it will display the information which is accurate at the time. Especially if the software is running on a local intranet frequent checks for changes on the database is less a burden as the speed is much faster than retrieving information from the internet.

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A step closer to better Web Applications with Google Chrome

As many of you already might know Google has made an open source internet web browser call Google Chrome. And the good thing is that they especially built it with Web Applications in mind. One thing on which a lot of Web Applications rely is the support of Javascript and above all the speed of it. Therefore they have used the enhanced V8 Javascript engine which is fast en reliable. But also each tab of the browser runs in a separate process which means that if one of the Web Applications breaks for whatever reason it does not bring down the whole web browser.
But there's more, a special feature that let you run a Web Application almost like a Desktop Application. See http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=95710&hl=en how to create a Web Application shortcut using Google Chrome.

So, we're one step closer to the desktop integration with Web Application and sooner or later more and more desktop application will become obsolete or replaced by a decent Web Application.

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How is Web Software cheaper

Web based software applications does have many benefits of which one is proclaimed to be cheaper. But how is that actually realised?

The same way as other software do has web based software application to be developed which of course does cost money. The ease of distributing it however (if accessible via the internet) is way easier as is the installation (if any at all). So that's the first cost cut. It's a different story though if a client wishes to have the web software 'hosted' on it's own local intranet server(s). But even than it is often much less time consuming than installing it on every client computer while it only needs to be installed on a single server.
Another benefit of using web based software applications is that licensing can made very easy. Policy of A-Vision is that in case a developed web application is being installed on the client's intranet server(s) there will be no limitation of user access. That again is another cost cut which can make a huge difference.
Further, as web applications are installed on a central place, updating and maintenance becomes a job which immediately lies with the developer rather than the user. Updating can even in most cases be done without any downtime which is most convenient.

So these are the reasons how Web Software can turn out to be cheaper-
  • Easy distributing.
  • Single server installation without client installation.
  • Per user licensing not really necessary.
  • Faster, easier and cost effective maintenance and updates.
  • No (in most cases) downtime for maintenance and updates.

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Web application as desktop software

As we all kow, web applications are running on the web. Obvious, why should it else be called like that. This than also implies that it is running using a web server and normally unable to run on the desktop. However, there are several solution out there to use these application as were they desktop applications.

For example Google Gears allows you to basically store information on your local system rather than on the internet/intranet. It is being installed as a plug-in for a number of browsers but initially it still needs that internet/intranet connection in order to start the web application.

Further there are things like bubbles which is basically a browser like program with some enhanced features. It does however not allow you to store data on your local machine.

So how to really run web applications as desktop software?
A solution for this might be to bring the web server to the desktop rather than having it on the internet/intranet. This can be done by using for example a stand-alone webserver like Server2Go. This does fully support server side scripting and databases and have no need for installing a browser plug-in. You can run it from a USB key and keep all data saved on the USB key so that you can run it on any (Windows) computer system even if there is no internet connection at all.
Other possibilities are for example to create a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM which automatically starts the software. Obviously you can't save any information on the CD/DVD but saving on the computer system is still possible.

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