WE - Why not use it for...

BTW, what Phillip and Thom said on Mason’s comments. There are a lot of ways to skin the multi-device pig. One that is easily overlooked that Xojo does very well is in the security of keeping business logic on the server side.

You can keep business logic on the server side while the mechanics of responsive design is on the client. Just not with Xojo.

Let me rephrase then… WIth Xojo, you have to do a lot of extra work to put the business logic on the client side.

But all this aside… Anyone who thinks that a great demo app would do wonders to sell Xojo Web Edition should make it. As a bonus, you’d have key insights into the real-world strengths and weaknesses of the tool. Marketable knowledge.

[quote=21739:@Phillip Zedalis @ 1701 Software, Inc.]Mason you somehow got my name for a quote from Joseph.
[/quote]

I apologize for that Phillip. My mistake. Doesn’t seem this forum allows me to edit. You are forever tarnished with someone else’s writing :wink:

[quote=21739:@Phillip Zedalis @ 1701 Software, Inc.]
Also when I said free I didn’t mean as in money. I meant time invested. [/quote]

That is part of the point I am making. Besides the expensive price tag, WE doesn’t have fluid layout ability without hand coding it for every sceen size you want to support. So a WE developer must spend a lot of time hand coding for that and it probably wouldn’t resize live like other tools do.

[quote=21739:@Phillip Zedalis @ 1701 Software, Inc.]
HTML/CSS doesn’t magically rescale itself to different sizes. [/quote]

Here’s a little example I whipped up please see it then create the same functionality in a WE app and please post the code so myself and others can try it in the IDE for comparison. As you can see there’s not much ‘code’ there to make the image resize correctly fitting the browser. It’s all built in, handled ‘magically’. I have extra code in there for headers, a title, a caption, etc. If you see how little work it is to get that image to resize correctly, some of you guys might be surprised?

Go here, a free tool (no server required) :

and paste my code into the top left HTML box only. Don’t mess with the other boxes, they are not needed. Once you see the page I created showing the image go ahead and resize the browser window. You will see the image magically resize to fit. There’s no major ‘code’ going on and that is not a special image. I just got it from the internet and posted it on the image hosting site which you’re getting it from. Also, Codepen shows you real time changes, no compiling delays no need to even refresh your browser. For example change the header text and you see how it looks on the page ‘instantly’. I’m pretty certain xojo WE developers don’t know about these and more free tools so their opinion of WE may not be exactly coming from a place of reality. This one tool alone can save you a lot of time developing. The point I am making is if you knew what was out there a WE developer might not be so gung ho about WE? That’s also what I’m trying to find out. Do experienced web developers LOVE WE or do they see it as SO SO?

Would experienced web developers that know how to make web apps using other technologies still choose WE for most of their work or not? And why?

[code]

Some Image
<style>
h1 {text-align:center;color:#C0C0C0;font-weight: normal;font-family:"Palantino", Times, serif;font-size:42px;}
h2 {text-align:center;color:RED;font-weight: normal;font-family:"Palantino", Times, serif;font-size:28px;}
</style>

 <style type="text/css">
.style1 {text-align:center; color: yellow;}
</style>

<style type="text/css">
figure {
float:left;
text-align:left;
width:auto;
margin:0px 5px 25px 0px;
padding-top:0px;
padding-bottom:0px;
padding-right:0px;
padding-left:0px;
}

#figure figure, #figure span, #figure img { display: block; width:100%; text-align: center; margin:0 auto }
#figure img { max-width:100% }
#img-holder { max-width: 640px; margin: 0 auto }
</style>

My header

My header 2


Image caption
Unable to load the image.
[/code]

Phillip or someone please write and post the WE equivalent code so I and others can run it in the IDE and see how it compares. That would help a lot of people decide if WE fits our needs or not. If WE can easily scale things to fit different screens without spending hours and hours coding for each ‘page’ and each screen then it’s going to be much more attractive to me and others. If not then maybe WE developers either don’t scale their WE apps or they spend days like Brad coding for all the different screen sizes? I don’t know.

