As we head into 2010, technological companies and experts are making their predictions as to what the New Year can expect to bring while reviewing the best of 2009. Navot Peled, CEO of Gizmox, has three personal resolutions to share with developers and the IT community, focusing on commitments that he is making.

1.Ensure that developers have more tools that they really need
Desktop power on the web, with its enormous economic impact, is a long set goal. Yet as technologies get closer, they get much more complicated. Although Ajax, Silverlight and Flash all introduce complexities that challenge developers, there many tools that try to reduce complexities. My first New Year’s resolution is to reintroduce simplicity to the ever growing complex technological world.

Sometimes it seems that on a daily basis there are new technologies, and it is difficult for developers to try everything and figure out what is really ideal. In fact, it often seems that new technologies are released just for the sake of it, as they do not bring any real breakthrough or even progress in functionality or productivity when compared to their predecessors. I resolve this year to work harder to encourage both developers and technological companies to create tools that really make a change, and which allow us to be more productive or achieve what was not possible in the past without the need to learn new skills each time a new tool is released.

Part of this effort means that getting up to par with the trends in the field should be more reachable and cost-effective, such as the latest trends of offering users more accessibility and web 2.0 user experiences. Moving your organization to being web or cloud based not only increases productivity but also can lower costs in the long run - both on infrastructure and maintenance. But before you do so, you need to take in consideration the emerging battle between the Google thin client model and the fat client approach of Microsoft. Google's approach leads towards an organization which consumes everything from the web (or Google) while Microsoft advocates in client installations which requires stronger client computers. There is a gradual boost in available tools following each of the approaches and 2010 might finally be the year when you make the move and modernize your software assets…or at least consider it more seriously!

2.Ensure that information is better secured
It seems that the more we improve technology, the more vulnerable it gets. Each year introduces more problems for the end user, which poorly reflects on developers. Knowing that there are solutions to most security problems, my resolution is to utilize this year to make sure that developers are protecting their assets and the information in their organization but still doing it in a transparent way that is not a burden on their users.

Some technologies are more vulnerable than others and companies’ practices can unintentionally create many security holes. I’m committed to making a stronger effort to ensure that developers know where and how to look for solutions that provide them with a better starting point when designing the security system.

3.Work to ensure that information is centralized rather than scattered
While developers work to expand their services, enhance their products, and make improvements for end users, often they overlook the need to make an effort to consolidate as much aspects of their IT as possible. My resolution is to help developers look for overall solutions that allow them to centrally manage their system or to be focused on their business needs without having to worry too much about multiple languages, skills binding components together and compatibility issues. This will greatly simplify development, deployment & maintenance in your organization. And those benefits do not have to be stated here – they are definitely understood!

MSDN Webcast: Wednesday, Jan 27

MSDN Webcast: Wednesday, Jan 27

Posted using ShareThis

I would like to introduce a new open source approach to Ajax architecting – Empty Client. This appraoch received its name due to the fact that according to this approach there is no logic, data or open service on the client and all Ajax calls are routed through a central HTTP/XML pipeline and optimized to a degree never realized on web before.

The approach is implemented by Visual WebGui which positions the approach as Windows Over Web and cloud. The approach seems to get traction with .NET developers, which use the approach to extend ASP.NET and Silverlight. Benchmarks indicate that Empty Client developers experience higher development productivity and enhanced performance sometimes as much as 10x increase in responsiveness. Also, the Empty Client approach is completely secured – an Empty Client front end is unhackable. The approach is being used for scenarios that require high user productivity and highest security level over the web. Common usage scenarios would be finance, HR, Military, government, and such.

The Empty Client approach also allows web or cloud enablement of desktop Windows application. It enables code reuse by copying Windows’ code into the Empty Client framework and then run it in a browser without any extra work.

The Empty Client being a free open source can be used to enhance existing ASP.NET third party controls within existing ASP.NET application.

In case this interest you there is a thorough paper that provides an overview on implementing ASP.NET third party controls with the Empty Client approach and by that enhancing its performance and making it secured by design. You can find it here.

6.3.13 released today

6.3.13 released today

Posted using ShareThis

Can you build an interactive keyboard operated order entry/overview in ASP.NET Ajax, in less than two hours? You would with new ASP.NET Ajax based paradigm

Can you build an interactive keyboard operated order entry/overview in ASP.NET Ajax, in less than two hours? You would with new ASP.NET Ajax based paradigm

Posted using ShareThis

Visual WebGui Cloud solution in the Media

Visual WebGui Cloud solution in the Media

Posted using ShareThis

The Missing Element in Cloud Computing | Guest Opinions | ITBusinessEdge.com

The Missing Element in Cloud Computing | Guest Opinions | ITBusinessEdge.com

"...whether or not we agree with the Gartner report that refers to the “hype” of cloud computing, it seems that we are moving fast toward fully comprehensive cloud solutions that include application layers. It might be sooner than expected before we can create fully functional enterprise applications running with ease on Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2 and Google App Engine."

