Advice about Visual Web GUi

Question

has any body used this Visual Web Gui , and are their claims right ? i have been reading on their site and it seems amazing that you can make Web/Desktop App in same time, plus they say you don't have to worry anymore about update panel, AJAX, it is all on the server, plus they have wrappers for 3rd Party controls.

i mean all in all it looks theoretically great, but what about reality ?

Answer 1

I have been using VSGui for 3 years now, it is very stable once it is deployed, it works on all browsers in the same way, so you do not have to worry about fixing the css and it is really powerful.

On the bad side, it loads a lot the server, and it is not usable like a public website, it is more specific for internal tools and private projects.

What I love of it, it is that you work in windows form and you can publish a web.

Answer 2

I think that Mitch gave a great answer for the question. I have built several applications using this tool, and Mitch is 100% spot on. At this time, they are not doing anything fancy, so there is nothing to be paranoid about. Gizmox is not claiming that they can do everything for you, but what they do well is the AJAX part of their framework. I can easily create a great UI and get the data/business rules/ORM up and running; leading to a great experience for the user.

However, that being said, the theming is time consuming. It is not difficult, but tedious. Also, you must be smart about the state of the application, how many views are active, etc. As Mitch said, it keeps information for each user on the server, so be aware.

Overall, it is a great framework. If you are looking at building something quick (even prototyping), you can't go wrong with this. Remember the days of using VB6 for prototyping, it was a godsend at that time. Also, if the application fits the mold of a Winforms app (or SWING if you want), then VWG is a great fit. This is not to say that using MVC with Telerik or some other RIA 3rd party tool doesn't give a great result, but it will take longer. VWG is what it says it is, and that is pretty much what Mitch and I have said as well.

There is no panacea for development, no framework that will do everything, it is not possible.

Answer 3

I have an inherant distrust for any product that claims it will do all of my work for me. Frequently, that means 1 or two things:

1. It does everything it thinks I should be doing and ignores all the fine details that I need to do in addition to the primary task
2. It can handle all the details but entails more work to get it installed, configured, or to use than if I just did it myself

That said, I have never used this product and can't really give an opinion beyond my own suspicions.

Answer 4

We have a production commercial software application that was built using Visual Web GUI.

We could not have built this system using a traditional stack like aspx. Our web site is http://www.hrtms.com

VWG is best suited to a line-of-business applications.. not Web 2.0/bouncing ball/youtube/video or social networking types of apps.

Here is what we have learned: 1. Don't try to scale to 1000s of users.. there is a server-side statefull component for each user, so intuitively, this will limit the number of users compared to a traditional application that is stateless. 2. Best used for Business applications with lots of complex business rules and data (definitely ours!) 3. Best for applications that can use the standard look and feel that comes with VWG.. so you really can't build Facebook with it. Most VWG apps look like Outlook. 4. Of course you must use .Net stack

On the positive side: 1. You can knock out a huge amount of your system very fast... since the framework is based on the Winform model. You do need to handle modal forms differently, but for the most part, the code looks and feels like winform code.

2. The network traffic is minimal.. once the client has downloaded the javascript engine the network is just used to post commands and data.

3. Stateful programming on the server for web apps is far far easier that stateless. You can load complex object trees and know they will be there when the user is interacting with you system..

4. No more agony working with html/javascript/css. VWG maps it according to the browser being used.

Ok, on the negative side: 1. Scalability.. you need to plan on throwing lots of hardware at these apps.. I figure about 200 -300 concurrent users per box. Good news: hardware is cheap.. 2. Until 6.4 comes out, we are still dealing with pesky version problems with some browsers... so the support beyond IE right now is not 100% 3. Silverlight plugin support is on hold right now.. they want to support that when SL stabilizes.

Overall.. its a great tool. There's no magic.. Its a smart ajax app.. Try it out.

By the way.. i am not an employee or agent for this tool.

Mitch