Hi Wayne thank you for contributing here. Well sort of. Creating a WE APP that sits on your home computer isn’t very useful. To get any reasonable use out of it you really need to pay that hefty price tag. But yes you are right and that is actually what I am doing at the moment. I am using the demo of WE to develop an online web app business idea. However I am very concerned it will not be robust enough for my needs or it will cost too much to properly host in comparison to other tools. My plan was to develop and complete more than one online business idea then make the purchase and then finally see if WE is up to my needs. Since there is no way to build a demo test project and test it out on the server risking a purchase and refund seems the only way to go.

[quote=21741:@Wayne Golding]
There are lots of arguments here based on performance, scalability etc. but cost is very hard to argue when comparing oranges & apples.[/quote]

For me I don’t think it’s that difficult. I want my apps and sites to scale correctly for mobile, desktop and everything inbetween. I think that web apps and websites that don’t do this are lacking and somewhat unprofessional. I cannot ignore millions of mobile users and I don’t like the idea of having to hand code for all the different device screens. I might be wrong but that seems like such a waste of time to me. Doing that seems like it would significantly increase development time. Then what happens with each new device that comes out? I have to recode more options to fit their screens? What about the new internet TVs? Them too huh?

[quote=21741:@Wayne Golding]
I have scaled WE apps running standalone at 20 WE instances per windows server with 4 windows instances per $2k (NZ) - about $1800 US - machine. This gives me between 2000 - 4000 active users for a pretty small cost. It doesn’t compare well with a brochure type site running on Apache though. Of course that would be comparing plums & prunes![/quote]

Thank you for this information!
Well, Apache, php, CSS, HTML and javascript are pretty powerful stuff. You could probably do what you’re doing there using 1 server using them instead of using 4 servers running WE. I’m wondering about the long term cost difference of having to run 3 extra servers. I guess if you’re having 4,000 paid customers the cost is peanuts. But if you’re web apps and sites are mostly ad revenue or low cost based 3 extra servers is probably significant.

Am I understanding this correctly ? 4 servers handles around 4,000 users concurrently?
What kinds of things are your users doing? Are the 4000 concurrent users chatting or doing a much less intensive actions?
I would like to know how many servers would be required for the exact same thing using the native technologies?

I can see why it’s attractive though. For someone that doesn’t know web technologies it probably still saves them time even though they must hand code for different screen sizes.

Wayne how did you handle correctly developing for all the different device screen sizes with your WE apps?

[quote=21741:@Wayne Golding]
And I’d rather Xojo used its resources to fix the IDE before writing their own forum software.[/quote]
They could of easily and cheaply hired a customer developer to do the job and not wasted any xojo inc. developer time.
I like the new forum but it’s disappointing not seeing a WE app in action.
This forum is actually an advertisement to not buy WE. It’s php based.

Brad, PHP is always executed server side. And good security is always keeping the business end on the server side. Never rely on client side security because it’s not secure.
I don’t understand how does that help correctly display for the massive number of varying screen sizes without hand coding for them?

Hi Thom.
How about sharing the WE secret for everyone that did not attend XDC. WHAT Auto-Layout stuff?
And are you saying faster and easier than going to conventional HTML+CSS?

SHOW US :slight_smile:

Though I am still not sure if it would handle all of my web app needs you guys are helping sway me towards eventually making a WE purchase, thanks. Without examples and information from the actual company, it’s a bit in the dark and of course I’ve still got a lot of learning and testing to do.

Well Mason you raise excellent questions.

As for your example I may be dense but I don’t see any live resizing going on. I just see an image being centered.

I guess there’s a difference here I’m talking about numbers of connections rather than screen sizes.

Excuse me? Really, if you want to be argumentative for its own sake fine, but please don’t assume to know how I spend my days. Just plain rude. And incorrect.

[quote=21752:@Brad Hutchings]Well, you should run a software company. I’m not going to second guess how other people allocate money for various business activities for their companies. Geoff’s a sharp guy on this front. Real/Xojo just celebrated its 15th anniversary, if I’m counting right.