Visual WebGui Win Over Web revolution is what Visual Basic was for the desktop

Just a decade and a half ago, the process of building a simple Windows-based application could have been described as a nightmare. The introduction of Visual Basic changed it so developers could for the first time implement Windows applications in an intuitive, graphical environment by dragging controls onto a form.

The web revolution is here and now. Web had become very quickly the platform of choice for all kind of applications. The demand for web applications is ever growing and cloud computing is expected to bring along another jump in demand and usage of web. Ajax and RIA solutions which are web enhancement methodologies have added complexity to a much complicated as is, web development. There are a handful of solutions that target Ajax development but none has really brought with it the Visual Basic kind of simplification that had revolutionized the software industry. Web and now cloud is complex to develop with multi languages, require mastering of diversified skills, time consuming and risky.

Now Visual WebGui does the same for the web development paradigm. Visual WebGui is extending VB.NET development simplicity into the up dated web and cloud user interface. It is transforming web development much like Visual Basic did with desktop. Its penetration can only be compared to that of VB back in the days. Since its introduction only couple of years ago, Visual WebGui had been adopted by hundreds of thousands of developers who had built more than 35,000 Visual WebGui applications to date.


Visual WebGui VB.NET like drag & drop designer for web

More information about the VWG revolution is available on the website:
The new enhanced VB-like development experience VS. traditional Ajax >

Windows to web or cloud migration >

Advanced Telemtric successfully built an enterprise application on Windows Azure with Visual WebGui

Due to Visual WebGui cloud application platform, developers can now deploy their applications to Windows Azure with the click of a button with no re-writes or new programming skills needed.

“(now we can) quickly achieve what, a year ago, would have taken more people, more money, and a lot more time. It’s going to open up applications of sorts we’ve never seen before.” The ease of using Visual WebGui was a key benefit. Noted Naylor, Advanced Telemetry CTO, “There was no learning curve with Visual WebGui. To a Windows developer, it is very natural, very drag-and-drop, and you don’t get bogged down in tables and style sheets and other HTML artifacts.”

Advanced Telemtric successfully built an enterprise application on Windows Azure with Visual WebGui.

Read the case study from Microsoft >

Visual WebGui cloud platforms offers the only push-button .NET desktop legacy application migration path to Windows Azure. “Visual WebGui offering is no doubt one of the most significance for enterprise cloud applications. We see the enormous interest it arises and we expect to lead enterprises to cloud migration.” said Navot Peled, Gizmox CEO.

Read the official Visual WebGui Press Release >

Win $10,000 for writing an application with fewer lines of code

In the first code challenge of its kind, Visual WebGui is offering a $10,000 and giving away prizes valued at thousands of dollars in their call to developers to be the first to submit a Webmail application written by another framework with fewer lines of code.

Visual WebGui web/cloud platform's productivity is featured via the "Project Webmail", which is an Outlook-like web application with desktop responsiveness & performance & functionalities that was developed by a single developer in only one month.

Developers can register for the Code Challenge on-line from anywhere in the world, but special prizes such as free licenses, free support packages and extended evaluation periods will be raffled between those who visit Visual WebGui’s booth 316 at PDC or booth V5 Tech-Ed.

www.visualwebgui.com/code

Last Preview version for revolutionary Visual WebGui Web/Cloud Platform released

Visual WebGui 6.4 Preview 4 was released and available for download here.

This version presents an important progress as Preview 4 is the last Preview version of the 6.4 version.This means that from now on, every revision released of Visual WebGui 6.4, will only introduce stabilizations to this version and will not add new functionalities or infrastructure changes.

"The Visual WebGui 6.4 preview version is another step towards simplifying and commoditizing complex Ajax web development . The ease of developing with Visual WebGui combined with the new efficient interface between developers and designers gives Visual WebGui an unparalleled advantage over other RIA development platforms. The market loves our solution and rewards us in its download and adoption rate," said Navot Peled, CEO and founder of Gizmox.

Visual WebGui 6.4 allows to take advantage of incredibly fast application development without sacrificing the essential flexibility and customization of designing from scratch. Release version of 6.4 is expected before the end of 2009.

