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With Visual WebGui Developing and deploying rich internet business applications is simpler, faster, more cost-effective and secure than ever
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It takes a short overview of Microsoft development tools and platforms evolvement in order to demonstrate the importance of supporting Web Forms development for ASP.NET Ajax with HTML5 enhancements. In an article that Todd Anglin publishes in Redmond Developers, under the title "Silverlight: What Web Forms Wanted to Be", Todd says that ASP.NET was supposed to be Web Forms. A framework that meant to duplicate VB6 ease of development or rather its more mature successor Window Forms. Asp.Net was expected to deliver this simple and easy development paradigm for web. But it failed, Microsoft could not reproduce stateful based development paradigm for a stateless environment. Years later Microsoft rolled out Silverlight that is really another trial to come up with Web Forms paradigm for website development. Todd says in his article " Silverlight is what Web Forms wanted to be, a stateful application development model that can be deployed and updated as easily as traditional Web sites. Unencumbered by the limits of stateless pages, developing for Silverlight finally achieves what ViewState could not: It allows traditional desktop application developers to reuse their skills and development patterns for applications that can be deployed with no installation, save for the Silverlight plug-in"
However, Silverlight does not seem to deliver as well, for 3, main reasons: it is propriety plug-in that enterprises hesitate to opt in for. It did not really maintain the classic state full development, and it did present a learning curve for the VB6 and WinForms developers. HTML5 is hitting faster and stronger than expected with its cross browsers, open approach and the support of world leaders: such as Google, Apple and now Microsoft and Adobe.
Todd says "Microsoft envisioned a world in 2002 where developing for the Web and Windows would be indistinguishable. Windows Forms and Web Forms tried to present a uniform approach, but ultimately Web Forms was bound by the limits of the Web and the vision was never fully realized."
Microsoft did make a huge step with Silverlight toward realization of the concept, but HTML5 takes it back to square one and to ASP.NET as a platform that target HTML.
And here is where Visual WebGui presents its value. VWG takes a different approach all together. It virtualizes Dot.Net code atop ASP.NET server, and by doing that, it provides 2 major achievements: In design time it enables the VB6 and WinForms classic development paradigm AS IS for ASP.NET Ajax, as Web Forms based development, with no learning curve for Microsoft core developers. In run time it enables again AS IS desktop richness and experience atop ASP.NET that turns ASP.NET Ajax into Rich Internet Application (RIA), deployed in a plain (plug-in free) cross browser environment and now with HTML5 frontend.
The outcome is the Web Form experience that Microsoft was trying to deliver with ASP.NET and later with Silverlight BUT IN A PLAIN HTML5 BASED BROWSER, with Silverlight-like rich user experience. This makes ASP.NET extension, Visual WebGui the first Microsoft shop solution to support stateful Web Form experience for HTML5. Very soon, developers will use the same drag & drop, stateful and event driven development paradigms of VWG to build perfect ASP.NET based data centric apps using HTML5 frontend for both desktop browsers and mobile browsers.
And what HTML5 features Visual WebGui is going to support? Among HTML5’s features and capabilities which VWG is about to support are further UI and behaviors flexibilities, Canvas, SVG and additional boost utilizing the local-storage
Some examples:
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Utilizing a HTML5’s Canvas element which enables client side manipulation on images and client drawing simply by dragging the Canvas control onto the form and hooking-up to its events. Streamlined according to VWG’s concepts, you will of course be able to choose whether to handle events on the client side or on the server. Providing full jQuery support for those client scripting
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VWG will enable the usage of the events bound scalable vector graphics (SVG) by dragging an SVG element to the Form and manipulating it through Object Oriented code or direct HTML5 tags & attributes. Events will be handled either by the server or by the client according to the developer’s choice.
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Native HTML5 Audio, Video and media elements will be drag-able to the Form, controlled through Object Oriented code and events or directly customized using standard HTML5 tags & attributes, jQuery and JavaScript.
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HTML5 new form field types such as Required Text, Email, Range, Date, Search, Tel, Meter etc will be added to the list of available controls. Those controls will inherit VWG efficiency at runtime and at the same time they will enrich and enhance the interactivity of the application.
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Full complementing support for CSS 3 such as Border Radiuses, HSLA, Opacity and others will be present through the theme designer. Transitions and Animations will be controllable through Object Oriented code or direct HTML5 tags & attributes.
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Improved drag & drop experience utilizing the newest HTML5 drag & drop concepts.
