RE: GUI vs Green Screen was open source IBM i. was Re: From RGP to ¿Java ?

What, you didn't ask if I used Visual Age RPG? Well if you had, I'd say while blushing, "Yes." For the record, I am not at all a fan of VARPG. I'm actually vehemently opposed to it. I voiced my opposition to it, but the idea that our current knowledge base would help expedite production, I guess that's what won. We were also sorely lead stray by Mr. George Farr who, when I asked if there was a future for VARPG, I got a 100% yes yes yes. About a month or so after that IBM announced that it was deprecated.

But, I digress. The point is that it was a rich client vs a browser-based application.

Before our company was bought out, we were considering moving to a web-based environment (PHP) or possibly EGL to continue with rich client development. Now I don't even work with user-interfaces at all.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nathan Andelin
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 9:17 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: GUI vs Green Screen was open source IBM i. was Re: From RGP to ¿Java ?

From: Kurt Anderson
I'm pretty proud to say that at my previous job, our team
developed a GUI order processing system that the users loved.

What did you use for the GUI? Visual Basic? Java (Swing or AWT)? Screen Scraper? HTML?

I promote browser technology for applications, but must admit that I've never created a browser-based GUI that offered the same level of keyboard support that's available in green-screen applications.

The most resistence I've seen to GUI was with screen-scraper products. My daughter has a part-time job at a bank, and was given the option of using a green-screen interface or a (JWalk or NewLook) GUI interface. She chose green-screen for performance reasons, and made the decision without any input from me.

I think I could create a data-entry screen using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that could rival 5250 performance and keyboard support, but must admit that it would take a lot more work than using DSPF DDS. On the other hand, if I were to go to the trouble, I'd probably create a generic JavaScript library that could be applied to any browser-based data-entry form.

Nathan.