Download Free Preview >

Open Letter to the Editor of CIO regarding Cloud applications

This is an Open Letter to the Editor of CIO in response to an article posted on Computer World discussing the five problems that supposedly keep legacy applications out of the Cloud.

Dear Editor,

In light of your recent article about the challenges that legacy application face in migrating to the cloud, below please find a response which provides answers to 4 of the most problematic issues. We believe your readers would greatly benefit from the information, and we regret that we were not directly interviewed about these issues in advance of your article. We recognize your hesitation to publish such a piece because it promotes a product so blatantly, due to the originality and uniqueness of Visual WebGui, currently being the only one in the world that can take .NET desktop applications directly to the cloud with the click of a button. Your readers were told of the problems with the cloud, and we believe that they will find it useful to know that most of the concerns raised in your article have already been attended to by VWG. We’re one step ahead of the market with our real world and vision.

1. Just as no 2 clouds in the sky are alike… For those who are not familiar enough with Cloud technology, it’s easy to throw together all cloud platforms into one category. But that’s like throwing planes, trains and automobiles into one category and making them all equal. With all due respect, in reality, the advancement of the cloud today means that “cloud platform” can refer to different architectures, capabilities and services, starting from the virtual machines bases clouds (such as the Amazon AWS or the v-Cloud by VMware) to the most abstract deployment form of clouds (such as Windows Azure or Google App Engine), and everything in between. It’s not one product but rather a myriad that have a single common denominator: they all provide a dynamic form of web applications/environments hosting. We can bind them all together but only with a pure web architecture that is cloud aware and can benefit from the various services using the most common approach.That exists today in solutions such as Visual WebGui, which is a pure (managed) .NET based platform which executes plain web applications; in addition to its ability to connect different clouds, it offers benefits that can save organizations significant funds. For example, with proper planning, it can be possible to perform migration of apps from one cloud provider to another without having to perform major changes.
   
2. Behind the lock and key…The potential serious security hazards are hindering enterprises from moving to the cloud, as exposing a software application to the public web can potentially result in unauthorized access to data. Furthermore, being able to trust a complete isolation of storage and being able to audit and monitor access, as well as to grant and prevent permissions on those systems, is an open issue.But here again, there is a solution. One of Visual WebGui’s primary by design advantages is that the entire application runs on the server using a very organized methodology that makes it possible to audit every move of any user on the system, and grant or prevent access from users at runtime.And in terms of client (browser or device) safety, VWG ‘empty client’ runtime paradigm offers a complete secured client, making it impossible to disrupt or change the server’s logics by manipulating the client scripts. The ‘empty client’ also means that the client never exposes applicative data that was not supposed to be presented on the screen, a scenario that is often caused by the development method on which developers use applicative data to link between client piece with the server. Furthermore, data is never cached on the browser.
   
3. You don’t know your legacy apps… Line-of-business applications are extremely critical to the business, and demand an expedited means of transferring the current forms, complexities and logics to the cloud, as an alternative of the hundreds of thousands of hours of work that would have to be put in by human effort. Alternatively, significant experience can be left behind, resulting in much reduced productivity and loses. Visual WebGui offers full migration path for legacy WinForms and VB 6.0 applications including their entire business logics, forms and complexity to the cloud environment through a low costing and much less painful process.
   
4. Migration is manual and too darn few tools will help… Migration of legacy applications to cloud environments can be costly, especially when it comes to complex highly invested enterprise applications. Using Visual WebGui can cut down the manual labor, and even eradicate it, due to a straight forward path of migration for WinForms and VB 6.0. Currently, this is the best starting point for migration of any other desktop technology to the cloud.
   

The security of the cloud, the storage, the ability to migrate apps to the cloud, and all other “problems” that worry the world are merely a walk on the beach with Visual WebGui. So what’s the downside? Only that if Google Apps had used Visual WebGui, newspapers would have lost a lot of their headlines over the past few months!

A new "Green IT" Power Management solution

Navot Peled, CEO of Gizmox, challenged the “Green IT trend” with the announcement this week that its product, Visual WebGui, has been successfully providing energy and environmental benefits to enterprises, with its solutions that dually cut costs for hardware and software.

“Over the past 2 years, enterprises have been successfully using our product – Visual WebGui, and reaping the environmental and energy benefits while saving money,” said Peled. “To move the industry forward, it’s not the individual success of each Green IT product that must be celebrated. We must collectively recognize that there’s not just one Prius. Rather, every major development in technological applications today can, and must, incorporate the environmental and energy factors.”

