What I learned from this post is that in September 2023 nobody knows of an immediate threat that will cause a Web 1 app to no longer function. Nobody has said “Hey, next year xxx is going to happen and Web 1 apps will cease to function”. That is really all I wanted to learn from the question I asked of the forum.
As long as I can run the 2019r3.2 IDE, then I can make updates. It runs fine in Windows 11 and I don’t see Windows 11 going away any time soon.
At some unknown point in the future, something is going to happen and this Web 1 app will need to be re-written. No doubt. When it does, we will almost certainly stick with Xojo.
who can ever know if it will break tomorrow?
and who can ever know otherwise?
the question that has gone unanswered is: if Web1 breaks, will someone fix it quickly?
finally, it’s too easy to tell other people: rewrite your applications with Web2 and shut up.
Greg, you know that there are solutions for this. We for instance containerize our whole toolchain and maintain copies in a container registry. Also hardware can either be emulated or archived once it changes.
Sure. I never said this has to be done for free. We would pay for a long term version. In fact this would have been easy money. No change needed since 2020, but constantly fees. If it wouldn’t be a yearly fee, why not offering an tls update for $200 or more once needed
There’s not a single complain on the forum what I am aware of, where someone expect an update for an old Xojo version. Because there was not a single case where Xojo abandoned a whole platform/framework. So it would have been very clear that this is a special situation with a special offer.
The new Version of what? Web1 doesn’t get updates. That is the problem. Web 2 is not an update of web 1, its a while new product. This is not the same as iterative updates what Xojo does.
In many cases this can’t be done due to technical incompatibility between the Web frameworks, or it will break the client business to do it. So the claim that Web 2 is the fix for Web 1 proved false in the real world.
There’s a big difference between stopping development of a tool and fixing critical bugs that impact on its existing use for all users.
While U.S. law allows “as is” licences, the laws of Australia, UK, EU and others require Xojo customer devs to provide “merchantable quality” and “fitness for purpose”. That was possible since the tool was licenced “as is” with a promise of future fixes - as a going concern - which fixes to critical bugs should have materialised by now. We can argue over what those are but memory leaks to do with SSL and JSON must top that list. So there is a good faith aspect which needs some work but noone is suggesting Xojo should do that for free. It is needed by the entire Web 1 user base so there should be potential for a maintenance release beyond “a point release” whatever that arbitrary line was said to be in 2020.
This problem isn’t going away because Web 1 is built on open standards and there is no talk whatsoever of abandoning HTTP 1.1 anytime soon, much less HTML5, Javascript and CSS Xojo Web 1 relies on.
That is why Xojo users chose Web 1 and not desktop for their projects to start with. The blah blah about browsers and client OSes is irrelevant since noone will ship a non-HTML5 / JavaScript/CSS browser since it would break a billion web sites. The Web 1 userbase for Xojo hasn’t gone away and will not go away until the business case for those apps force the issue. As the OP attests, that could be a very long time.
Precisely, I think that the problem is that the Web framework 1 does not rely on HTTP/1.1, but on HTTP/1.0 (dating from 1996), defined as being officially obsolete.
We’re not immune to browser updates in the future to refuse these HTTP/1.0 requests, particularly if security vulnerabilities are discovered, or if it’s simply now considered HTTP/1.1, already very old, should be a minimum in our time. Google (or even Apple) can be very quick on this sort of thing if they consider security to be at stake. And in these cases, everyone follows quickly.
I appreciate your efforts to maintain a positive outlook, and that’s commendable. However, I gotta ask about vague statements such as “For as long as it is needed.” These don’t provide us with the concrete information we need. Many of us are managing projects that significantly impact the lives of our employees and involve substantial financial and time investments. General statements like this are difficult to interpret and don’t offer actionable insights. It’s unclear whether “as long as it is needed” refers to the needs of a single user, 10% of your user base, 20%, or Xojo internally. (As long as we make a profit on it in Xojo Cloud?)
A more specific commitment would be far more useful. For example, stating that you will support the platform for a minimum of three more years, ensuring compatibility with the most up-to-date operating systems and addressing any security vulnerabilities in the framework. This would allow us to plan more effectively, whether that means adapting to new changes or maintaining older hardware.
I think you’re thinking of HTTPSocket class in Xojo’s core which was indeed replaced by URLConnection which implemented HTTP/S 1.1. So what we are talking about here is leaky SSL and JSON apparently
Web1 relies on HTTP 1.1, HTML5, JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets. I repeat there is not even the hint of talk of obsolescence with any of these, as it would break a billion web sites. Therefore Web 1 will work from a Web client standpoint for the foreseeable future.
On the server side, Web1 can compile to 64-bit Linux which also will work for the foreseeable future especially using snaps et al.
So there is no technical reason why Web 1 apps would become obsolete in the foreseeable future if Xojo Inc. is here to help as Geoff P says it is. Because Web 1’s underlying technology stack is still fully supported and very widely used, Web 1 apps should work fine for decades to come. That I believe is the answer to the OP’s question.
