.NET HTML5 Application Development

Microsoft Developers finally get a .NET Framework for HTML5 Mobile Applications

Webgui — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:56:54 GMT

I would like to share with you some exciting news from the Gizmox labs. If you haven't heard by now the Visual WebGui Mobile Team @ Gizmox has been working on a .NET Mobile Framework for a few months now. This mobile dedicated framework continues the Visual WebGui vision towards the mobile development workd by enabling Microsoft core .NET developers to leverage their existing skills for developing cross-platform HTML5-based mobile apps within Visual Studio.

As with its Web Framework, the Visual WebGui Mobile Framework will also allow the .NET development paradigm, but in this case for creating Form Factor and Device aware, browser-based applications that can use local device resources through PhonGap integration. Those browser-based HTML5 mobile apps with inherit the famous Visual WebGui "empty client" security.

A first preview release is due towards the second half of January 2012 which makes Visual WebGui the first framework within the Microsoft camp that allows leveraging existing skillset to develop HTML5 mobile applications. The upcoming preview will be accompanied by a mobile email application demo (iPhone look & feel) developed with the framework’s preview. The preview version will support gestures and animations in transitions and will include the following designated mobile controls:

ListView
TreeView
Toolstrip
TabControl
TextBoxButton
RadioButton
Panel
Label

The next framework version is expected in the beginning of Q2 2012 which will be another phase in fulfilling the Visual WebGui promise of allowing .NET development for cross-platform HTML5 Web, Cloud and Mobile within Visual Studio.

More info is available on visualwebgui.com.

ASP.NET developers turning to Visual WebGui for rich management system

Webgui — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:17:05 GMT

When The Center for Organ Recovery & Education (CORE) decided they needed a web application to allow easy access to the expenses management system they initially went to ASP.NET web forms combined with CSS. The outcome, however, was not satisfying enough as it appeared bland and lacked in richness. So in order to enrich the UI and give the web application some glitz, Visual WebGui was selected. Visual WebGui provided the needed richness and the familiar Windows look and feel also made the transition for the desktop users very easy.

The richer GUI of Visual WebGui compared to ASP.NET conveyed some initial concerns about performance. But the Visual WebGui performance turned out to be a surprising advantage as the website maintained good response times.

Working with Visual WebGui required a paradigm shift for the development process as some of the usual methods of coding with ASP.NET did not apply. However, the transition was fairly easy due to the simplicity and intuitiveness of Visual WebGui as well as the good support and documentation.

“The shift into a different development paradigm was eased by the Visual WebGui web forums which are very active thanks to a large, involved community. There are also several video and web pages dedicated to answering the most commonly asked questions and pitfalls" Dave Bhatia, Systems Engineer who added "A couple of issues such as deploying on IIS7 seemed to be show stoppers at first, however the solution was readily available in a white paper on the Gizmox website.”

The full story is found on the Visual WebGui website:
http://www.visualwebgui.com/Gizmox/Resources/CaseStudies/tabid/358/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/964/The-Center-for-Organ-Recovery-Education-gets-a-web-based-expenses-management-system.aspx

Visual WebGui helps Dawsons put its Windows Forms HR system on the web

Webgui — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 12:10:59 GMT

Dawsons needed to upgrade their existing Windows Forms LAN human resources system to allow better and flexible access to the ever increasing data size as labor hire clients are demanding easy access to copies of tickets and licenses and etc. The company has some 30,000 applicants on file, but access to this data has been complex and limited with the current system.

Therefore the IT department was asked to find a possible solutions that would allow creating a web based application while utilizing as much of the existing Windows Forms code as possible. Visual WebGui was found to be highly regarded in many frameworks comparisons so the team decided to give Visual WebGui a try. It didn’t take long for them to recognize that the Visual WebGui controls appear and react over the web the same as desktop controls. This and the fact that most of the code was directly ported which saved Dawsons hundreds of development hours are what make Visual WebGui so unique and productive.

“My first impression of Visual WebGui was perhaps disbelief. Not being a seasoned Web programmer, I initially found it hard to accept so much functionality from a web based application. Also, the speed is exceptional” said John Sainsbury, Financial Controller of the Dawsons Group who added “Since working with Visual WebGui, I have showcased parts of the application to our major clients, some of whom use SAP portals, and they are amazed.”