Visual WebGui raised its value as a platform that can improve Green IT even more profoundly with the recent Visual WebGui based Verismic Power Manager™ Solution that reduces operational costs, enhances end user experience, and increases efficiency of IT support staff. With analysts such as Gartner and Forrester claiming that more than 40% of IT costs come from the power consumption of the PC estate, Verismic Power Manager™ Software, which describes itself as “precision engineering for systems management”, sought environmental and economic enhancements in its products.

Visual WebGui was its platform of choice for a solution that would address the needs of increased efficiency by optimizing PC power consumption while delivering savings of $75 per PC and ROI within 6 months. In addition to the savings achievable by the applicative product as a resources manager, Visual WebGui contributes to savings on hardware equipment and even power resources, as its platform consumes 50% less CPU and 90% less bandwidth.

“Visual WebGui has provided the excellent user experience that our customers now expect from Verismic Software” said Mark McGinn, Managing Director, Verismic. “In such a critical area as PC Power Management where cost and carbon reduction are equally important to business, Visual WebGui has enabled us to provide a solution that does not increase resource requirements or administration overhead.”

Verismic also recognized simpler development and expedited production, which translates into great benefits for Verismic’s environmentally-preferred Power Manager.

Visual WebGui’s platform has offered native environmental benefits since the company’s inception, and its effects are being felt by companies around the world, like Verismic Software (which provides software to UK, Mainland Europe, US and Asia Pacific).

Read the Verismic Case Study...

Should Visual Webgui used for the Umbraco backoffice UI

Daniel Bardi, a .NET developer and a Visual WebGui user shared his experience with the Umbraco community as he wrote in his post

"...The UI is amazing and works in all known webbrowsers... it's the reason I had decided on the platform for the project (and by reading the many, many reviews). The framework allows non-web developers (or winform developers) to build web applications using a WinForms development environment. No more worries about session and state.

The web applications runs on the server and is "projected" into the clients browsers (no client overhead). They call this "Empty Client" technology.

There is no installation on the client side, but they get a full Windows application experience. The best part is that it's open-source (with a commercial license available for a mere $1500). I personally use the it for projects and have had nothing but positive feedback..."

Click here to read the complete post.

Visual WebGui 6.3.10 Web Development & Deployment SDK released

A new Visual WebGui version was released today providing further stablization to 6.3.x. The new version is available to download for free in VWG SDK and Express Studio versions and with a 30-day free trial with the Professional Studio.

Visual WebGui is the only platform to offer simple one-layer development for web, bullet-proof security & unrivalled performance of desktop-like rich UIs, even with poor conectivity.

View Change log >
Download now >

Visual WebGui ASP.NET Control Wrapper tutorials

I would like to share the new How To tutorials published on VisualWebGui.com showing how to use 3rd party asp.net controls within Visual WebGui projects. The articles demonstrate and walk through the wrapping process of a few common controls created by companies like Infragistics, ComponentOne and Telerik into Visual WebGui which allows you to leverage those controls.

Visual WebGui allows simple & fast development & deployment of Web/Cloud applications while providing full flexibility & extensibility of other ASP.NET components.

These are the articles:
How To Wrap ASP.NET Controls (Walkthrough) - Telerik RadListBox
How To Wrap ASP.NET Controls (Walkthrough) – ComponentOne C1Calendar
How To Wrap ASP.NET Controls (Walkthrough) – Infragistics UltraWebGrid

A new VWG web development Vlog launched

The Visual WebGui Web developers community continues to initiate with some more cool projects. We are proud to present the Genius Code project.

GeniusCode.net is the spontaneous idea of Ryan Hatch and Jeremiah Redekop - the Vlog includes anything from screencasts to code articles while the idea is that Anyone can be a genius. "We've discovered some tools that developers can use in order to implement their ideas quickly and effectively," said Ryan and added that "the blog focuses on LLBLGen and Visual WebGui in order to generate some code demos and routine software, but hopefully it will spark your imagination to do some really cool things.”

The Code Genius just finished recording a new screencast on using custom Urls within Visual WebGui.

Previous screencasts introducing the basic CRUD data operations using LLBLGen Pro, the O/R mapper and the first screencast: Advanced Text Formatting in Visual WebGui.

Visit Genius Code...

New Social Networking blogging concept created with Visual WebGui

MyTimelineOnline is a unique blogging website featuring advanced controls that allows users to document their life, or the life of a loved one and to share their collective experiences within their social network and with the world. MyTimelineOnline features a control originally designed by MIT and converted to .NET by Rob Chartier. The timeline view allows users to quickly navigate several years' worth of postings to explore what events occurred in their own life or the lives of others.