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Upgrading a Client/Server desktop based application to ASP.NET Web or Cloud based environment is thought to be a very complex and risky process. Most of us are intimidated only by the thought of taking one of our large, business applications; one that we have been working on for quite a while now, not to say mission critical and migratie it to a differernt technology. Most of us will follow the good old saying: If it ain't broken why fix it, right?! Which means that we will eventually find our selves with a very large and old system which the only possible solution for modernizing it would be the costly rewrite that we probably cannot afford or don't have the tme to wait for.
But what if you could know exactly what it takes for your application can be converted to ASP.NET based technology and that it doesn't mean a whole lot of work and resources on your end...
Well, Visual WebGui is a unique platform that its architecture that via its innovative pipeline virtualizes Client/Server on top of a standard Web server and runs the application as native ASP.NET VWG and with desktop-grade security, richness and performance all via standard Web browser (plug-in free) or mobile. This architectural fact allows to convert .NET applications to ASP.NET VWG based Web and Cloud (SaaS) in a simple path and practically no risks since no rewrite or reengineering is required (other Client/Server technologies can be converted to .NET first and then to ASP.NET VWG based Web and Cloud).
VWG Client/Server virtualization
Now, in order to support those declerations Visual WebGui released a tool that can analyze .NET Windows Forms applications in a matter of minutes and provide a quick assessment report about your Client/Server (.NET Windows Forms at the moment and soon VB6 and other Client/Server technologies) application readiness to be moved to ASP.NET based Web and Cloud using the Visual WebGui CloudMove solution.
The AssessmentTool is a simple, downloadable standalone EXE application that can be executed on the runtime assemblies of a Windows Forms application, from which it extracts detailed information regarding your project (technology statistics and usages). This information is by no mean a risk to your intellectual property as it collects technological information and statistics and not business logic analysis or algorithms capturing.
AssessmentTool Report - Summary & Overview
This tool is based on a wide database which is created progressively during the assessment process. After creating this database it runs some queries on it, searching for patterns and usages that are risky or requiring manual adjustments when running as VWG ASP.NET Web or Cloud. The results are aggregated as a readable report which indicates the relative portion of the application that can be reused automatically (as-is). In addition it provides more specific information on the parts that will require adjustments and manual intervention such as finding ASP.NET equivalent replacements to 3rd party components.
Deep analysis - Possible issues and suggested solutions
This report assists you further to decide and assess the efforts require to upgrade the application to the Web, based on the level of the automatic transposition vs. the manual intervention required. We expect that the majority of Window Form applications will show 80% - 90% portion readiness for transposition and will not require manual adjustment.
More info and the free download is available here.
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Latest announcements by Microsoft executives leave no doubt. Microsoft is shifting its support to HTML 5 and by doing so gives up on its RIA platform Silverlight which it repurposes for mobile. Adobe releases a Beta of a new HTML5 supporting tool kit, and by doing so also embraces the HTML5 option. It does look as if both give in to the market preferences for standard, no-plug-in and non-propriety option of HTML5 (see "Microsoft favoring HTML5 over Silverlight: reports" ).
If we follow Microsoft's early announcements when launching Silverlight, Microsoft pointed out the value of Silverlight in two aspects: The first was the graphics and media richness it enables while the second was the .Net developer's quest for a simpler, .Net based RIA development.
In a new world where HTML 5 replaces Silverlight and Flash in providing a solution for the quest for standard rich internet, the second quest for simple .Net based development of rich Internet application is left unattended (now that Silverlight is off the shelf and no longer serves as RIA, developed the .NET way). Reading developers' reaction following Microsoft PDC in October 2010 is probably the best way to learn about the impact of this announcement:
"Silverlight is dead, quite a surprise they have for us in PDC this year. I think most devs arround the world were expecting just the opposite, the Silverlight 5 announce. I think Microsoft should had been more honest and recognize the big mistake they made, wasting so much time and resources in a technology that is never going to be used massively. I assume my mistake as a developer for the resources I invested in Silverlight. The most sad thing is there aren’t any tools for HTML 5 in .NET, those four years of Silverlight left us with the hands empty. I think is time to move to GTW, every evidence is screaming that Google is the future." (Quoted from this blog)
I must express my humble opinion here and say that there might be more to the Silverlight twist (and Flash) than meets the eye. It might also be a result of slow adoption rate in the business sector that pays for its applications (vs. the consumer that does not). Being in the business RIA market for some odd years, I have been hearing quite too often enterprise CIOs saying that they will not allow plug-in RIA solution for security reasons, no matter if it is Microsoft's or Adobe's. I have been also hearing enterprise CIOs complaining about the stiff learning curve and lack of productivity that the new RIA solutions impose. I have been hearing them complaining about the hardship of data binding and I have been hearing them complaining about slow response time of applications written with the new Ajax based RIA solution.
Visual WebGui does support HTML development the .NET way, and naturally supports HTML5
We have been there for the last 3 years, betting on HTML by boosting ASP.NET Ajax development and runtime and indeed, being highly rewarded by market opinion leaders, adoption and traction. We have been enabling the classic VB6-like desktop development paradigms for HTML based front-ends. And now more than ever it seems like we are here to collect the big prize. Visual WebGui enables the best of .NET simple and structured development paradigms for HTML5. Exactly where Microsoft has been aiming with Silverlight, but we target open standards non-propriety platform. And that is a big difference.
So dear developer, Silverlight might be dying but it is not necessarily Google GWT that you must migrate to. If you are a .NET developer, I do believe that it is Visual WebGui you are looking for. You will have the best, well entrenched .Net development practices only this time targeting the RIA winner HTML5 and JavaScript.
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"Developing on Visual WebGui we were able to migrate the system to web environment and even add new features in less time which allows us to offer it over a standard web browser with better performance and no installations as was required with Citrix" Alexander Cuellar.
The full showcase on why and how Brinks Bolivia migrated their VB6 Customer Service system to the Web with Visual WebGui can be viewed here.
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While ASP.NET provides an event base approach it is completely dismissed when working with AJAX and the richness of the server is lost and replaced with JavaScript programming and couple with a very high security risk.
Visual WebGui reinstates the power of the server to AJAX development and provides a statefull yet scalable, server centric architecture that provides the benefits and user productivity of AJAX with the security and developer productivity we had before AJAX stormed into our lives.
"When I first came up with the concept of Visual WebGui, I was frustrated by the fragile and complex nature of developing web applications. The contrast in productivity between working in a fully OOP compiled environment vs. scripting even today, with JQuery, Dojo and such, is still huge. Even today the greatest sponsor of JavaScript programming, Google, is offering a framework to avoid JavaScript using Java that compiles to JavaScript (GWT). So I decided to find a way to abstract the complexity or rather delegate the complex job to enable developers to concentrate on the “What” instead of the “How” and embraced the Form based approach," said Guy Peled the inventor of Visual WebGui.
Although traditional OOP development still rules the enterprise, the differences between web sites and web applications have blurred and so did the differences between classic developers and web developers. As a result, we now see declarative languages in desktop / backend development environments (WPF / WF) and we see OOP, gaining more and more power in web development (ASP.NET MVC / ASP.NET DOM). However, what has not changed is enterprise need for security, development ROI, reach, highly responsive and interactive UIs and scalability.
The advantages that declarative languages and 'on demand' compilation provide over classic development are mostly the flexibility and a more readable initialize component it offers which is what Gizmox is aspiring to do by replacing the designer initialize component with XAML code. The code in this new project template will be compiled on demand using the build provider mechanism ASP.NET has. This means that the performance hit is only on the first request and after that the performance is the same as a prebuilt solution. This will allow the flexibility of a dynamically updated sites and the power of fully blown enterprise applications over web. You can also use prebuilt features available in ASP.NET to enjoy both worlds in production.
VWG XAML implementation (VWG Sites) will be the first truly compliable XAML implementation as Microsoft implemented Silverlight and WPF as a runtime markup interpretation opposed to the ASP.NET markup implementation which is compiled to CLR code once. We have chosen to implement the VWG Sites parser as a different way to create CLR code that provides greater performance over the reflection alternative. VWG Sites will also be the first server side XAML UI engine which, while giving the power of XAML, it will not require any plug-ins or installations on the client side.
Click here to watch a short video demonstrating VWG Sites markup.
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Gizmox is announcing a ListView contest where developers can participate by creating and submitting their own implementations of the new extended ListView. "its quite amazing what you can do with it. It opens a lot of new ways to present data in a better and more userfriendly way," says one of the VWG community members who built a three level hierarchal ListView.
Watch the hierarchal ListView demo by Visualizer
Those ListView implementations will be reviewed and rated and the winner will win a free Professional Studio license $750 worth. The 5 top rated codes will entitle their developers for a cool new T-shirt. The new v6.4 introduces new capabilities with its extended ListView Control.
Enter the Challenge
The Collapsible Panel enhancement of the ListView Control, along with the Column Type Control, open up the possibilities for potential usage of the ListView control for data display, data entry and as the Collapsible Panel can contain whatever control you like, it can as well contain other ListView controls, thus making it possible to create Hierarchial ListView display of unlimited number of levels.
