Steve Parker - Implementing Clarion for Internet Connect: A Case Study

Posted September 1 1997

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Curious about how people are trying to use the Clarion Internet Connect (CWIC) product in the real world? I certainly was, and that was why I was looking forward to this presentation by Steven Parker.

The Promise

As I'm sure you've heard by now, CWIC offers the promise of being able to take one of your current applications, add a few templates, compile it again and then presto-change-o: have an application which can run both locally or across the Internet. Sounds cool, doesn't it? And it's true... up to a point.

NOTE: Steve's presentation covered the same material published in the article Quick, It's CWIC in Issue 1 of Clarion Online, so I am not going to restate his trials and travails again here. To get a blow by blow account, you can look the article up here on Clarion Online...

The Reality (part 1)

Steve described his experiences in trying to convert a few relatively simple applications for use with CWIC in the form of "10 reasons to avoid creating CWIC apps". As you can probably guess from the format, his experiences were not entirely pleasant. Indeed, in the course of trying to demonstrate the problems he encountered for the audience, the version of CWIC running on his PC repeatedly crashed itself, crashed the Web Server software Steve was using (WebSite), and crashed the laptop itself (he was running under Windows 95). On the brighter side, this did give him lots of time to answer questions while he was waiting for the laptop to reboot.

The Disclaimer

In all fairness, it must be pointed out that Steve was using Beta 3 of CWIC. To restate the point, this is NOT shipping software!

Jim DeFabia of TopSpeed Corp, who answered questions as well (from the both the audience and Steve) also attended the session. He said that a CWIC Beta 4 is nearing release, and that it addresses some of Steve's problems and complaints. (See the Clarion Online report on Jim's session for more information - I know he began by trying to answer Steve's top 10 list.)

Back to the presentation...

The Reality (part 2)

Some of the issues pointed out by Steve were the result of problems that TopSpeed can fix, such as:

• Problems with the installation due to the absence of an 'OK' button in the CWIC install program (you know, the button you press to say "OK, go ahead and install the product").
• Applications not running until they are placed in the CWIC install directory (or a sub-directory of it).

Other problems are more design issues, or issues created by the very nature of the Web and Web browsers. These included:

• Pulldown menus which become a large flat list of all of the menu options, since there is no such thing as a pulldown menu in HTML (the language which controls the appearance of all web pages).
• Fields that move around the screen depending on the browser you use to view an update form/web page. Note: This happens to ALL web pages, not just CWIC generated pages. Some of his examples were a bit more extreme, though, due to a problem with the way he had designed the form. (Tip: If you want to use QWIC, any fields displayed within a group must actually be contained in the group.)
• Not all browsers understand the technologies TopSpeed is using with CWIC, such as Java and Javascript. (CWIC simply doesn't work in those browsers.)
• There is no way to have multiple windows open on a web page (unlike the native Windows version of your app). You can only display one screen/window at a time.

The Final Decision

In the final analysis, Steve made these points:

• It is unrealistic to expect anything other than the simplest Browse/Form combination to run over the Internet without any changes on your part to adapt it to the realities and limitations of using a web browser to display it.
• You WILL have to learn some HTML. In fact, the best looking version he showed used a standard web page as the program menu, with the original application being broken up into smaller sections called by the standard web page.
• He expects the product to get better, and, lest there be any confusion about this, will DEFINITELY keep using CWIC!

If you would like to try out his CWIC applications over the Internet, go to:

http://www.scnet.com:8080

Note that you must have the colon and 8080 on the end of the URL to access the pages.

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