The result was so satisfying that the company is now looking to produce a mobile version for accessing the labor pool on the go. “By removing the barriers of the local network, Visual WebGui has changed how we can do business” said Lloyd Everist, General Manager Dawsons Group.

The votes are in and winners chosen for a free Visual WebGui ProStudio License

Webgui — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:01:08 GMT

First we would like to thank each and every one of you who have supported Visual WebGui in the nominations for DevProConnections and Windows IT Pro. We appreciate all of our customers and friends of Gizmox for being with us each step of the way in our efforts to bring our unique products to the forefront of code trans-positioning and migration.

Without further ado - Congratulations to our 3 big winners!

Gevorg Horomyan
Marcin Pytel
Ugur Yildirim

Please contact us at your earliest convenience at marketing@gizmox.com to receive your free Visual WebGui ProStudio License! We know you will benefit immensely from the software and please let us know your feedback as well.

Also – keep your eyes and ears open for the winners of the actual Community Choice Awards which will be announced in the December 2011 issues of Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Magazine, and DevProConnections.

Once again, thank you all for your time and effort in voting for Gizmox’s revolutionary Visual WebGui as the best add-in and cloud computing product or service. We hope to see you with us as we continue to bring you better, more improved software.

For anyone interested in other industry awards, there is also a Visual Studio Magazine Readers Choice Awards that can be viewed at the following link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/KFB6YJC

Keep up to date with all the news and coverage of Visual WebGui on their website www.visualwebgui.com, on Twitter @VisualWebGui, or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/VisualWebGui.

3 Buzz-words that every CIO hears but 1 they should listen to.

Webgui — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 16:47:34 GMT

Anyone that’s managing an enterprise IT with aging or outdated client/server systems is starting to feel the heat. Soon, their systems and applications will be obsolete and unsupported. At the same time, the industry as whole is seeking the fastest gateway to the latest .NET, HTML5 and mobile deployments including SaaS models. Right about now, there will be a knock on your door with team members offering their advice as to what you should do to ‘keep up’ with the latest trends and supported architectures. Here are 3 of the buzz-words they will have probably used, and what they actually mean.

Rewrite: Whilst the end result will be a bespoke and modern application, it’s lengthy, costly and risky path using one of the new unproven web frameworks

Technical migration: Sounds great, sure, but where are those automatic tools that will take your legacy client / server apps to the latest and greatest?

Apps Virtualization: Available but expensive. If you have no more than a few dozen users, the economics might not leave you out of pocket. And, if you are OK with using VPN and maintaining outdated, sometimes unsupported code, this might be your solution.

But the express route from c/s to a rich web app is this:
Transposition: A solution that literally transposes your code (moves it from one environment to another) to run as the latest .NET (C#, or VB.NET) in the form of desktop, web, cloud or mobile .NET / HTML or HTML5, at web economics (a few cents per user). This solution allows you to rewrite selected code using your legacy as a starting point so you can reuse valuable business logic. It enables you to achieve your goals at a fraction of the cost of both rewriting and application virtualization.

Gizmox’s Instant CloudMove will also enable you to improve your legacy code (whether it’s 'spaghetti', outdated functionality, antique-looking UIs, or the need for new layers or to make it object oriented) and is the shortest time to market by far.

Managers take note. Transpositioning is the way forward.

Tips for IT Security in RIAs

Webgui — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 12:53:32 GMT

Rich internet applications are growing fast in the business and enterprise application landscape as more and more software managers and corporate decision makers are electing to place rich internet applications (RIA's) into their organizations. But with the many advantages of rich internet applications over the client/server deployments, organizations also find many new aspects they need to master and overcome - one of them is understanding the new security vulnerabilities of the rich web based applications and taking the right measurments to protect their systems.

