HTML as a 5250 replacement

["Joe Pluta" <joepluta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lacking in HTML:

Row and column cursor sensitivity
Field editing, especially at the keystroke level
Function keys
Embedded display attributes
UIM Help
Forced writes

Most can be gotten around with JavaScript; even the row and column can be
"fudged".  UIM Help is a little more involved, and forced writes are quite
difficult and cumbersome.


Perfectly fine in HTML:

Field-level display attributes
Field-level cursor sesitivity
Popup windows
Disabling input fields

HTML is fast, easy to use and painless.  With some thought, you can emulate
popup windows and function keys quite nicely.  My PSC400 demo shows the
ability to pop a window up on top of different background panels.  By
avoiding hardcoded font sizes you can, to a reasonable degree, allow the
user to resize the output depending on their needs.


Better in HTML:

Color control
Images
Hyperlinks
Combining multiple panels
JSP support (talking directly to the server)


In general, HTML (with a little bit of JavaScript) can emulate perfectly
well most required aspects of a 5250 display.  I haven't bothered trying to
emulate the graphical DDS keywords, but everything else is workable.  I
don't suggest that it's a walk in the park; I've been designing my software
for three years now.  But it can be done.

The single biggest thing I like about a JSP/servlet approach as opposed to
applets is that you can change the screen visuals without having to change
any middleware code.  With an applet, you're pretty much stuck with whatever
look and feel the applet designer decided on, and frankly that's often not
very pretty.  A JSP/servlet solution with a properly exposed set of APIs
allows far more freedom to deploy the interface the way you see fit.

Joe



> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Morris
>
> Joe,
>
> I know this is not an HTML forum, but I am curious. What did you
> find was lacking and
> what was better in HTML compared to 5250?