<SALES> Pavuk IDF upcoming availability - Preliminary Announcement
Bill Crowell
I'm announcing the upcoming availability of my product, Pavuk IDF. Ads
will be appearing in Spectrum starting in January and I will be
exhibiting at the Spectrum 2010 meeting.
Pavuk is a commercial product that runs inside of the QM commercial
version. It is a full-featured development framework for web-based
applications. The native user interface is any W3C compliant web
browser (Sorry, I.E. 7+ is neither W3C compliant nor reliable). It has
been running a medical application system in production since June and
has been tested to 120 simultaneous users. Pavuk has an internal web
server and emits dynamic HTML and Javascript rendering application
forms in real-time. And yes, it does run on the iPhone!
With Pavuk, the MV developer doesn't need to know anything about web
programming. In fact, most databases can be designed in the database
designer and running a form within minutes. There is an API for the
advanced programmer to write plugins that are specific to your
application and triggered by a number of different event types.
I started designing this system a number of years ago when I was faced
with trying to put a legacy system on the web. Trying to learn HTML,
Javascript, PHP, etc. and put it all together for a running
application was turning out to be a difficult task to say the least.
Instead, I looked at how we build applications and built a system that
organizes applications and automates the process without me needing to
write a web form and build all of the interfaces for an application.
The result was a full development environment.
Much thanks to Martin for his extensions to QM that have made this
possible.
My minimal web page is up at www.pavuk.com with a couple of screen
shots of actual production forms from the medical application.
Before making any product announcement, I wanted to be absolutely
certain that it is as fully debugged and tested as possible. Now, back
to writing documentation...
Bill
Peter McMurray
The page looks pleasant but in my opinion if it does not run in IE it is
dead. I am afraid that the user chooses the browser not the programmer.
Of course if you are only interested in in-house packages that is OK just a
harder sell of course.
Peter McMurray
<snip>
Tony Gravagno
You've accurately described the scenario: If you can control the
browser for intranet/extranet (trading partner) apps, then declaring
support for a range of browsers and releases isn't a problem. If you
have an app that needs to be used by "Joe internet user" then it seems
Pavuk IDF may not be the right solution.
These days it's OK to ask IE5-7 users politely to upgrade or migrate.
If you don't ask, someone else will, and eventually most people give
in to the wave of demand and get themselves current.
Every company needs to ask themselves if the cost of supporting old
browsers is in balance with the business they get from people with
those browsers. Send your current customers a little survey, ask them
what browser/release they use. Ask them if they'd upgrade to use a
GUI for your app. I'd wager pretty much all of them would.
The notion of companies not buying "current" software because it costs
them too much to upgrade their masses of workstations is outdated and
pompous. Most MV VARs are targeting shops with 1 to 100 users, where
it's hardly an IT burden to upgrade all browsers - and in fact almost
critical that they do. Ten years ago shops of 100 seats or more might
gripe about upgrading browsers - these days those companies have gone
virtual if their IT burden was that great. If you're really REALLY
selling to that audience, then why don't you have a GUI yet? The
argument that one needs IE7 (or similar downline) support makes no
sense anymore.
The real target audience for most MV VARs will not have a problem
using a current browser for common MV apps. Any large company will
have a problem finding a vendor who can/will support old/broken
browsers - and any company that does support old browsers will charge
massive bucks to do it. MV VARs should use these dynamics to their
competitive advantage.
T
Bill Crowell
I appreciate Tony's perspective and comments on this. The business
reality is that there are other fine browsers on the market that are
free. Safari for Windows has the fastest JS interpreter presently
available. In our testing, Safari for Windows enabled even old
computers to have reasonable response times when compared to IE. Opera
also works well as does Firefox. All of these can be downloaded free
of charge. I've not tried Chrome yet.
When you want to reach the largest audience possible and run a real
application, staying within the published standards leads to best
reliability. As Pavuk presents a "virtual desktop" inside the browser,
an end user is not going to tolerate the fact that IE cannot interpret
JS or CSS properly just because MS wants the world to do it the MS
way. Asking a user to use one of these other fine browsers to run
their applications is a small price to pay to have them happy and
productive.
