Revisiting Visual WebGUI

Revisiting Visual WebGUI

Old forum URL: forums.lhotka.net/forums/t/8441.aspx


tiago posted on Sunday, January 31, 2010

Dear All,

I know Visual WebGUI from Gizmox for a long time. A week ago they release version 6.4 Beta (Beta 1b on Jan 28, 2010).

In a nutshell, Visual WebGUI is an framework/environement where the code runs always on the server. The client is a dumb terminal. This is a recurring concept. It all started with dumb terminals and some 15/20 years ago SUN had a concept of running everything on a X Windows terminal - I can't recall how they named it.

From the runtime viewpoint your browser just sends and receive events. Your mouse and keyboard also generate events that are sent to the server. The server executes your C# or VB.NET code and generates events that are sent to your browser. Your browser has a small JavaScript engine that updates the display according to those events. All this server/browser chat uses AJAX so you never submit your web page.

From the developer viewpoint, is much easier (read productive) than ASPX. You don't have to care about a lot of stuff, namely state because there is no state: just a dumb web page. You have design time support like if you were working on a WinForms project.

From the security viewpoint, it more secure than any other solution. No problem if the client is compromised as it runs no application code, just a JavaScript terminal program

You have to take care with dialogs, because the server doesn't wait for the response. The Wiki explains in detail with a couple of examples.

I miss some CSLA stuf that is available on WinForms like ReadWriteAuthorization, CslaActionExtender, ErrorInfoProvider, etc. I guess all those WinForms utilities can be ported to Visual WebGUI. Has anyone done that?

tiago replied on Wednesday, February 17, 2010

tiago

I miss some CSLA stuf that is available on WinForms like ReadWriteAuthorization, CslaActionExtender, ErrorInfoProvider, etc. I guess all those WinForms utilities can be ported to Visual WebGUI. Has anyone done that?

I guess not. It should be easy enough provided Gizmox solves the problem of casting from System.ComponentModel.Component to Gizmox.WebGUI.Forms.BindingSource (Gizmox.WebGUI.Forms namespace should be a direct replacement for the System.Windows.Forms namespace).

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