jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Tue Aug 11 10:41:30 CDT 2009
> 4) Now that we have IE8 as our lowest-common-denominator browser... YOU have IE as the lowest common denominator. I have firefox (holding steady at about 20% worldwide). Others have Chrome, or ... Web browsers HAVE no lowest common denominator. And they don't all do the same things when... John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com Kenneth Ismert wrote: > John, > > Microsoft just bought Office.com to further push its web-based Office > offerings. They are in no way abandoning their desktop offerings, but they > feel the need to try to counteract the movement of Google, Zoho, etc. in the > web-based office applications market. That's indicative of the trend. > > There are a number of projects afoot which allow a web application to 'fail > over' to a local data store when the internet is down, and re-sync when it > is back up. > > As for your list of downsides: > 1) Dozens of technologies > On the browser, I can really think of three important ones: HTML, CSS and > JavaScript. Oh, and these are internationally-defined standards, which is > the critical advantage of this 'thin-client' technology over the older > versions. Add a JavaScript framework, and you have four things you need to > become familiar with to do a good web front-end. On the back end, your task > is really no more difficult than coding unbound forms. And you have a wide > choice of server-side application frameworks to help you there. > > 2) Server load > Yes -- it is a server technology, isn't it? But Access places severe demands > on the network, so we really can't claim an advantage there. > > 3) Integration issues > I guess I'll have to hear more to understand what you mean here. > > 4) UI clumsy to say the least > In the IE6 days, yes to a much greater extent. Now that we have IE8 as our > lowest-common-denominator browser, you would be surprised at the > sophistication of UI that can be achieved with standards-based HTML, CSS and > a little JavaScript. Certainly more than adequate for the average data > application user. > > 5) User UI preferences harder to deal with > With CSS you have far greater ability to change the look of a web interface > than anything you can get in Access. HTML forms can dynamically re-scale, > and the font size can be dynamically changed, which Access can't easily do > (but, I haven't used 2003 or 2007, so that may have changed). Plus there is > built-in support for people with different abilities. > > To be fair, the one thing Access has that the web still lacks is a > compelling reports capability. I've looked at a number of web-based reports > frameworks, and there is nothing that leaps out as a 'this is it' web > reports alternative. > > -Ken