Consider this, many sites will work ONLY with IE. Well, I run a Mac or
an iPhone. Because they've used ActiveX, they've placed a greater
restriction on the user. I can remember when some insurance companies
required that you use Netscape because IE didn't have JRE.
We have run Pavuk applications on various versions of IE and it has
worked most of the time. The key here is "most of the time". The
medical firm's production environment has mostly older PCs and they
were able to run the medical application, developed with Pavuk, in IE,
but it was slow on the old hardware. Simply installing Safari for
Windows on these same machines sped up the process more than 5x and we
had happier users. Sure, for some sites, they must use IE, but to do
their work which is running the medical application, they use Safari.
Given the amount of demand for iPhone support reflected in Spectrum, I
would respectfully submit to you that placing your application into
Pavuk and having support for this and so many other platforms is a
very good thing!
So back to Tony's point. The ability of a VAR to project their
application into so many different devices with a browser is the main
competitive advantage.
Bill
Peter McMurray
"Bill Crowell" <bcro...@pavuk.com> wrote in message
news:dba261b6-af04-4477...@1g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
On Dec 30, 1:24 am, Tony Gravagno
I appreciate Tony's perspective and comments on this. The business
reality is that there are other fine browsers on the market that are
free. Safari for Windows has the fastest JS interpreter presently
available. In our testing, Safari for Windows enabled even old
computers to have reasonable response times when compared to IE. Opera
also works well as does Firefox. All of these can be downloaded free
of charge. I've not tried Chrome yet.
When you want to reach the largest audience possible and run a real
application, staying within the published standards leads to best
reliability. As Pavuk presents a "virtual desktop" inside the browser,
an end user is not going to tolerate the fact that IE cannot interpret
JS or CSS properly just because MS wants the world to do it the MS
way. Asking a user to use one of these other fine browsers to run
their applications is a small price to pay to have them happy and
productive.
Consider this, many sites will work ONLY with IE. Well, I run a Mac or
an iPhone. Because they've used ActiveX, they've placed a greater
restriction on the user. I can remember when some insurance companies
required that you use Netscape because IE didn't have JRE.
<snip>
Ah Hah and here we have the answer - a devoted Mac user. 5% of the market
maybe with one multi-value supplier albeit an excellent one. Unfortunately
for the vast majority of users Safari is a pain in the butt tied in with
I-Tunes. Yes I have tried it and had to delete it because it constantly
interfered with other operations. I find it quite amusing that Mac users
who need something more than email and a browser promptly nip out and buy a
VM so that they can actually run real applications.
Like I said you have restricted your market to in house use. Possibly an
excellent decision for your package although my local medical centre and
pharmacy run Windows server and workstations and the devoted Mac parties (a
quilt shop and serious film documentary venture) use the Mac for film
editing, email and browser with a VM to do the business side.
Peter McMurray
Kevin Powick
> Unfortunately
> for the vast majority of users Safari is a pain in the butt tied in with
> I-Tunes.
I believe it is iTunes that is tied to Safari, and only on the Mac
platform, which doesn't really matter as Safari comes with Mac. This
is no different than the great number of Windows programs that require
IE to be installed on Windows.
> I find it quite amusing that Mac users
> who need something more than email and a browser promptly nip out and buy a
> VM so that they can actually run real applications.
I find it quite amusing that you comment on things that you know
little about. I've been running a Mac since March and the only reason
I have a Windows VM is to write/test native Win32/64 software. I can
assure you I'm doing a hell of a lot more than just e-mail and web
surfing with my Mac. I would love to completely cut ties with
Windows, but the best tools for writing native win32/64 applications
are, quite understandably, Windows based themselves.
Even if there were Mac based tools to write native Windows
applications, I would still require a Windows box or VM for testing
them. Actually, there are some pretty good Mac based tools for
writing native Windows programs, but I don't use them.
Finding Mac based equivalents for almost all Windows applications is
fairly easy and, IMO, they deliver a better user experience than
Windows. If I didn't do Windows development work, I would only use a
Mac.
No, I'm not a Mac "fanboi", but I am informed. I've been using PCs,
DOS, and Windows since there were invented. For *me*, the Mac
platform is preferable.
