Webifying livecode is a real mystery to me

Andre Garzia andre at andregarzia.com
Fri May 25 01:02:08 EDT 2012


Jim,

I don't want to sound pessimistic but what I am going to tell is good
advise on my opinion. Keep in mind it is my opinion only.

Revlets were never a good option for mass deployment because it is hard to
get the users to install a plugin. If you were working on some vertical
market such as education or internal enterprise apps, then you could force
your users to install the plugin but even so it is not guaranteed.

The only correct and safe way to be on the web is by using HTML, CSS and
Javascript. It may sound complicated but it is not. If it was there would
not be millions of web developers out there. Assembler is complicated,
parallel programming is complicated, web is easy.

Learning the web ways is a good amount of work but it is not hard work, it
is just tedious. All those fancy stuff such as Ruby On Rails, RevServer,
PHP, they are just generating HTML, CSS and Javascript. Of course they do
server side processing but that is business logic and not web per se.

I don't know how much of HTML/CSS/JS you know, so I will give gradual
advise. The first things are for someone that never saw the web from a
developer point of view. The stuff after that is for those that already
know how the web works at a glance and the last section is some advanced
stuff.

====================
 Never Saw HTML Before
====================

Try to join one of Mozilla learning initiatives. Some of their learning
stuff is targeted at teens but I think we can all handle it.

First, to get you curious, check out hacksaurus at
http://www.hackasaurus.org/en-US/ complete their getting started tutorial.
This will get you to replace some HTML content on the fly. It is fun and
gets you motivated. Depending on where you are, you may want to join some
Mozilla Webmaker event, find more about it at
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/webmaker/

If that got you motivated, then you can grab some books that will help you
get started. HTML has many versions, if you're starting now, you should
learn HTML5 from the beginning.

The book "HTML5: The Missing Manual" should give you a basic understanding
on HTML and a cursory glance at CSS and Javascript:
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920018001.do they also have "CSS: The
Missing Manual" available at
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596802455.do?green=E18B58FD-1201-54EB-B5DF-813E55C008EF&intcmp=af-mybuy-9780596802455.IP

These are introductory books, I haven't read them but a friend of mine
really enjoyed them so I am quoting them.

====================
 Already understand about
 HTML, CSS, JS
 but don't want to use it
====================

The web is the platform. It is available everywhere and it is not going
away. Learning how to use it will pay off many times.

Learn more about the following libraries/frameworks
JQuery: the most popular javascript library out there at
http://www.jquery.com
Enyo JS: A personal favorite at http://www.enyojs.com build web
applications from Javascript without the need to write HTML and CSS.

The Pragmatic Bookshelf, O'Reilly, Apress and Packit have great web related
books. No matter what you choose, don't forget to read "Javascript: The
Good Parts" by David Crockford, great read.

==========
  Conclusion
==========

With RevServer you can work your business logic at the server end but you
still need to use web technologies to display your app. Automatic solutions
that deploy to the web are often inferior than hand crafted code. With just
a little HTML,CSS and JS you can create beautiful web apps backed by
RevServer that will be available everywhere the web is which means Desktop
and Mobile for all OS you can think of.

I've once built a little stack that would convert a stack to a web version
of it. It actually worked but the performance was bad and lots of bugs
could be introduced fairly easy if your stack was not coded wisely. In the
end, I noticed that I lost more time debugging my stack gizmo than I would
use to write the HTML stuff in the first place.

HTML may be boring but CSS and Javascript are great. I wish LiveCode had
anything similar to CSS. It would solve lots of layout issues and would
make skinning your app easy. Javascript is a great language with very
powerful features. It is my second favorite language and I am never tired
of the new stuff that is coming out for it.

LiveCode is great and my favorite language. You can use LC to create
awesome tools to help you code your web app. You can use RevServer to build
your server side code. No matter what you do, the web can help and enhance
your software.

Don't forget to install firebug on your firefox installation it is the best
web development aid available! ( http://www.getfirebug.com ).





On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 1:05 AM, Jim Schaubeck <jimschaubeck at yahoo.com>wrote:

> So the revlet concept is not getting any more attention and revserver is
> great if you know 5 other programming languages to get it right.
>
> I invested in livecode because of its web presence (actually it was the
> sales pitch of web apps that won me over). But I have officially given up
> on livecodesrevlet support.  Where does a livecode only person go from here
> if they want to be on the web?
>
>
> Where does livecode sit with the web?  Revsever and all of it's simplicity
> might be the right answer for most guru's on this list but I'm 100%
> livecode...I don't have time to learn the other 5 languages?
>
>
>
>
>
>   Jim Schaubeck
> jimschaubeck at yahoo.com/ 714.321.4499
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