Whilst the measures taken to secure systems in the client/server culture are as relevant today as in the past, the nature of the browser client obligates us to go still further if we want to secure our RIA-based applications. That means understanding the numerous ways the information exposed in the browser can be used by a hacker with a mission to compromise the application or the information it contains. Rich internet applications can be broadly categorized into plug-ins and Ajax frameworks which use JavaScript and either XML function libraries or JSON (the JavaScript approach in which we practically send JavaScript objects on the wire) to infuse HTML with the asynchronous desktop-like behavior we desire for our RIA. Plug-ins are proprietary software sandboxes that need to be installed into the browser environment. A third approach is HTML5 that brings some of the capabilities of the plug-in into the browser as native functionality, further empowering the pure AJAX solutions. Its use is steadily growing but is still not fully supported by the browsers.

In both the plug-ins and the Ajax models, a degree of sensitive information must be communicated between server and client - far more than traditional synchronous web 1.0 applications which demand very little of the client, beyond capturing user input (the request) and presenting the screen delivered by the server (the reply). The smarter, asynchronous web 2.0, which is the basis of RIA applications, requests specific pieces of information and this often requires the client to play a significant role controlling program logic. The requests from the server will bring information more in the form of a data structure, e.g. a list of customers as opposed to synchronous HTML in whose elements the list of customers are already embedded.

So the information that causes security vulnerabilities is not the information received as input from the user or output to the web page, but rather the various pieces of data that make the application tick. Understanding these data items and what opportunities they present to a user with malicious intent is the key to building secure web applications.

Those items are discussed in depth in the following guide posted on Visual Studio Magazine to understanding RIA security vulnerabilities and how to cope with them.

Nominate Visual WebGui now for your chance to win a Free ProStudio License

Webgui — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 08:25:36 GMT

DevProConnections and WindowsITPro are now accepting nominations for the 2011 Community Choice Awards. These awards allow you to nominate developer products and services for special recognition.

We’d like you to consider nominating Visual WebGui and as a thank you, will be giving away a few licenses. All you have to is click the links below and in the “Add-In” category on the DevProConnections survey (category # 1) and “Best Cloud Computing Product or Service” category on the WindowsITPro survey (category #5) please select “Gizmox Visual WebGui”.

To receive a license simply let us know you nominated by Tweeting “I just nominated @VisualWebGui for the [Insert as appropriate: WindowsITPro / DevProConnections] 2011 Community Choice Awards for a chance to win a license" – OR – writing on our Facebook wall/LinkedIn group “I just nominated Gizmox for the [Insert as appropriate: WindowsITPro / DevProConnections] 2011 Community Choice Awards”.

We’ll be selecting a few ‘nominators’ who will be announced as winners on those social media channels and giving them a license.

But wait – there’s more! If you get 10 more people to nominate us, you will definitely receive a license. To let us know they came from you, they need to write YOUR name when they tweet or post on our walls. ("I just nominated @VisualWebGui for the [Insert as appropriate: WindowsITPro / DevProConnections] 2011 Community Choice Awards @YOUR name")

Why should you nominate VWG?
Visual WebGui is a revolutionary tools that enables desktop applications to be migrated to the cloud/web mobile instantly. VWG also enables you to write new code in .NET and create HTML5 rich internet applications.

We invite you to pass these link on to improve your chance of winning a license
• DevProConnections: http://bit.ly/phWNzv
• WindowsITPro : http://svy.mk/n0cpVE

Presenting our unique migration solution at WPC11

Webgui — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 20:59:58 GMT

I would like to invite you to visit us at WPC LA 2011 and learn how to move your mission-critical/Enterprise apps to the Win Azure Cloud.

We will present our innovative migration solution Instant CloudMove at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC)tomorrow (July 13). Find us at the Windows Azure Building Blocks demo station where we’ll be showcasing the unique tools for moving business client/server applications such as é.VISOR by Limón GmbH to Azure Cloud. The original application is a data-centric energy monitoring system developed as Client/Server Windows Forms with Access DB. We’ll explain how we moved the desktop application to Win Azure with Visual WebGui Instant CloudMove technology within 1 month whilst maintaining all exiting functionalities and user experience.

This will take place at 1:15-3:30 PM PDT at the Windows Azure Building Blocks demo station, located in the front of the Windows Azure booth. We’ll have our own station which will be located under the monitors which display “Building Blocks in the Public Cloud”

We are also going to present a quick session “Cloudify your Client / Server app with Visual WebGui CloudMove “ at the Windows Azure Theater this afternoon (July 12) @ 2:45 PDT.