--
Kevin Powick
Tony Gravagno
>Given the amount of demand for iPhone support reflected in Spectrum, I
>would respectfully submit to you that placing your application into
>Pavuk and having support for this and so many other platforms is a
>very good thing!
No dissent on other points but I will comment on the above: Yes, there
was an article on iPhone in Spectrum, but I have seen absolutely no
commercial interest in this market for iPhone connectivity to MV. An
article by an individual doesn't indicate "demand". Nathan Rector and
I have been very supportive of mobile devices since the mid 90's but
there has never been any real market drive in this direction, so we've
only kept up with it as a sideline.
I've blogged on the topic and got no response from end-users or VARs,
only similarly minded developers wondering like myself whether it
would be worth it to gear-up to support the platform. My conclusion
is no. Despite the phenomenon of iPhone, MV VARs have not expressed
interest in linking the devices with their software. I think this is
yet another example of the lack of vision and bad business decisions
that have plagued the market for decades.
Some VARs would say they have had no requests from their end-users,
but as with a lot of other things I talk about here, end-users usually
don't ask unless they believe their vendors can support what they
want. An end-user almost certainly wouldn't ask for modern/advanced
functionality from a software provider who gives them a green screen,
but if you ask, they might say "hell yeah, iPhone and Blackberry too!"
Personally I think the wave of the iPhone is behind us. More people
are now dumping their iPhones because they're expensive to purchase
and use and regional coverage is sporadic. Waves come and go, that's
not important. What is important is that MV VARs should be prepared
to deliver what people want when they want it, like GUI, like business
intelligence, like web services, like SaaS ... and once again the MV
market lets a wave go by without cashing and without helping end-users
to conduct business in the manner they wish. We're here to provide
what people want, (arguably) not to make decisions for them about what
they want. Even if we do accept the role of influencing consumer
decisions, we should not do so in favor of keeping people on old
technology or no technology. Provide something equivalent or better.
If you try to keep your clients in the dark ages, someone else will be
certain to enlighten them, and the end-users who "certainly" were not
interested in things like web services or iPhone yesterday will
certainly be migrating to a vendor who can provide them tomorrow.
I don't know if it's good or bad that I'm closing off yet another year
with the same sort of commentary as for the last decade... ;)
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
Nebula R&D sells mv.NET and other Pick/MultiValue products
worldwide, and provides related development services
remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com/blog
Visit PickWiki.com! Contribute!
http://Twitter.com/TonyGravagno
Peter McMurray
I am glad to see that the strength of your opinions is based on "fact".
Funnily enough so are mine but I am talking about the vast majority real
users whereas you are talking about significantly less than 5% of the
market.
In fact the Commodore is still popular with the photographic crowd many of
whom are now Mac devotees.
By the way I have successfully interfaced the dreadfully non standard Apple
to a real machine for a misguided client. RS232 Steve Jobs style was
rubbish.
As it is I happened to like the latest Mac but I could see no market for it
and it is priced up not down. But I keep my eyes open, aware that QM is
there and if someone wants one "the customer is always right". It was a
devoted Mac user that introduced me to Parallels and its myriad users.
I see that the issue is clarified in another post. Bill was just venting
his spleen about the most popular browser.
I-Tunes/Safari are muddled up on the PC as well I can assure you.
Happy New Year
Peter McMurray
"Kevin Powick" <kpo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4c93e85b-7471-454a...@c34g2000yqn.googlegroups.com...
Kevin Powick
> but I am talking about the vast majority real
> users whereas you are talking about significantly less than 5% of the
> market.
I really don't know what you're talking about with that statement.
I'm not sure what qualifies as a "real user", but the vast majority of
Windows users would have very little problem finding Mac software to
replace almost any of their Windows favourites.
> In fact the Commodore is still popular with the photographic crowd many of
> whom are now Mac devotees.
Relevance?
> By the way I have successfully interfaced the dreadfully non standard Apple
> to a real machine for a misguided client. RS232 Steve Jobs style was
> rubbish.
So? I don't think PCs have even come with RS232 ports for at least a
few years now.
> As it is I happened to like the latest Mac but I could see no market for it
Good thing you don't work for Apple, as they seem to see a growing
market.
> and it is priced up not down.
