Hi Folks - at the outset of developing with Servoy our Guru (Graham Greensall) suggested that if we develop for the Web Client then the Smart Client should work fine out of the box. After a few weeks, we found due to the many limitations on what we could do in WC, we chose ignore his sage advise and go Smart Client only - idiots!
Now, way down the line, we need a Browser version of this app fairly quickly. So, wiser heads than mine have been down this path before and your experience will be invaluable for us, here are the challenges I think we have and I'd value feedback on how or if it's possible to over come them. First of all a basic question:
Q: Should we even consider making this already live solution both web and smart available, is it too complex and if so, should we simply take the core functionality and build a new web specific version without attempting to make it work well in both arena's?
There are a few aspects I know we need to address:
1. Pop-up Dialogs. We think if we convert these to all be 'Warning' dialogs as opposed to info etc then they should all be converted to alerts in WC.
2. Shaped Graphics. Where possible we have used the Servoy shapes rather than importing gif's etc. Partly to simplyfy resizing and anchoring and partly for ease of use. However in the WC these rounded corner rectangles (for example) become square rectangles. This is also true of the grouping shape. Is it possible to change this behaviour using CSS?
3. Some text in labels becomes miss aligned in WC where its perfect in SC, perhpas look and feel has this effect?
4. A number of aspects of the UI look poor in WC - though I know the CSS from Harjo may overcome some of this.
5. Dialog forms - we think should all be converted to windows to work on WC.
As you can probably tell I'm really unsure (other than to know I should have listened to Guru Greensall) as to the way forward here. We could easil just duplicate the solution and fix what does not work for WC but that will leave us with two versions to support. Because its a small subset of users that need to have a WC we could perhaps allow only limited access to the functionality of the app through WC and that way reduce what we need to modify - but that seems like a bit of a cop out!
For those who have the time to comment - your input and suggestions will be very gladly recieved
Ian