Back Draft

Simplicity at Last

By Jonathan Goodyear

I recently had the opportunity to work on a small VB6application for one of my clients. Before I started, I felt a pang of mustyoldness that typically accompanies working with a technology that has beenaround for a decade or two. After a few hours, though, I began to get a warmand comfortable feeling that I haven?t had in a couple of years; the feelingthat comes from knowing the intimate details of the environment in which I amworking.

Most of you are certainly aware of the breakneck pace atwhich Microsoft has been releasing new technologies. Even developers who arenormally diligent about staying ?ahead of the curve? are finding themselvesstruggling to just stay ?at the curve.? New technology is exciting, but itwould be great if Microsoft took the time to make its tools easier to usebefore moving on to the next innovation; maybe even as easy as working with VB6became.

Luckily for us, a couple of enterprising efforts areunderway that may just fit the bill. The first is Visual WebGUI, an open sourceinitiative by Gizmox (http://www.visualwebgui.com/).The Visual WebGUI framework enables developers to build fully functionalAJAX-enabled line-of-business applications almost as easily as it is to buildthem using VB6 or Windows Forms .NET. You may be thinking that because ASP.NETapplications are event-driven, this isn?t big news, right? That?s what Ithought ? until I downloaded the framework and tried it out. All I can say is,wow! Visual WebGUI gives you a complete set of Windows GUI controls that youcan drag and drop onto a fully functional design surface that even lets youline the controls up using a snap-to-grid feature. Launching new pages or dialogsis as easy as creating an instance of the form and telling it to show. Need topass in some parameters? Just set some properties of the form you are callingbefore showing it.

You never have to think about the Request or Responseobject unless you want to. You can even include Visual WebGUI forms and ASP.NETpages in the same Web project and have them interact with each other. Whileusing Visual WebGUI, I totally forgot that I was even building a Webapplication, because everything worked just like it does while building aWindows Forms application. I never even saw a line of HTML mark-up, and I hadaccess to almost all of the familiar events that I know and love in VB6 andWindows Forms .NET. The laundry list of features and functionality that is offeredby Visual WebGUI is extensive, so I couldn?t possibly outline it all here. Youhave to see it for yourself to truly appreciate its power and flexibility. Ofcourse, the best part is that it?s open source, so it?sfree and you can customize or fix it as you see fit. Please note, though, thatwhile you can customize the UI controls and some colors, Visual WebGUI is notmeant for building Web sites with fancy visual effects or media (more on thatbelow). Its core strength is enabling you to quickly create line-of-business Webapplications, and for that purpose, it shines.

While getting so worked up about Visual WebGUI, I almostforgot to mention another company that aims to simplify your Web developmentlife. The folks at NETiKA Technologies have created GOA WinForms, a suite of morethan 40 free controls that replicate the features and functionality of WindowsForms controls in Silverlight applications (http://www.netikatech.com/).NETiKA is also building a ?Professional? suite of more than 30 additionalcontrols that it will be selling. The reason this is very good news is because,in its current form, Silverlight is not much good for doing anything other thancreating media-rich ?Flash-like? applications. You need controls to build anyline-of-business application functionality, and that is exactly whereSilverlight has been lacking. It would stand to reason that Microsoft iscreating their own toolbox of controls. However, giventheir reluctance to build a framework that even comes close to functioning likeVisual WebGUI for ASP.NET, it?s fantastic to see a company take the bull by thehorns and distribute some basic controls to get everyone developing Silverlightapplications ? and not just concentrating on building more complex controlslike grids, charts, and menus. Now, if someone could just build a better andmore consistent design surface for WPF/Silverlight, we?d be all set.

It should be noted that while both Visual WebGUI and GOAWinForms work well with Internet Explorer and FireFox, they still struggle abit on Safari ? but I would expect those issues to be resolved in the shortrun.

The main point I want to make with this article is thatdevelopers have a yin and yang to their psyche. They want to have cool newtechnologies to make their work interesting, but they also need tools tosimplify the process of working with those technologies so they can flat-outget their work done. Working with all new technologies all the time can grindyou down. It?s good to have tools that give you the feeling of wearing a goodpair of boots that you?ve owned for years. Reducing the struggles of workingwith new technologies to a palatable level will keep us all from losing ourminds.

Jonathan Goodyearis president of ASPSOFT (http://www.aspsoft.com), an Internet consulting firm based in Orlando, FL. Jonathanis Microsoft Regional Director for Florida,an ASP.NET MVP, a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD), and co-authorof ASP.NET 2.0 MVP Hacks (Wrox).Jonathan also is a contributing editor for asp.netPRO.E-mail him at mailto:jon@aspsoft.com orthrough his angryCoder eZine at http://www.angryCoder.com.