And TCP/IPv4 was finalised in 1981 and it still transports the lion’s share of network connections today. So that HTTP 1.1 is almost 20 years younger than TCP/IPv4 only goes to my point that internet open standards, on which Xojo Web 1 is built, last a long long long time.
Geoff P didn’t ignore it Ivan. He asked what the issue was. Danna also said there are no plans to stop support anytime soon regarding Xojo Cloud. I’ve made a clear case why Web 1 will not go away unless business issues compel. So the fog is clearing…
The answer, while not directly stated should be clear by now. If it breaks, it stays broken.
Your only option is to rewrite your app. If Xojo Web 2.0 isn’t mature/stable/fast (whatever) enough, then look at the many other options out there. Heck you can even write web apps with Apple’s Swift.
The statement about Xojo cloud supporting Web 1.0, kinda muddies the waters. I understand it to mean that they’ll do their best to keep their shared hosting plan compatible with Web 1.0, but when the hosting company, forces a change, it’s out of their hands. I do not believe for one moment, that they will dig up Web 1.0 and update it to meet changes made by the hosting company.
Xojo Web (1.0) is a dead-end. As others have mentioned, you will need to move on. You don’t have to shut up about it, but you do need to move on, the sooner the better.
I’m aware we have to move forward, with or without Xojo.
It’s also true that if you have large applications in production, the change requires a lot of effort, a lot of time and a lot of caution.
I find it very annoying that some people try to minimize or even deny this problem.
but it still happens.
finally, I invite you all to revisit this post:
the author talks about companies, employees, investments, etc., kindly asking for clear answers that…of course do not come.
Oh absolutely, you, I and many others know it all too well and we absolutely agree with you. The people who don’t think it is a problem, obviously do not share in your experiences.
The best thing you can do (at least in my humble opinion) is to start researching alternative tools. Some customers who’ve left Xojo for other tools, congregate on a different forum (the name and links to that forum are banned here), but they will be able to give you a better idea if the tools they’ve chosen would be appropriate for your needs.
While having a plan won’t help with the anger and frustration, it does help you move forwards mentally, step by step the anger and frustration will get weaker and weaker until you no longer feel it at all.
Right. I don’t want to sound dismissive about the difficulties of porting from Web 1 to Web 2. I understand that it’s a challenge. If you have to port anyway, why not port elsewhere? No business or tool should ever give their customers an excuse to look to the competition.
But that is the reality of the situation. Web 1 will break some day. It will not be updated. Get a plan in place now. That plan could be moving to Web 2, or that could be moving to another tool. Staying on Web 1 is not a permanent solution.
I doubt that anyone here ever thought that Web1 could last eternally - at least not for professional purposes.
But if I had to walk on a wire, I would want a net underneath.
And if someone told me: “Start walking, then I’ll see if I can put the net”, I wouldn’t be okay with it.
The statement “No business or tool should ever give their customers an excuse to look to the competition” may sound like a compelling principle, but it’s not always practical. Similar to other platitudes like “all software has bugs” or “we will support it as long as it is useful,” it lacks actionable advice. If taken to its logical extreme, this idea would suggest that any minor advantage gained by a competitor should prompt a complete overhaul of your own product, which is clearly an unsustainable approach.
That’s a telling statement - what’s so difficult in doing just that? I still maintain an IBM RISC-6000 toolchain for some builds and that platform was created in 1995-ish, a SunOS IPC with SunOS 4.1.5 (NOT Solaris), a Linux 2.6 kernel-based system, and many others. And I’m one dev in my lab environment doing that.
I’ve also been on the REALbasic train since the early days of OS X. Preferably, I’d love to see Xojo move to an LTS model that would create as stable a version of the IDE and Frameworks as possible and keep the new stuff out of it for at least 2 years with the LTS release then rolling every 2 years. Sure, continue to release bleeding edge builds with new features, but continue to maintain the LTS versions so that those of us who are not hobbyists know that we have a stable platform to work with.
Of course there is always a reason to look at a competitor. My point is not to give your customers a compelling reason to look. I mean things like the recent Unity nightmare. If you put up some kind of roadblock - like the transition from Web 1 to Web 2 - that forces developers to consider their options, they might consider to move away. For example, my Xojo app is available for Mac and Windows, though I’d love to have mobile and web versions. Xojo’s offerings for mobile and web are not good enough (in my opinion) so I’d have to rewrite in another tool to make that a reality. If Xojo were to do something to the desktop version that forces me to more-or-less rewrite my desktop app, why would I not take the opportunity to go elsewhere? And this isn’t hypothetical, this happened for some developers, just with web in place of desktop.
Of course, maybe upon reviewing options I’d conclude that sticking with Xojo is still the best move. It’d be less work to rewrite in something I know than something I don’t. But my point in all of this is the company (Xojo, Unity, whomever) should never put a fork in the road and force the customer to consider wether or not they want to stay a customer.