The site was developed by a single individual and originally technologies such as Telerik were considered and discarded due to the complexity and cost. As a result, the entire site was rewritten by a single part time developer in Visual WebGui which provided a significant increase in the usability of the site as well as the visual style. Visual WebGui was chosen since it was extremely easy to use & develop with and it also allowed rewriting pages written in other Ajax solutions very quickly. Additionally, Visual WebGui allowed focusing on usability since the Visual WebGui themes took care of the rest.

Prior to upgrading the site to Visual WebGui the user experience was lacking, including repeating unnecessary page refreshes. "With VWG I was able to create a fully ajax’ed site quickly without worrying about the typical issues," founder John Ruf.

Read the full Case Study...

The new Ajax for Line of Business applications

I would like to bring to your attention the following article that compares between traditional web development and a new approach to Ajax represented by Visual WebGui.

This article is targeted towards traditional web developers that always wanted to bring the benefits of Ajax to their business applications but encountered the complexities and would like to learn a way to focus their development efforts on algorithms, requirements and business logics using a new, highly productive, boosted web development paradigm which provides maximal flexibility, interoperability and interactivity with any other web applications, controls set and architectures.

Click here to read the full article...

Patch Theme download for Visual WebGui 6.3.9

A Patch Theme that fixes some renedering issues for version 6.3.9 was released.
Fixes for these issues have already been implemented in the upcoming version 6.3.10 and will also be relased with that version.

The patch is a VWG v6.3 Theme. There is no installation required for using it.All you need to do to use it is:

1. Either add the project or the assembly to there references of your Visual WebGui Application project

2. Register the Theme with the name "PatchTheme" and select it as the default theme, either by using the VWG VS integration, or by going to the Web.config of your application and adding the following XML element in the 'Themes section:

3. Change the Themes section opener to look like this:

When VWG v6.3.10 is released with these fixes, you can simply remove the registration of this theme, set the Default theme as Selected and remove the reference to that theme from the VWG Application project.

You can get the patch theme from this location here.

Thank You Twitter Hackers

The repeated Twitter hacking exposes the complex and serious security issues on the web.

"The repeated Twitter hacking exposes the complex and serious security issue on the web. Unfortunately for Twitter (Google Apps, Facebook, and others), the problems have unfolded in a public arena, forcing them respond quickly to calm users and resulting in a short term solution (that clearly has not been working!). What is unknown to many internet users is that the problem doesn't end with Twitter's band aid approach, nor is the intrusion limited to internet sites. The security issues don't start here - they start with the platforms and applications that don't enable software to be developed with the proper security. Fortunately for the software developers but unfortunately for the public, the greater problem has stayed out of the headlines of mainstream media outlets..."

Navot Peled is addressing that issue in the following article >

Visual WebGui Professional Studio version 6.3.9 was released

Visual WebGui Professional Studio version 6.3.9 was released.

This vnew ersion includes several new features & enhancements of previous studio versions as well as some fixes. For example, a new simple and convenient way to specify what runtime version of Silverlight that the Visual WebGui application should support.

6.3.9 versions of Visual WebGui Community SDK & Express Studio are expected to be available for download on the website in the next day or so.

Download a Free Trial now >

Creating a Framework for AJAX CMS w/ Visual WebGui

"...Flexible software systems require a foundation that supplies the basic system services that's easy for developers to use, yet powerful enough to support complex and flexible systems—in other words, a framework..."

The second article by Bogdan Zamfir written & published on DevX continues to develop the Mini CMS system with the Visual WebGui Web & Cloud Platform (a followup article to: Creating a Prototype) which will get some base components that represent the actual workplace.

"...These will support loading and showing modules inside the workplace, passing control between modules, and unloading them when their tasks are complete. Modules should be able to call other modules and pass some parameters. The called module should be able to return control back to the calling module and also return an exit status (if the user saved changes or canceled), so the calling module can update itself accordingly..."

Read the full Build an AJAX Content Management System with Visual WebGUI: Creating a Framework article...

A new VWG Web & Cloud Platform Preview version released

The 2nd Preview version of the upcoming Visual WebGui 6.4 breakthrough Web & Cloud platform was released.

This version presents another step forward in this cutting-edge version which is expected to be released later this year. Preview 2 resolves many bugs and issues of the 1st Preview version and also introduces some new features and enhancements including enhanced datagrid performance and enhanced menus mechanism which enables right click events and opening menus anywhere on the screen.

The change log with the full list of breaking changes (fixes, new features & tasks) is available here.

The Preview version is fully functional and available for free download.

A web-based application simplifying software distribution developed using VWG

THe following quote is taken from a new case study of smcTeam's AeX Collection Manager. smcTeam's AeX Collection Manager is a web-based application used to simplify software distribution within an Altiris environment.

