Booth,
I agree, we can do a lot more than we can do. At my place, it often boils
down to where in the priority list your project falls. And until recently
this was way down the list. Now with unemployment rates as low as they are
in our area, any way to help increase 'butts in the seat' is being
investigated.
Though once again today, I heard the 'key stroke' cry from a fulfillment
manager when talking about slightly modifying their green screen app, forget
about making it a GUI app.
But we must persevere and move on into the new world... as long as I keep my
backend on my IBMi I really don't care as to what the front end looks like.
I'll be taking a look at your links over a glass of wine tonight. :)
Ken Meade
-----Original Message-----
From: Booth Martin [mailto:booth@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2017 2:26 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Moving from Green screen app to GUI because of push back from
younger employees?
A step in that direction may already be available to you. 5250 green screen
allows push buttons, radio buttons, check boxes, even scroll bars. Granted,
this is a long ways from a GUI interface, but its also leaps ahead of most
iSeries shops who refuse to program with the enhanced tools provided 20+
years ago.
The biggest issue, but it can be worked around, is that way back when,
5250 , by necessity, was screen-at-a-time processing. Today's computer
applications are key-stroke processing.
I'd agree with the training thing. Today's user's understand "Shft-F5", not
"F17". They do not understand an F-key to accept a screen - they expect
"Enter" to be the "Accept Key." They expect drop-down boxes, radio buttons
& check boxes to set filters. They expect to click a column heading to sort
a subfile by the that column, and to click it again to sort it in the other
direction. This is all doable with 5250.
Pardon the rant, but this is a sore spot with me. We can't do everything,
but dang me, we can do a lot of it. If we wanted to. The learning curve is
in the range of one day.
Here is an application
<
http://www.martinvt.com/SQL_-simple-/SQL_Personal_Menu/sql_personal_menu.html>
that you can copy/paste and have running in under an hour that shows a newer
approach. Its your own personal mouseable menu.
The ASCII Art
<
http://www.martinvt.com/SQL_-simple-/SQL_Art_Editor/sql_art_editor.html>
editor, for the headings
Saving a user's last settings
<
http://www.martinvt.com/SQL_-simple-/SQL_User_Preferences/sql_user_preferences.html>
for filters, starting position, or whatever...
I'll go one step farther: I am retired and bored out of my skull. If you
want a specific application as an example, just ask. I am glad for the
mental exercise.
On 12/12/2017 8:04 AM, Ken Meade wrote:
I had a request to update our interface from a green screen
application to a 'more modern GUI' because of an inability to keep new
employees because of the look/feel of the green screen apps and the
ability to more easily train them if the look/feel was something they were
more familiar with.
I'm just curious if others have run into this as a reason to 'modernize'
their applications.
Thanks,
Ken Meade
Director of Information Technology | kmeade@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
603.444.3570 |
1309 Mt. Eustis Road, Littleton, NH 03561
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