On the esoTalk thing specifically… Developed part time by a grad student. I don’t care how good grad students are. They don’t expect or get full developer salaries.[/quote]

Brad, Take a deep breath my friend. I am not suggesting Geoff or Xojo is doing anything wrong, they’ve got many, many things right. I don’t need to go start a software company and be in business to point out where there might be room for improvement, especially if it has the potential for Xojo being more successful which is beneficial to all users. (Every company gets hammered on their product/marketing once in a while, Microsoft anyone? - It ultimately makes them stronger)

I merely pointed out, based on the original post question, which is also my question, and another poster’s question (that’s three) that it would be good if there were more examples. Particularly if your trying to sell a product that develops web apps, and your company uses a web app, perhaps it would be a good show piece. No? And I hesitate to add this negative issue that if the company has a product that is capable and doesn’t use it on an outward, customer facing application then maybe it might result in the customer asking themselves “if it is so great why aren’t they using it?”.

How does a part time grad student make such a great product like esoTalk, but Xojo can’t? Not seeing your logic here, but OK. Maybe Xojo WE simply isn’t suited for such an app? That’s fine, I honestly don’t know and haven’t used WE, that is exactly why I ask. Honestly your posts and input did nothing to help answer that question, either way - no one can fault your loyalty to Xojo though.

That’s not the customer’s job Brad. So now we (the potential customer) need to learn and make the demo product for the company we want to buy a product from to validate whether to buy it? OK Brad… we’re worlds apart - good night.

FWIW I don’t think he’s being argumentative. I think he’s implying that you are a Pro since you can do it however its not necessarily native or easy to do with the tool.

I understand where his questions are coming from. If responsive design is your ideal goal and you want to quickly scale to infinite number of users then WE is probably not the best tool for you.

It is currently best suited to those with existing Xojo code who want to make an Intranet-enabled version. It also does really well for membership/subscription based applications where there is some predictability with users.

It is not ideal for forums, blogs, content heavy sites, or the next Facebook/Twitter clone.

That being said you can do those things if you so choose.

[quote=21766:@Phillip Zedalis @ 1701 Software, Inc.]FWIW I don’t think he’s being argumentative. I think he’s implying that you are a Pro since you can do it however its not necessarily native or easy to do with the tool.

I understand where his questions are coming from. If responsive design is your ideal goal and you want to quickly scale to infinite number of users then WE is probably not the best tool for you.

It is currently best suited to those with existing Xojo code who want to make an Intranet-enabled version. It also does really well for membership/subscription based applications where there is some predictability with users.

It is not ideal for forums, blogs, content heavy sites, or the next Facebook/Twitter clone.

That being said you can do those things if you so choose.[/quote]

I think this is EXACTLY the kind of input and advice the original poster (and myself) were looking for - Thanks!!

And again, Joseph, it’s easy to Monday-morning quarterback a company when you don’t have to make the numbers balance. Look, I’ve sold a lot of software in my time to a lot of developers. In my experience, the potential customers who approached us with, “if I could just see it do this, it would help my decision” usually weren’t worth the cost. The ones who were worth the cost came with money in hand to have us develop their solution. So call me automatically skeptical of the idea that recoding the forums with Web Edition would do anything but burn cash and open up all the overly rehashed “do it my way” discussions.

RS/Xojo’s messaging on Web Edition has been pretty clear from the start. It excels most at creating web applications that look/feel like desktop applications. It makes web development accessible to desktop developers, specifically those with experience with Real Studio / Xojo. There are some peculiarities of web development that such developers probably need to figure out depending on the kinds of web products they want to build.

That they’re not explicitly addressing whether WE is good for general web app development isn’t a weakness in my book. It’s a strength to stick to what they know works well and work to make that confidence space expand over time. As an active user of this stuff, I’d say it has done so quite quickly.

[quote=21762:@Phillip Zedalis @ 1701 Software, Inc.]Well Mason you raise excellent questions.

As for your example I may be dense but I don’t see any live resizing going on. I just see an image being centered.[/quote]

Seriously? Is your browser size really small already? Make it larger so the image is fairly large. If you want to make the image larger change the code to something like max-width: 990px; Look closely at the size of the image. Resize the browser much smaller. If you do it slowly you’ll even see the image shrink. If the image was not resizing the right side of the image would probably get chopped off as you shrink the browser. For me it correctly resizes and it’s very clear.

Is it not working for anyone else and if not what browser are you guys using?
If you’re using IE that’s known to be garbage and may require special code for certain things.
Many developers just ignore IE, lol.

Brad Phillip is correct. As he wrote I wasn’t being rude or taking a shot at you. By your own words you said

I took that to mean it’s taking you a long time to make things work correctly for different screen sized devices. To me that would mean days spent doing that.