The required functionality did not exist as out-of-the-box feature so the company needed to develop a new solution to distribute software packages quickly and with a minimal administrative overhead. Based on a standard software distribution application a frontend had to be developed which allowed for a quick on-demand delivery of software packages to particularly chosen client computers.

"Only several days of development were needed for the creation of the application, compared to some weeks which would have been required with other solutions. Moreover, the code maintenance is very convenient so that additional savings are already obvious," Thilo Ruhland

Read to complete case...

New Visual WebGui Wiki site launched

Visual WebGui, the Web & Cloud Application Development Platform, announces the creation of a Wiki page designed to provide a new interaction zone for Visual WebGui users to read, post, and share development knowledge.

The Wiki page will feature detailed information on Visual WebGui, tips and tricks on how to best use the platform, code samples, control pages, SDK version highlights, case studies, and much more.

The site will also feature user-generated content posted by Visual WebGui community members, a major benefit that will allow actual product experience monitoring for the entire community.

Check out the new Visual WebGui Wiki page to start learning, sharing, and developing today: wiki.visualwebgui.com

Visual WebGui new Web & Cloud offerings' name challenge

Visual WebGui is evolving and as we go new opportunities present themselves. As you all know we have been working hard on maturing Visual WebGui rich web offerings along with adding functionality that you, VWG community members have been asking for.

This autumn we target to release 6.4 which promises to be the ultimate enterprise rich Internet application solution.

We still have some mileage ahead of us on the road to turning VWG into standard de facto rich enterprise solution, but apparently we are heading there on a pace that no other platform ever did before. Here are some of the recent evolvements that we would like to share with you.

VWG will be addressing 3 market segments with targeted offerings based on the same core technology: Rich enterprise web Apps. Cloud Apps. and legacy Apps. migration to web and cloud. We will be offering 3 dedicated and focused offerings in all 3 segments.

We are not facing the challenges involved alone. Partnerships with world leaders on the Cloud and Migration will be announced when they mature, those will be highly strategic partnerships that will take the VWG revolution into the next phase.

There are 2 main reasons for this post:

1. To let you, Visual WebGui community members in on our plans and the VWG direction and to promise you that the new opportunities will not affect our focus on your needs and supporting them.
2. We want to announce name challenge, and ask you, VWG community member to participate in a name finding challenge. The chosen names will be reworded by a 5 years subscription, for each name eventually chosen by Gizmox.

We are looking for names for the following offering:

1. Visual WebGui Web suit - it will be a web dedicated development kit with web dedicated designers and controls
2. Visual WebGui Cloud suit - It will be based on the above but will add some additional cloud dedicated features to enable unlimited scalability over cloud infrastructure, and further abstractions for cloud easy and native deployment.
3. Migration suit - that will offer the closest as possible solution to automating the VB6 and WinForms migration into web and cloud.

On each of the above Visual WebGui innovative infrastructure is going to offer the easiest and simplest developer targeted solution, and yet open for developers to extend and customize under our open source approach.

Please send your feedback and suggestions via our Contact form or to sales@gizmox.com

A magical framework for better RIAs

I found a very interesting article on asp.netPRO that provides a review of Visual WebGui. The article was written by Bill Haider, a Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET:

"Living in the era of rich Internet applications (RIAs), as we ASP.NET developers do, calls for complex and interactive designs, easy deployment means, rapid development, and high-performance and scalable applications—not to mention the full features of an RIA solution. For a Windows Forms or Web Forms application developer, catching up with the latest technologies required for developing such RIAs requires time and training. But what if you had a magical tool that could help in the rapid development of RIAs, provide better and easier deployment, and help migrate Windows Forms desktop-like applications to RIAs?"

"...Such a tool exists: Visual WebGui, from Gizmox. Reviewing and exploring the Visual WebGui technology could spread over many articles, possibly even a book. But in this article's limited space, I'll provide a brief overview of the Visual WebGui technology, its key features, and the components bundled inside. In addition, I include a simple demonstration on how to use the Visual WebGui to show you how the theoretical explanation and practical application complement each other to provide a "magical" framework for better RIAs..."

Read the full article...

Allowing responsive, secure application for field agents via cell phones

The SES Investigator application is a tool developed to allow law enforcement investigators to store case information in a central repository that is accessible and shared with other investigators in the task force. The main reasons that lead for the development of this new version of the Investigator application was the requirement to move from a single user version to a multi-user version that would also allow the system to be used while still in the field.

