[Hidden-tech] Anyone making standalone desktop applications to work with web based applications ?

[Daniel Fried]

Rich,

I've been hearing good things about the beta too, but telling a client to
fund a solution based on beta software is another thing.

I always believe in making the solution fit the need.  Flash could do
several things for you that HTML/JS would make more difficult, depending on
how pretty you want your timer app to be, Flash is still the better tool for
animation.  

My general guidelines say that if the application is mainly form based, use
HTML, if it's mainly animation/media based, use Flash.

The other neat thing about Flash (although I don't think it applies in this
case) is that it can support an open socket which will allow a server to
push information back down to the client.

There are some third party tools that create Linux Projectors as well
(Windows and Mac can be built from Flash on either platform).

That being said, if you're doing this yourself or a client doesn't care
about beta software, I would agree on going with AIR which would allow you
to use HTML/JS, Flash or both together in a pretty painless way.

-Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: Rich [mailto:rich at on-the-net.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 12:54 PM
To: Daniel Fried
Cc: 'HT-discuss'
Subject: Re: [Hidden-tech] Anyone making standalone desktop applications to
work with web based applications ?

Daniel Fried wrote:
> I have done that with Flash. I've played with AIR, but haven't done
anything
> real with it since it's still pre-release (or was last I looked).  
They are on beta 2 -- seems fairly robust.

> I have,
> however, used Flash in stand-alone mode for the same purposes.  Even
without
> AIR, Flash can handle interaction with a web server using XML from a
> Projector (an executable that can be generated from the Flash authoring
> environment and does not require a separate Flash player).  The only thing
> that AIR really adds to that is the ability to access the file system and
> registry and the like (also the ability to build applications using HTML
and
> JavaScript, but that's a separate issue).
>   
Actually that issue (HTML/JS only) is exactly what we are looking for - 
we have no need for flash nor
care to deal with it.

To add more explanation

The basic idea is we have a project task/time tracking system,
all web based and connected to various resources and data
sources.

It would be a real improvement to have a timer
component as a standalone desktop application, esp
so a browser window doesn't have to open to start, pause
and/or stop the timer.  Running on Windows and Mac is required,
being able to run on a linux desktop would be a real plus.

So far, AIR seems the most advanced without getting too complex,
and Webrunner (a packaged version of XULRunner) looks very
promising - it's basically a standalone mini-firefox including JS.

-- 
Rich Roth
CEO On-the-net

Bringing you complex online systems since the net was young
http://www.tnrglobal.com - http://www.on-the-net.com/rr/