[THIN] OT: Question about app development...?
- From: "Braebaum, Neil" <Neil.Braebaum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 31 Mar 2004 16:49:33 +0100
Firstly, want to start by saying this isn't SPAM, nor a subtle attempt
to court business. Far from it, because I'm not currently equipped for
doing any of this commercially, apart from in my current role as an
employed techie. You'll probably realise from my postings over time,
that I'm not one to leech of this community, wantonly ;-)
I've written a couple of applications recently, and after writing the
second one, it occurred to me, that there may be some potential for
doing it independently, or commercially. At the moment, I'm an employee
in a support role for a retail business - so no current irons in the
fire selling such services.
The reason I thought of getting peoples' take on this method of writing
apps, being that it's not exactly the traditional approach (ie either
web / server / asp based, or binary / executable). Both applications
I've written are effectively client-side, and are HTA. Which made me
wonder whether this is a sector, or niche of the market that's not yet
explored much. I realise that many scripts, HTAs and HTML are publicly
distributed - hell I've publicly distributed some of my scripts, I guess
I'm wondering whether there's any mileage in commercially developing
something end-to-end, on a bespoke basis, using these sort of
approaches.
Neither application is particularly specific to thin-client computing,
per se - one is a replacement shell, which could be used in thin-client
sessions, or normal desktop PCs, the other runs from a windows desktop
and is a centralised, distributed print application. My point of this
post, though, isn't to gauge interest in these particular applications,
per se, but more whether developing things in this way, or for these
sort of purposes is likely to be of interest, and whether there is
likely to be demand for these *type* of applications.
The first app I wrote was in effect a replacement "shell" for Citrix
users in retail locations. The premise or question asked from the
business, was the ability to have a notice board area of the desktop,
which would always be on show, in the background - obviously current
apps may obscure it, but it can't be minimised - and to which an
operations area could update with messages / notices / alerts on a
fairly quick (within a few seconds / minutes) basis. They wanted to be
able to use links (to documents), and use highlighting and different
fonts, a la HTML. The other aspect to what the business wanted was to
get away from the icons and start menu of a traditional windows desktop,
and make it more appliance-like with big buttons for the applications
that users run.
So the users get a desktop that is half notice board area (confined
within a frame, that can scroll (only if needed to) so that it doesn't
disturb or displace any of the rest of the desktop - which is 7 big
buttons that run applications. The operations people get another simple
utility that allows them to put a html file of their choice, and update
this notice board area (frame) on the users' desktop. It will take a
maximum of 30 seconds for such a change to be effected on the users
desktop - but that's configurable - it could be a shorter or longer
interval, depending on how timely updates need to be reflected.
When I was initially looking at providing this type of functionality, I
was considering (and evaluating) products like MSAM, in-house
customisation of NFuse / WI, bespoke executable, bespoke ASP / web
application. Using the browser - per se - represented issues, because of
the browser security model, and to use it effectively would either
require quite undesirable configuration, compromises on usage, or the
inclusion of binary stuff within the deployment.
The second app I wrote was to provide distributed printing capability
for the same area of operations, in order to automate the printing of
corporate / business information at remote locations - rather than
relying on the users to print it.
This involved dealing with the processing of a number of documents
submitted (in a specific folder), spooling each document once (ie it
would be quite inefficient and time consuming to have to spool each
document for each printer - as the numbers of printers concerned are in
the hundreds). The tricky factor, here, being that in general, in the
windows world - only the applications themselves (ie word, excel etc...)
can normally provide printable stuff from documents, and server-side
dealing with office applications is neither supported nor recommended.
Before writing what I did, here, I did research commercially available
products to do such a thing - and there are numerous that would. The
problem I had, being that these products tended to be either a little
overkill (either in functionality, or layers of architecture) for the
requirements I was given, or represent costs in terms of licensing and
architecture that would likely be prohibitive.
Basically this application takes documents from a folder, processes
them, allows the output to be printed on a representative printer, using
the same method of "printing" that will be leveraged when sending the
documents en-masse. It gets the information for the printers to be used,
from specific areas in Active Directory. And it moves source document
files when successfully processed, to an archive area, where they are
stored in folders with date based naming. It also housekeeps these
archive folders.
The printqueues used are specific for the location and usage, and use
restricted hours of operation, which are timed for when is most suitable
for this traffic on the WAN.
I guess what I'm wondering is whether there is much call for this sort
(or type) of development, commercially, and whether there's any mileage
in considering it as something to do?
What say you deployers out there?
Do you think this sector of the market is worth consideration? And do
you think these *types* of application are likely or suggestive of being
of any demand? 'cos it just struck me when writing them, that mine isn't
likely the only company wanting to do such things - which sorta made me
wonder whether there was any mileage in that.
Neil
***********************************************
This e-mail and its attachments are confidential
and are intended for the above named recipient
only. If this has come to you in error, please
notify the sender immediately and delete this
e-mail from your system.
You must take no action based on this, nor must
you copy or disclose it or any part of its contents
to any person or organisation.
Statements and opinions contained in this email may
not necessarily represent those of Littlewoods.
Please note that e-mail communications may be monitored.
The registered office of Littlewoods Limited and its
subsidiaries is 100 Old Hall Street, Liverpool, L70 1AB.
Registered number of Littlewoods Limited is 262152.
************************************************
********************************************************
This weeks sponsor Emergent Online.
Emergent OnLine is the leading server-based computing consulting integration
firm in the nation. Emergent OnLine delivers expert
consulting services you can depend on.
http://www.go-eol.com
**********************************************************
Useful Thin Client Computing Links are available at:
http://thin.net/links.cfm
***********************************************************
For Archives, to Unsubscribe, Subscribe or
set Digest or Vacation mode use the below link:
http://thin.net/citrixlist.cfm
Other related posts:
