Impact of web platform on GUI

Question

Hi all

Web based systems (Client Side GUI only) are known to be platform independent, But, are they development-platform independent too?? To the best i know, Client Side GUI will always be built using HTML and JavaScript/VBScript or Java or etc which are supported by all OSs and Browsers to make it independent. I am concerned about the change in GUI-code if the server side platform is switched e.g. from ASP.NET to PHP or Java or from x to y? If it depends upon the way the GUI is designed/developed then What should not be used to make this impact as minimal as possible?

Regards

Atti

Answer 1

You would need to use frameworks that are platform agnostic or write your views in plain html + javascript + css yourself.

Platform agnostic frameworks would help to seamlessy deploy your UI layer, or views, onto different operating systems. If you also plan to change the development language, you will probably have to write the html, javascript and css for your views yourself because to my knowledge there are no popular frameworks that can be used on different languages. Most frameworks are designed to work with a specific language/runtime and provide you with a level of abstraction that hides the gory html, javascript, ... details for you for a more natural development experience. The code is then transformed by the framework into pure html, javascript, css, ... But in case you want truly agnostic views, you will have to give up that abstraction and write the html yourself. Not an easy task, not because of the fact that html and javascript are difficult per se, but cross browser compatibility is a bitch, plus you lose the benefit of well tested components.

The end product, on the client side, is always platform independent because it is nothing more then html, javascript and css, which is supported by all operating systems

Answer 2

If the client GUI is written in JavaScript and does all communication with ajax and json, you can swap out whatever back end you want as long as it provides the same api.

It also depends on how you build the site. If you are using, for example, java based html widgets, it will be harder to replace with the equivalent in say cold fusion.

But changing the back end is usually an exercise in futility since you aren't really giving the end users anything different. Often it's overzealous programmers that want to rewrite the back-end for no good reason. Don't do that.

Answer 3

Hi

I thought it worthy

The Web is Not Platform Independent