Launching RR from a web page

[Andre Garzia]

Len,


I don't think it's possible to launch a program from a web page. In 
Windows you can make some arcane activeX voodo rituals that will load 
your activeX across the net thru the page, but this is not polite nor 
elegant in my opinion. The web is not the tech to deliver high media 
clients in my humble opnion. I guess your problem is: "How do I 
maintain a instalation of 500+ clients up to date.". I think the best 
way is to go like RevNET, create a launcher stand alone that will query 
the server to the most up to date version of your stack then load the 
thing. If you're a Magic Carpet user, check MGCAA, which makes this 
thing a breeze.

If you're talking about 500 users in lan space, then you can make one 
cool thing. Install Zeroconf/Rendevouz in all machines (win32, macs and 
linux), use RevZeroConf to automatically find your server and your 
clients, not network setup needed, I have three machines in here, all 
them are ZeroConf enabled, even my iPAQ and my Newton are now zeroconf 
enabled. All my remote stacks are able to find the server no matter my 
current net configuration... it's pretty cool.

It's very risky for a machine to allow remote launching of programs, 
imagine the Virii hell that would be? If you could launch your app from 
remote, people could load trojans from remote as well (and yes, they 
can, but their trojans are not Rev made). You say that you're not too 
sure of how to install something on the user machine without looking 
like you're installing something, well Len, I think is not polite to 
install software on user machine without his knowledge. And trully I 
think it's not possible with current Rev features to do that (may be 
you could make some .NET remote app summoning thingy), I think the best 
way is to create a clear instalation process, plain clear, a webpage on 
a server describing it in a very clear manner and allowing the user to 
perform the tricks. If you can setup your own server with Rev as CGI 
then you could do like this:

* Make the CGI probe the OS of the requesting client.
* if the client is win32, respond the request with launcher.exe
* if the client is MacOS X, respond the request with launcher.dmg

MacOS X will auto mount downloaded DMG files, Windows will ask to run 
downloaded EXE files. and linux is the wild west, we never know... This 
way the only thing your users need to do is to try to load the webpage 
and then accept the download. I think this is as easy as it can get. to 
create installation EXE files and DMGs you might want to look for 
InstallGadget from SweatTechnologies, it's a Rev Made app that is very 
good and very easy to use!

Related URLs:
http://www.sweattechnologies.com/InstallGadget/
http://www.altuit.com/webs/altuit2/MagicCarpetCover/default.htm
http://www.mindlube.com/developer/revzeroconf/


Cheers
andre

On Mar 24, 2005, at 11:40 AM, Len Morgan wrote:

> There was a thread about 3 years ago about having a RR that ran within 
> the browser and I'm wondering if anything came of that?  The reason I 
> ask is I have a very good chance of getting a big programming contract 
> but one of the customer's top requirements is that it be web based.  
> He wants nothing to be installed on the workstations.
>
> While I could send DHTML, I think we all agree that RR would give a 
> much better experience to the end user and frankly, would be much 
> easier on me.  So, is there some way to launch a stand-alone from a 
> web page?  I know I can "start using" a stack from a URL so I'd only 
> need a stand-alone to get the process going.  I think his concerns 
> are:
>
> 1) The "java version problem."  A lot of his users have their own 
> programs (by the way, we're talking about 500 connected users) that 
> use one version of java or another and if they upgrade it to be able 
> to use my code, it will break the applications they already have (by 
> the way, I have no intention of doing this in java - I'd rather loose 
> the contract).
> 2) If changes need to be made, he doesn't want to have to go to 500 
> machines and install something.
>
> With my own stand-alone, I wouldn't have to worry about versioning 
> problems since I would know when it changed.  I could also check for a 
> new version of the stand-alone every time I start it up and get the 
> new version.  Since my stand-alone would really do nothing more than 
> download a stack (with the REAL program on it), I doubt that I would 
> need to change it that often (the stacks on the other hand are a 
> different matter but since I can refer to a URL, he'd be ok with that. 
>  It's just that I'm not sure how to get the stand-alone on the user 
> machine without looking like I'm installing something.
>
> len morgan
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> use-revolution at lists.runrev.com
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>
>
-- 
Andre Alves Garzia ð 2004 ð BRAZIL
http://studio.soapdog.org