What type of car do you drive? Why do people get hung up on the price
of a Mac? If you price a PC with the *same* hardware specs as a Mac,
the Mac will likely be more expensive, but not overly so.
> It was a
> devoted Mac user that introduced me to Parallels and its myriad users.
There are better virtualization products than Parallels for the Mac.
> Happy New Year
And to you and to all. A decade after Y2K and most of us are still
here.
--
Kevin Powick
frosty
> ...I have seen absolutely no
> commercial interest in this market
My experience has been: Why do I need to
tweak my (web-deployed, Pick-based) app
for teh iPhone, when it can pan and zoom?
That is: "my app already runs on the iPhone."
Not saying that's realistic; just saying
that's what I'm hearing.
> ...Personally I think the wave of the
> iPhone is behind us...
HAH! I literally LOL at this. I believe
that the wave of the iPhone (and the Droid,
etc.) has just started to build, and it's
the wave of the desktop PC that's ebbing.
Time will tell.
--
frosty
Peter McMurray
There is no point in replacing favourites that work with items that move one
out of the mainstream of business.
The user count is interesting.
The relevance of my Commodore remark is that there are a small highly
specialised group of people that have excellent Mac packages that they live
and die by. As in my first point if it works don't fix it - Sorry Bruce.
There are two Apple dealers within 250km of my home both small and high
priced. There are 3 PC support companies, an on-line access centre plus
peer support from the chemist and the post office in my village. Plus
numerous state-wide PC support companies before we even get to Dell and the
like. By the way Dell provide on-site support with no argument - in my case
not a young tyro out of his depth but an experienced tech with NCR/Honeywell
background.
The RS232 remark was a dig at the lack of compatibility of the Apple range
over the years since others were digging at MS. I did enjoy the System 8
catastrophe where the change from 16 to 32 bit arithmetic caused much grief.
Now they are another Unix albeit with an improved user interface.
Interestingly the V8 supercars stats, lap timing etc is done by a local chap
and he was a long time Apple and BSD fan but he had to dump Linux in favour
of Windows for reliability in the extreme environment of a V8 racer. You
know those are the cars that actually turn corners rather than going around
in circles a la NASCAR :-)
What car do I drive? A Mazda: because it works. So long as you change the
tyres every few years and service it the job is done. Of course I would
love to enter something hairy in Targa Tasmania. Were I younger the Dakar -
started today in Argentina - would beckon on a motorbike of course. I just
met a chap with a Suzuki Hayabusa -awesome zero to 200 in 7 seconds and he
wants to supercharge it! I wonder how he would have gone on my Rudge Ulster
with no fancy bits at all just raw power on two wheels.
Oh just an aside re RS232 in the if it works category. There are thousands
of Gilbarco remote site fuel dispenser card controllers all over the country
that use 1200 baud modems and software written for Windows 95 which was the
upgrade from the original DOS and in my case R83. I installed two more last
year. It seems users are happy with the tried and true.
I have spent a considerable amount of time over the last few months
untangling the debacle with the wonderful new controllers that go off air at
the drop of a hat. Believe me the mythical hat in this case is country
power supples. An old Gilbarco just coughs and restarts but the newbies
need TLC. Unfortunately a log truck driver who finds himself unable to
refuel at 3am is not overflowing with TLC. Apparently the genius designers
though of this and the screen and keyboard die if tapped with a modicum of
force. The death is deliberate as they assumed that it had to be an attempt
at defalcation they never though of someone just being cold and tired.
Now we have to live with flipping digital TV change over as well.
Peter McMurray
"Kevin Powick" <kpo...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:a6e1ced6-2e3a-4cd5...@l30g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
dawn
For the record, I'm working on an SaaS application, written in MV
using Cache', scheduled to quietly go to an alpha-live state sometime
soon. If anyone is interested in seeing it and maybe doing a pound-
through in about 3 weeks, let me know here or by email. Happy New Year
to all, a bit late, but so is the software ;-) --dawn
chandru
Bill: if you can truly force your users to non IE, more power to you
(we were IE only until a few months ago.) I think it's the wrong way,
but more accurately, I think you (and Tony) are wrong in your
criticism of IE.
I find all this angst about IE not being 'standards compliant' and JS-
and CSS-hostile to be ridiculously amusing. I started web stuff with
an inherited product that was IE-only and have had, now, six years of
intense and productive effort. I converted to FF a few months ago.
While I can sit and curse IE with the best of them, it is no more, and
no less 'reliable', 'compliant or 'fast' than other browsers at least
in realistic terms (in any ways that count, discounting the geeks who
count angels dancing on a pin).
-If you need Opera 'speed' to make your application work (even with 5
y old, 1gHz systems,) your application needs to be rewritten.
- Firefox freezes or runs out of steam (presumably some memory cache
problem) just as often as IE (to be fair, customers *almost never*
complain about this, seems to happen during intense development, and/
or when the PC's been un-re-booted for a couple of days.)
-No idea what Tony G means about IE and javascript. Yes IE has a few
(a few) syntactical irregularities, I believe I have about 30 lines of
code in 5000+ to account for this. Much better than UV <> QM or
(horrors) D3 <> jBase. Get over it.
-Safari imo is one of the worst looking browsers, even my graphic
designer wife used to complain that things were different than other
browsers. To be fair, what I work with does not work on Safari (or
maybe it does) mainly because IT is standards-uncomplaint on visual
attributes of input, select and checkbox tags.
-And as for Chrome, it's probably beta blues, but a rock-standard
table (multi-value display of course) actually *shifts data* on some
renderings. I have not had to stomach to figure out how it could do
that since the html & javascript are pretty basic.
- And finally, we made *no changes* to go to IE7 and IE8 (fingers
crossed) from IE5.5/6 . None. I think that's a pretty good record.
- Now if you're talking about IE on a Mac...wow, what a
bastardization, but it is ancient!
Chandru
Tony Gravagno
chandru wrote:
>Bill: if you can truly force your users to non IE, more power to you
>(we were IE only until a few months ago.) I think it's the wrong way,
>but more accurately, I think you (and Tony) are wrong in your
>criticism of IE.
I never said anything about forcing users from IE. I said it's now
acceptable to ask them to upgrade to IE8 to overcome IE7 issues. If
your argument is that there were no significant IE7 issues then what's
the raison d'�tre for IE8 and it's compatibility mode for IE7?
>I find all this angst about IE not being 'standards compliant' and JS-
>and CSS-hostile to be ridiculously amusing.
[snip]
>-No idea what Tony G means about IE and javascript. Yes IE has a few
>(a few) syntactical irregularities, I believe I have about 30 lines of
>code in 5000+ to account for this.
[snip]
Why is it that when I point out some fact that's well known to the
rest of the world, someone in this forum inevitably questions it like
I made it up? Dude, Google it or get a book or something.
All I can tell ya is that a multitude of webpages I visit these days
shows a JS error for IE7 but not for IE8 or other upline browsers.
Here's the scenario: Someone codes to FF and the FF interpretation of
W3C. It looks great. Then they display their screen in IEx and it
doesn't look the same. Cries of woe fall upon Microsoft for not
following standards. Standards definitions include terms like Should
and Shall and May, in addition to Must and Must Not. The former terms
are subject to choices by browser development teams while the latter
are more definitive for all teams. While in many cases Microsoft
actually didn't follow the Musts and Must Nots to the letter, in most
other cases the standards are vague enough to allow interpretations,
and Microsoft people simply came to a different conclusion about how
things should work than other groups. With FOSS groups following the
Mozilla lead, it's no wonder that this becomes a Microsoft against
"the world" argument. Add to this that Microsoft added options for
CSS which other browsers have not - this as part of their attempts at
commercial differentiation. This makes it impossible for someone to
code for a general audience _and_ get the benefit of the special
functionality, unless you code to only use the IE-specific
functionality when the user in fact has IE.
For those who do not encounter JS and CSS issues I would guess that
they are making specific choices where such functionality is not used.
If you don't ever use margins or offsets or opacity settings, and you
don't float your divs or manage object positioning or size, then you
may never encounter the issues that everyone else does.
The bottom line for our purposes is that there are JS and CSS
differences. Not as many these days for JS but still many for CSS.
As mentioned recently in one of these threads, jQuery helps to
normalize code and eliminate most of these issues.
