[CS-FSLUG] Church Management Software

[EnzoAeneas]

Interestingly enough, the lines between such are blurred by quite a
few applications.
Take the Mozilla XulRunner applications of Miro and Songbird. While
they specifically target themselves towards web-based content, they
present what is for all intents and purposes, a "native" interface:
that is a locally installed application, as opposed to applications
like gmail, google calendar, and google docs. Or many of the newer
Microsoft applications, which use web-based technology (albeit their
own adaptations) in presenting parts and sometimes all of their
applications.The new vista control panels looked "generated" to me.
The advantages of using a web-based paradigm is that arbitrary types
of data can be easily massaged into a common display without having to
worry about GUI toolkits. Data is transformed into the needed
presentation format and can then be transformed into a format usable
for storage outside of the central repository. But a downside is that
the browser, its security model, and its interaction with the desktop
are limiting.

Technologies such as Prism, Adobe Air, and Google Gears (google reader
& google docs) attempt to mitigate these sort-comings but fall short
in many ways. And of-course most users cannot tell whether they are
actually on the Internet or just their localhost when looking at
content through a browser, a problem that can be both dangerous and
frustrating to the end user.

So now as I think about it, a browser-based solution is less optimal,
but applications that mash web-based technologies into a native
application such as those based on XulRunner that can harness
server-side processing locally while presenting a "native" interface.
They can directly read and save files, and talk to databases, using
"servers" and services only when there is an advantage to doing so.
It will allow us to use whatever strengths are at our disposal, saving
implementation time, but also allow our users to take advantage of
functionality that we never have to include ourselves. Features such
as PDF output, image zooming, graph interactivity, and format
conversion are far more easily (and reliably) by browsers and
server-based software simply because the developers that employ these
methods do not always have complete control over their environments.
And our users won't know that it is built on top of a browser
framework.
What do you guys think about that approach? I've looked at PHP-GTK,
but I cannot recall any system as usable as XulRunner and open source
in the area of web-based technology encapsulated into a local
application. Is there another way to achieve the same integration.

Let's discuss this as it is does affect how we move forward in some
cases. Whatever we resolve to do is fine by me.
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Robert Wohlfarth <rbwohlfarth at gmail.com> wrote:
> EnzoAeneas <enzoaeneas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> > What do you guys think about using XHTML and AJAX for the UI?
>  > It lends it self to being usable outside of the intranet or machine?
>  > Though, for that usage, we must address security.
>  >
>  > Firefox has become a very robust platform, plus if we used Prism, we
>  > could lessen the user's ability to interrupt the system using BACK,
>  > FORWARD, etc
>  > XHTML would also allow us to quickly transform data into a user
>  > interface and when the system is locally hosted, we can use whatever
>  > works to provide the feature.
>  >
>  > The downside is that if the system is deployed outside of the intranet
>  > (i.e. remote web server), we cannot count on the host supporting any
>  > external tools or utilities that we want to use. A question: Should we
>  > even worry about this use case, wait for later, or never consider it
>  > all?
>
>  Earlier discussion in this thread seemed to lean towards a local
>  solution, not web based. I took that to mean some sort of native GUI
>  instead of a web browser. Did I mis-understand?
>
>
>  --
>  Robert Wohlfarth
>  rbwohlfarth at gmail.com
>
>
> And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love
>  him, who have been called according to his purpose. -- Romans 8:28
>
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