The first version of the application was a standard ASP.NET application, using heavy UI controls from Infragistics and Developer Express. While this found to be a great solution on the LAN, when the application was used in the field, it became completely unusable. After the first two versions of the SES Investigator Internet application that used standard ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX did not provide good enough performance over the web, the team looked for a new technology and Visual WebGui was chosen.

Using Visual WebGui Web Platform enabled the SES Investigator application to finally reach the most important requirement of usability and performance in the field. "With Visual WebGui the application runs with excellent performance while under even the tightest of bandwidth constraints. Additionally, Visual WebGui's unique architecture and protocol provides secure by design applications which is extremely important when connecting via cell phone modems," said Robert Johnson, SES Investigator Project Manager.

Read the full case study...

Gizmox’s Visual WebGui becomes a Microsoft Cloud Computing Enabler

Gizmox announced that the Visual WebGui rich Internet application platform, now enables customers to build and deploy applications to Microsoft’s cloud computing environment, Windows Azure. With the use of Visual WebGui, Gizmox will demonstrate to customers and partners an extremely fast and low-cost method to port line of business (LOB) applications to the cloud at the WPC in New Orleans.

Read the full Press Release or visit us at the WPC in New Orleans this week.

6.3.8a fix was released today

Visual WebGui 6.3.8a was released today as a fix to the following v6.3.8 issues:

VWG-5087 - IE-Button: The right-side border should be rendered in the correct position
VWG-4256 - Button with 21x21 image should not crop image with button size of 25x25
VWG-5091 - OpenFileDialog non-Flash should not throw JS error (while calling parent.Upload_CloseWindow())
VWG-5092 - OpenFileDialog non-Flash should not hang when OK button pressed
VWG-5093 - OpenFileDialog in Flash mode should not throw JS error while Obscuring active
VWG-5090 - OpenFileDialog non-Flash should show frames around the buttons

Click here to download all 6.3.8a versions...

Visual WebGui Cloud Computing application platform @ WPC09

Gizmox's Visual WebGui Web & Cloud platform will be presented at Microsoft's WPC in New Orleans between July 13 to July 16 within the Windows Azure booth. Visual WebGui can now enable the development & migration of applications to Microsoft's Cloud computing environment - Windows Azure.

Visual WebGui’s virtualization technology also dramatically reduces customers’ cloud bandwidth and CPU usage, offering a more cost effective runtime environment for native Azure applications.

Visit us at the WPC09

Easiest Web Applications UI Design & Customization Tool - More free videos are here

Creating Rich Web Applications Gets a Ton Easier (with VWG)

The following analysis was written by Peter Brockmann, President of Brockmann & Company, a high tech marketing consulting company and is featured on their website.

"Faster development of a rich media experience for web applications that are secure in operation has been a particularly elusive goal for many enterprise application developers since the debate about thin client and thick clients a decade ago. Until now.

...Visual WebGui brings the ultimate simplicity to the .NET development framework through an enterprise SDK that plugs into popular development tools such as Windows Forms... The runtime server product acts as a web interface to the application and supports DHTML, Silverlight and other presentation standards.

...There should be no doubt that with the interest in cloud computing services and user preferences for rich media applications running on a wider variety of platforms will only exacerbate the concerns about security of enterprise data and the cost of multiple device support which plays well to the Visual WebGui advantage in the marketplace."

Brockmann and Company researches the business user experience and writes about the business impact of communications technologies.
Click gere to read the full article on the Brockmann & Company website...

Visual WebGui Released version 6.3.8

Visual WebGui Web & Cloud platform version 6.3.8 was released today and can be downloaded here.
This is a further stabilization of 6.3.x that includes some resolved button behavior issues, as well as features such as Flash 10 uploading compatibility and the ability to configure a virtual directory.

The full v6.3.8 change log can be found here.
Click here to download Visual WebGui 6.3.8...

Visual WebGui 6.3.8 Released.8 Released

Visual WebGui Web & Cloud platform version 6.3.8 was released today and can be downloaded here.
This is a further stabilization of 6.3.x that includes some resolved button behavior issues, as well as features such as Flash 10 uploading compatibility and the ability to configure a virtual directory.

The full v6.3.8 change log can be found here.

Click here to download Visual WebGui 6.3.8...

A Visual WebGui partnership with DiscountASP.NET offers free hosting

Gizmox, the developer of Visual WebGui Web & Cloud Platform and asp.net hosting leader DiscountASP.NET signed a partnership agreement under which customers of both companies can benefit from special mutual offers.

At this point, DiscountASP.NET customers can receive a $50 discount on the Visual WebGui Professional studio while Visual WebGui users can get 6 months free hosting for the first year of DiscountASP.NET’s base ASP.NET hosting annual plan.