And as I said in another thread, the solution to the problem is to not
expect every browser to look exactly the same. It's OK to have
browsers look different as long as the overall functionality is
equivalent. Users can choose their aesthetic experience, they
shouldn't be forced to choose between functionality and lack-of.
Again, for the record, I have no problem with IE and in fact use it as
my primary browser. I just think it's time for everyone to upgrade
from IE releases _prior_ to v8 where issues are well known and most
web sites are now less forgiving of pre-v8 issues.
Tony Gravagno
Nebula Research and Development
TG@ remove.pleaseNebula-RnD.com
Kevin Powick
<address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote:
> Why is it that when I point out some fact that's well known to the
> rest of the world, someone in this forum inevitably questions it like
> I made it up? Dude, Google it or get a book or something.
FTR, I agree with you T. I spent the better part of 2008 working on a
contract for a web application for use by the general public. When it
came to JS, CSS, and elements of visual presentation, I spent more
time on coding around IE non-standards than anything else. I had
loads of bookmarks for sites dedicated to solving these issues. For
this project, we targeted FF, IE, and Safari. Chrome had just come
out, so we didn't work with it much.
It always seemed that a page that looked and worked as expected in FF
and Safari just would not on IE. Often, after making a quick "fix"
for the IE side, you would have to go back and do more tweaking to get
FF and Safari back in-line.
From the visual/presentation aspect of web programming, I am most
definitely NOT a "web guy". Unfortunately, we did not have any "true"
web/graphic designers on the project mentioned above. However, I do
have a few associates that are indeed professional web designers and
their laments about x-browser compatibility of JS, CSS, etc are no
different than my own experiences. It's just that many of them are
used to the problems and know how to either avoid them up front, or
deal with them more quickly than me and my Googling.
--
Kevin Powick
chandru
<address.is.in.po...@removethis.com.invalid> wrote:
> Chandru, I think we're closer to being in-sync on this than you think.
>
> chandru wrote:
> Why is it that when I point out some fact that's well known to the
> rest of the world, someone in this forum inevitably questions it like
> I made it up? Dude, Google it or get a book or something.
I could equally well ask ... why is that, given direct evidence from
someone who's been working with IE/JS for seven years in a very
complex system, you choose to ignore the nuance? News Flash: not
everything on the web is true or what it seems. The level of coding
shown in so many examples is so complex and obfuscatory that I would
cringe before posting them, and no doubt contributes to the issues.
If you're saying "IE/JS fails or acts differently in some
circumstances", that's true. But if you bother to analyze the majority
of complaints, you will see its what I analogized before as "counting
angels dancing on a pin", applicable in narrow/unusual/only-a-geek-
would-think-of scenarios. It's no different than MV BASIC on diff.
platforms.
And, contrary to Kevin's experience, so far all the problems, both in
html and visual rendering, have been in FF, not IE (and not all
because "it was coded to IE"). I would not therefore say FF is weird
or broken, it's just different. I was going to give a simple example
of FF stupidity but afraid it will fall on deaf ears. If you want it,
ask and it shall be revealed.
> For those who do not encounter JS and CSS issues I would guess that
> they are making specific choices where such functionality is not used.
> If you don't ever use margins or offsets or opacity settings, and you
> don't float your divs or manage object positioning or size, then you
> may never encounter the issues that everyone else does.
Do all that and so far no problems.
Chandru
Tony Gravagno
>> For those who do not encounter JS and CSS issues I would guess that
>> they are making specific choices where such functionality is not used.
>> If you don't ever use margins or offsets or opacity settings, and you
>> don't float your divs or manage object positioning or size, then you
>> may never encounter the issues that everyone else does.
>
>Do all that and so far no problems.
OK, let's end it here. Facts and references to facts rarely seem to
be able to compete with the personal experience of some people in this
enlightened forum.
So I'm wrong. Kevin's wrong. So is everyone else in the world who
complains about imaginary browser problems, and those who create
solutions to solve the imaginary problems. The people who created
jQuery and YUI are wrong. The IE8 compatibility feature is a figment
of collective imagination. FireFox users really have no gripe with IE
because there really are no issues to discuss. Yes, we are indeed all
wrong.
Chandru - you are now and always are right. And I'm glad you have no
problems. May you bask in your glory and may others dance in your
worry-free footsteps.
T