We look forward to welcoming you there and taking any questions.

You can also follow us on Twitter @VisualWebGui and if you are not attending WPC you are welcome to chec out the updates information on our website:
http://www.visualwebgui.com/cloudmove.aspx

Why Windows 8 does not mean the end for .NET development

Webgui — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 18:03:35 GMT

Since the demo of Windows 8 given by Microsoft Vice President Julie Larson-Green at the recent D9 conference windows developers have been described in many articles as feeling "Horrified" "Worried" "Deeply Concerned". Why?

From the demo it seems that the new Window’s 8 ‘immersive’ applications will be based on HTML5 and JavaScript – which means for experienced win devs who have invested years in learning windows development platforms, they will now have to ‘re-train’ if they want to create these apps. This group is dedicated to programming with Microsoft tools, and now Microsoft seems to be implying that it’s time for them to move on.

But here’s why Microsoft developers have nothing to fear. Visual WebGui is a tool that enables .NET developers, to use their existing skill set and create rich, secured-by-design, HTML5 Rich internet applications. The VWG technology platform that combines virtualization and application streaming to enable data-centric enterprise desktop applications to run on secured-by-design internet environments, as if they are running in a desktop environment.

Visual WebGui ProStudio .NETHTML5 is the only total development environment in which programmers can develop efficient-running, data-centric HTML5 web apps in Visual Studio. It works through a combination of pure Microsoft .NET development, abstraction of Java Script / HTML5 functionality through jQuery and the abstraction of Ajax, database connectivity and data binding.

No matter what Microsoft confirms about Windows 8 come September, whether they decide to stop supporting .NET or put more emphasis on the advantages of HTML5 over it, VWG enables .NET to appear as HTML/HTML5 on the client. Visual WebGui ensures that Windows 8 does not mean the end for .NET development.

Bringing the .NET power and HTML5 richness together

Webgui — Mon, 30 May 2011 11:51:36 GMT

As you probably already know Visual WebGui has recently released an HTML5 supported (beta) version of its platform. Needless to say this new .NETHTML5 version generated a lot of buzz and interest which were followed by many inquiries so I want to share more information and the Gizmox vision for the HTML5 version.

I would like to start and state that at this point in time (May 2011) .NETHTML5 is functionally equivalent to the classic Visual WebGui WINWEB version.

The main current difference is at the client rendering engine, which was replaced from the XSLT engine to a JQT engine (based on jQuery templates). This new client core lays the foundation for the upcoming .NETHTML5 as it allows better cross-platform performance and brings support for mobile device browsers, such as iOS and Android, while adding support for HTML5.

At this opportunity I would like to invite you to watch on-demand a recent webinar we presented on the .NETHTML5 version and how Visual WebGui bridges between the power of .NET and the richness of HTML5 to form the best platform for creating rich enterprise-level HTML5 applications.

The webinar is available on our website:
http://www.visualwebgui.com/Developers/KB/tabid/654/article/develop_html5_web_and_mobile_applications_using_visual_net_and_jquery/Default.aspx

In the near future .NETHTML5 will break away from WINWEB, and become much more web-oriented while adopting HTML5 as the future web and mobile standard, thus adding web functionalities, controls and further support for HTML5 capabilities. This means that .NETHTML5 will be moving away from the desktop look and feel to provide a more web-native experience.
At this point in time, WINWEB will continue to add compatibility to the MS .NET desktop application framework.

At a later phase we are planning to add a mobile designated framework to .NETHTML5. This will allow designated development, controls and form factor support for mobile devices and mobile device presentation of Visual WebGui standard browser applications. It will allow you to quickly and easily create an application with .NET Visual WebGui Form Designer and come up with a fully featured mobile application with support for all common mobile browsers and environments. The UI elements will also be revised compatible with the mobile application look and feel.

.NETHTML5 will bring data centric application development directly to you, with the visual richness capabilities of HTML5 in client and power of .NET code on the server, combined with the ease of use, the built-in multi-browser compatibility, the unmatched performance, the security, the scalability, the extensibility and many more benefits that Visual WebGui brings with it. At the end of the day, you will be able to create your HTML5 rich web applications, writing .NET code only.

A more detailed roadmap will be published shortly, so stay tuned.