Not being argumentative lol.
Btw Brad, I DO KNOW HOW YOU SPEND YOUR DAYS!!
AHHHH!!! :open_mouth:
I EVEN KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE in MV.
Now don’t forget to walk Bosco tomorrow!
LOL.

We used to be very close neighbors.
How’s that for internet privacy (remember that thread)?
Some part of the year I actually still do live close to you.

[quote=21763:@Wayne Golding]I guess there’s a difference here I’m talking about numbers of connections rather than screen sizes.
[/quote]
Wayne I’m talking about the whole enchilada!
The complete developing and end user experience.

Good night guys. Thanks for your help.

I forgot to ask, how would I replicate this behavior (my code example) in WE?

I would like to design my WE apps so they are fluid and things resize correctly on the fly.

Alright NOW good night guys, and thanks.

[quote=21771:@Mason Mack]I took that to mean it’s taking you a long time to make things work correctly for different screen sized devices. To me that would mean days spent doing that.
[/quote]

You misinterpreted the sentence to fit your thesis. Whatevers.

[quote=21771:@Mason Mack]I EVEN KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE in MV.
Now don’t forget to walk Bosco tomorrow!
LOL.[/quote]

Good grief.

[quote=21787:@Brad Hutchings]
Good grief.[/quote]

Good grief !? LOL I haven’t heard anyone say that since Charlie Brown!

http://jeanneexpatdiary.blogspot.com/2012/01/me-and-charlie-brown-good-grief.html

Its not WE only - if you want to see what it is intended to mimic see Apple’s presentations on Autolayout
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2011/#cocoa-autolayout
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AutolayoutPG/Articles/Introduction.html

Drag drop and pretty much done

Yeah, Good Grief. You went troll, stalker, and creep in a single thread. That’s gotta be a record. You, my former neighbor who I never noticed turned Internet tough guy, are a perfect example of why real names and affiliations should be required here.

Brad you’re probably the only person on the forum that makes such wrong assumptions and is consistently rude to others.

So far you’re the only one on the forum that’s insulting, rude and arrogant and is a total hypocrite.
It’s a mystery and a shame that xojo inc. lets you continually insult other paying customers.
Sooner or later it’s going to be costing them sales. Other customers have already complained about you and are shocked how xojo inc. lets you act this way.

I have no intentions of having anything to do with you Bradley. My and other forum member’s point was that people should have a right to their privacy and without that much information can be obtained. A point you don’t seem to understand. You have a problem of not respecting other people’s opinions and that distorts your viewpoints on a situation.

And as for you (in another thread) demanding customers use their real legal names and accurate headshots, you’re being a complete hypocrite :

You’re the loudest user on the forum complaining and criticizing other customers who want to maintain their privacy (with good reason) but you yourself Mr. Richard Bradley Hutchings are using an alias and are hiding behind a dog wearing dark sunglasses.

A lot of what you write is empty and seems to only ignite argument which is why many people on here will never buy your products and have already asked to not participate in their threads.

I really don’t know what’s in your head to make you so nasty but that’s not my life or my responsibilities.

Btw, your abnormal mancrush obsession with actor Jay Mohr is just weird.

[quote=21904:@Norman Palardy]Its not WE only - if you want to see what it is intended to mimic see Apple’s presentations on Autolayout
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2011/#cocoa-autolayout
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AutolayoutPG/Articles/Introduction.html
[/quote]
Thank you for posting those links Norman. I will check them out later.

[quote=21904:@Norman Palardy]
Drag drop and pretty much done[/quote]

Yes drag and drop is fantastic but other products have that as well and that doesn’t solve the multi screen problem.

For some reason I keep having a xojo WE problem where sometimes the page doesn’t load or it takes many seconds for it to load. This is from the IDE. I posted about this in another thread but I don’t think anyone offered any advice.

Any ideas what’s going on Norman? I’m using Xojo r2.

[quote=21920:@Mason Mack]For some reason I keep having a xojo WE problem where sometimes the page doesn’t load or it takes many seconds for it to load. This is from the IDE. I posted about this in another thread but I don’t think anyone offered any advice.
[/quote]

Wow, that must be frustrating! Perhaps some people who can help you the most would appreciate if you made the tiny step of being up front about who you are.