LiveCode Player for 5.5

[Richard Gaskin]

Ray Horsley wrote:

 > I'm in the K-12 education field.  Teachers are quickly moving away
 > from downloading anything and their IT guys are even worse, sometimes
 > setting up systems which disallow downloading a desktop app.  I
 > hadn't looked at building for Web in a while but this is very
 > discouraging to find it's gone.  I had hoped it had been cleaned up
 > since I last worked with it, not abandoned.

If it's gone someone should let RunRev know:
<http://www.runrev.com/products/web/>


 > From what I see the education industry is not the only area moving
 > rapidly toward doing everything in a browser.  Healthcare, finance,
 > you name it, everybody spends most of the day in browsers today.
 > Does this mean the majority of us Livecoders are doing nothing more
 > than writing mobile apps?

Ironically, a mobile app is very much like the most viable, flexible, 
and cost-effective alternative to RevWeb:  net-savvy standalones.

Whether the LiveCode engine is wrapped as a browser plugin or your own 
standalone, either way it'll need institutional buy-in to get your 
stacks distributed.

Any org that will allow a third-party binary browser plugin should also 
allow a standalone.

Like the browser plugin, a standalone can easily download stacks from a 
server, even compressed stacks for quick delivery.

But unlike a browser you have far more options:

Your users can enjoy the flexibility any desktop app has in terms of a 
UI dedicated for its workflow, along with local file access and other 
traditional app features, which can be used to provide an offline mode, 
smart caching, and more.

And if needed, a standalone can be more secure than a browser:  just 
turn on the secureMode as the first line in your startup handler, and 
your app will be prevented from many any changes at all on the local 
machine.

I suspect that most of the laments from not being able to use RevWeb for 
deployment fall into two camps:

a) Devs who've had to work with orgs run by dumb really dumb IT staff 
who somehow think that a proprietary binary executable that's called a 
"browser plugin" is somehow inherently safer than an application

b) Devs who haven't really pursued such conversations with their clients 
seriously, so the issue is largely just theoretical for them.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com