Metacard 4

[J. Landman Gay]

Alain Farmer wrote:
> 
> Specifically: Which UserLevel does a Revlet allow ?

Rev has no user levels. Stacks allow whatever you program them to do.
> 
> 1) Browse : e.g. navigate, click on buttons, activate menus ...)

Yes, of course. Without that it wouldn't be worth much.

> 2) Edit : is it possible to edit and format the content of fields ?

Certainly edit. I haven't tried formatting, though fields support all 
the usual text styles and properties and I don't see why it wouldn't 
work. I do know a revlet I created displays formatted text just fine. 
You'd need to add some buttons or command keys to manage styles, but 
once you can catch the commands the formatting should work fine. Revlets 
are just stacks and do everything stacks can do on the desktop, barring 
a few bugs that are still being worked out. It is currently still in 
alpha. However, I've thrown some complicated stacks at it and they have 
all worked fine except for secondary windows, which right now tend to 
open behind the browser window (so it appears they didn't open, but if 
you move the browser window you will see them.) This is a known problem 
and it's being ironed out. Currently visual effects don't work and 
custom cursors aren't yet supported. These too are being fixed.

> 3) Draw : is is possible to draw lines & shapes while online ?

Certainly. There is a demo of that on the web site.

> 4) Author : is it possible to create, edit & move parts while online ?

Yes. See the demo stacks.

> 5) Script : is it possible to script parts & so-on while online ?

Haven't tried that, but I don't see why not. Of course, every iteration 
of the revlet is a new instance, so no changes can be saved to it and 
any previous changes are immediately forgotten if you reload the page 
(the same as any web page.) You can, however, write to the user's hard 
drive (if they give security permissions to do so) and save data there. 
Or you can save it to the server.

Revlets are not the only new web technology. Equally powerful is the new 
iRev server-side scripting. The old-style CGIs will be a thing of the 
past. Right now you need an on-rev account so you can use their server, 
but eventually the server software will be available for installation on 
your own site. IRev works much like PHP, but you can write it in xtalk. 
You can mix html and rev code within the same handler. For example, this 
creates a table whose content is based on the values contained in a 
variable "sQuestions":

<?rev
command outputRow pName,pLabel,pVotes
?>
	<tr>
		<td width="30" align="center"><input type="radio" name="response" 
value="<?rev put pName ?> "></td>
		<td align="center"><?rev put pLabel ?></td>
		<td align="center"><?rev put pVotes ?></td>
	</tr>
<?rev
end outputRow
?>


<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" bgcolor="#FFFFCC" border="1" 
width="400">
	<th width="30"> </th><th align="center">Activity</th><th 
align="center">Votes</th>
<?rev
	repeat with x = 1 to the number of lines in sQuestions
		outputRow item 1 of line x of sQuestions, item 2 of line x of 
sQuestions,line x of sVotes
	end repeat
?>
</table>

You can set headers, track cookies, retrieve POST and GET values, etc. 
with new built-in functions and keywords.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com