Watch a webcast about the extended ListView
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Web developers/designers should check out an interesting webcast by Visual WebGui showing how to create custom Web/Cloud applications to your brand or organization with VWG version 6.4.
The Branding/colorizing your application with VWG version 6.4 webcast will walk developers/designers through the process of customizing a VWG Web/Cloud applications using the 'Import-Export' features of the NEW Theme Designer. At the end of the webcast you will be able to start from a default VWG theme and end up with your custom color scheme which leads to a branded theme.
The Visual WebGui Platform and tools allows simple development & design patterns that's proven to save on costs and resource.
So if you are interested in getting your design job done much easier, you should probably tune in for about an hour and find out how.
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If you are looking to implement the most complex data entry and views in a rich web application you should probably lok into Visual WebGui and more specifically its new extended ListView control.
The following recorded webcast explains the different between the extended controls and the standard "flat list" ListView control and of course what can be done with it.
Watch the webcast >
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I would like to bring to your attention an upcoming Visual WebGui webcast on this Wenesday (May 12 10am PST) demonstrating the process of creating new Web application themes in VWG. The upcoming webcast, titled Applying engaging, modern web 2.0 look & feel to your VWG application with version 6.4 will show how the new developer-designer interface allowed by the VWG framework and define each one's responsibilities (making usage of Adobe Photoshop) in the process.
The presenters will walk you through the process, starting from a default theme, understanding the needs and implementing those design needs accordingly.
The webcast which is taking place on May 12 is open to everyone for free.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/601138081
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MyTimelineOnline is a unique blogging website featuring advanced controls that allows users to document their life, or the life of a loved one and to share their collective experiences within their social network and with the world. MyTimelineOnline features a control originally designed by MIT and converted to .NET by Rob Chartier. The timeline view allows users to quickly navigate several years' worth of postings to explore what events occurred in their own life or the lives of others. The site was developed by a single individual and originally technologies such as Telerik were considered and discarded due to the complexity and cost. As a result, the entire site was rewritten by a single part time developer in Visual WebGui which provided a significant increase in the usability of the site as well as the visual style. Visual WebGui was chosen since it was extremely easy to use & develop with and it also allowed rewriting pages written in other Ajax solutions very quickly. Additionally, Visual WebGui allowed focusing on usability since the Visual WebGui themes took care of the rest. Prior to upgrading the site to Visual WebGui the user experience was lacking, including repeating unnecessary page refreshes. "With VWG I was able to create a fully ajax’ed site quickly without worrying about the typical issues," founder John Ruf. Read the full Case Study...
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Visual WebGui is an Ajax driven rich applications platform for Web, Cloud and migration of legacy apps. to Web/Cloud. It is the only Ajax platform to offer simple one-layer development for web, bullet-proof security & unrivalled performance of desktop-like rich UIs, even with poor conectivity.
This latest version includes several new features & enhancements of previous studio versions as well as some fixes and support for Microsoft IE 8 and Windows 7. One of the new features in 6.3.9, for example, is a simple and convenient way to specify what runtime version of Silverlight that the Visual WebGui application
should support.
Download a Free Trial of Professional Studio now >
All 6.3.9 versions of Visual WebGui are available for download on the website now.
View all Downloads >
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Visual WebGui is evolving and as we go new opportunities present themselves. As you all know we have been working hard on maturing Visual WebGui rich web offerings along with adding functionality that you, VWG community members have been asking for.
This autumn we target to release 6.4 which promises to be the ultimate enterprise rich Internet application solution.
We still have some mileage ahead of us on the road to turning VWG into standard de facto rich enterprise solution, but apparently we are heading there on a pace that no other platform ever did before. Here are some of the recent evolvements that we would like to share with you.
VWG will be addressing 3 market segments with targeted offerings based on the same core technology: Rich enterprise web Apps. Cloud Apps. and legacy Apps. migration to web and cloud. We will be offering 3 dedicated and focused offerings in all 3 segments.
We are not facing the challenges involved alone. Partnerships with world leaders on the Cloud and Migration will be announced when they mature, those will be highly strategic partnerships that will take the VWG revolution into the next phase.
There are 2 main reasons for this post:
- To let you, Visual WebGui community members in on our plans and the VWG direction and to promise you that the new opportunities will not affect our focus on your needs and supporting them.
- We want to announce name challenge, and ask you, VWG community member to participate in a name finding challenge. The chosen names will be reworded by a 5 years subscription, for each name eventually chosen by Gizmox.
We are looking for names for the following offering:
- Visual WebGui Web suit - it will be a web dedicated development kit with web dedicated designers and controls
- Visual WebGui Cloud suit - It will be based on the above but will add some additional cloud dedicated features to enable unlimited scalability over cloud infrastructure, and further abstractions for cloud easy and native deployment.
- Migration suit - that will offer the closest as possible solution to automating the VB6 and WinForms migration into web and cloud.
On each of the above Visual WebGui innovative infrastructure is going to offer the easiest and simplest developer targeted solution, and yet open for developers to extend and customize under our open source approach.
Please send your feedback and suggestions via our Contact form or to sales@gizmox.com
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Visual WebGui Web & Cloud Platofrm version 6.3.8 was released today and can be downloaded here.
This is a further stabilization of 6.3.x that includes some resolved button behavior issues, as well as features such as Flash 10 uploading compatibility and the ability to configure a virtual directory.
The full v6.3.8 change log can be found here.
Click here to download Visual WebGui 6.3.8...
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Gizmox released today a new version of the Visual WebGui Platform for Rich .NET AJAX applications.
Visual WebGui 6.3.7 is a further stabilization to the 6.3 pre-release version which adds support for wrapping of AJAX based controls into the Visual WebGui framework as well as support for additional languages.
The platform is available in free open source and free trial (commercial Professional Studio) versions.
All downloads are available for free here!
This is the Change log for 6.3.7:
Breaking Changes
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VWG-4746- Support for wrapping AJAX based controls added.
Bugs fix
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VWG-3930 - No control causes the designer window to open dirty - with a star marking changes.
VWG-4763 - VB form designer allows to edit ContextMenu items
VWG-4256 - Button with 21x21 image used tocrop image in a button with size of 25x25.
VWG-4204 - ListView RTL view fixed.
VWG-2599 - When browser is in offline mode a message is shown when the connection to the server is lost.
VWG-2976 - Focus indication on Checked list box focus.
VWG-4751 - Problem deleting SplitContainer contro from designer fixed.
VWG-4355 - Opening a TableLayoutPanel in designer used to automatically add rows.
VWG-4753 - Splitcontainer did not preserve splitter panels order.
VWG-4359 - When setting the CheckBoxes property to TRUE, the selection text used to disappear.
VWG-4309 - Casting safetly tests added in the resource browser dialog classes.
VWG-4344 - Support added for Iceland-Icelandic.
VWG-4403 - Support added for Brazil-Portuguese .
VWG-4311 - Support added for Portugal-Portuguese.
VWG-3792 - UniqueIdExtender renders CUID attribute at run-time - and it's now available in generated HTML code.
VWG-4211 - FCKEditor fixed .
VWG-4243 - TableLayOutPanel render problems fixed fixed.
VWG-4120 - TabControl should re-render on KeepConnceted requests fixed.
VWG-4752 - SplitterDistance property is now saved for the SplitContainer control.
VWG-4390 - TableLayoutPanel fixed to not corrupt layout when saving and reloading
VWG-4662 - Form.DockPadding fixed and wont make controls move on open+save form.
VWG-4483 - Buttons with Flat style text retain's it's location on mouse hover.
VWG-4260 - DateTimePicker with custom format will not change day part to undefined on second tabbing through the DTP control.
VWG-4246 - DataGridViewCell - allows placing typing cursor using mouse to edit contents
VWG-4371 - Tabbing through controls on a form tabstop on buttons with FlatStyle=Flat.
VWG-4244 - IE8 - Dialogs & MessageBoxes showing content.
VWG-4172 - IE8 - Rendering of labels fixed to look the same as in IE7 and FF3.
VWG-4340 - IE8 - Combobox rendering fixed.
Go to Downloads page...
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A new Visual WebGui RIA Platform showcase was published on visualwebgui.com.
A full Help Desk Ticketing System completed with 1 developer in only 8 months by Golden West Technologies.
Visual WebGui provided the platform to build Help Desk Ticketing System solution that actualized the requirements and met the challenges as a cost effective alternative to other RIA platforms. The drag and drop page development experience was an enormous benefit. This compared to the hours it would take to build the same pages with traditional ASP environments. “Visual WebGui claims of 90% reduction in development time and providing the bridge between desktop and web technologies were substantiated through the design, development, and deployment of our help desk software solution.“ Brian Butterfield
Brian Butterfield added that “There is no other software platform on the market today that can give traditional desktop application developers the ability to transition that knowledge and experience directly to a web development environment – providing an unprecedented development experience.”
Read the full case study.
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