"DiscountASP.NET recognizes that Visual WebGui is a powerful platform and has built a large user base,” said DiscountASP.NET's Vice President of Marketing, Takeshi Eto. "We specialize in ASP.NET hosting and are always interested in partnerships that provide our customers with the most advanced tools that make their life easier and their web applications richer.”

On Gizmox's side, Roy Goffer, Online Marketing Manager of Gizmox said, “The DiscountASP.NET and Visual WebGui partnership is a great fit,” and added “DiscountASP.NET focuses on cutting-edge ASP.NET hosting while Visual WebGui deploys like a standard ASP.NET and provides tools to help developers and ease their efforts to bring their applications to life.”

Visit the website...

A practicle guide to gateways - Geeks on a role S01E04

The forth episode of “Geeks on a role”, the show presented for Web & Visual WebGui developers, was released. This episode focuses on gateways and how you can use them in your application.
You can view the new episode following this link:A practicle guide to gateways

Gizmox is presenting its Web & Cloud Platform at Think Next 09

Gizmox is participating and presenting at the Think Next 09 demo fair this upcoming Sunday in Tel Aviv and will be presenting its Visual WebGui Web & Cloud Platform.

Microsoft Israel Development Center's Think Next 09 innovation event will take place on June 28, 2009, with the participation of Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation.

The event, planned to take place once each year, will uniquely and creatively present a wide range of the latest innovations in the technological world to the public.

The event's invitees are those involved in technology, innovation and the entire spectrum of creativity, including start-up companies, entrepreneurs, production people, venture capitalists and leaders of public opinion in the Israeli high-tech field.

Head in the cloud feet on the ground - Geeks on a role S01E01

Geeks on a role – Episode 3 is available to watch.

The third “Geeks on a role” episode introduces the Visual WebGui cloud current offering and directions.

Watch the new episode...

A simple Web UI theme customization video tutorial

A new video tutorial of the innovative Visual WebGui Web Design Tool was published.
The Customizing a Visual WebGui theme using the Control & Theme Designer tutorial demonstrates the new cutting edge web development/design patterns introduced by this Control & Theme Designer featured in Visual WebGui Web & Cloud Platform.

The new tool allows to create and edit image resources in Visual WebGui projects and their behaviors by using a visual point and click designer that is integrated into VS and works with most external image editing software. The tool is simple, intuitive and allows to create custom rich Web 2.0 UI's to the already productive Visual WebGui.

Watch the video...

Episode 2 of Visual WebGui's Geeks on a role show is live

Episode 2 of Visual WebGui's Geeks on a role show is live and available to watch here.

On the second episode the Visual WebGui geeks are introducing some of the other buggers on the Visual WebGui team as well as discussing the latest release of Visual WebGui (version 6.3.7a) and showing some best practices to creating an efficient "lean mean" Visual WebGui application.

Watch now...

A Visual WebGui Web Design Tool Webcast on MSDN

After a short break we are back to present a live Webcast on MSDN this Tuesday, June 16th at 9:30 AM PST.

The upcoming webcast: Designing Creative DHTML, Silverlight UIs: Simple, Visualized & Intuitive will show off the new point and click Visual WebGui Control & Theme Web Design Tool and demonstrate its fastest, most intuitive way of developing and designing without Javascript, HTML, CSS, or XAML.

Join us tomorrow for a short hour that can potentially save you a lot of time!

Click here to get more information and to register online...

Visual WebGui 6.3.7 Platform for Rich AJAX applications released

Gizmox released today a new version of the Visual WebGui Platform for Rich .NET AJAX applications. Visual WebGui 6.3.7 is a further stabilization to the 6.3 pre-release version which adds support for wrapping of AJAX based controls into the Visual WebGui framework as well as support for additional languages.

The platform is available in free open source and free trial (commercial Professional Studio) versions.

All downloads are available for free here!

To view the Change log for 6.3.7 click here.

Go to Downloads page...

MSDN Webcast of the new Visual WebGui Point & Click Web Design Tool

After a short break, Gizmox is back to present a live webcast event on MSDN.
The upcoming webcast will focus on the new web design tools and will show how to work with it in order to graphically design Web UIs with the same Visual WebGui development simplicity.

Title: Designing Creative DHTML, Silverlight UIs: Simple, Visualized & Intuitive

Abstract: In this webcast we'll show off the new point and click Visual WebGui Control & Theme Designer. This designer joins the well known drag and drop Visual WebGui Form designer. It offers the fastest, most intuitive way (no Javascript, no HTML, no CSS, no XAML) of developing and designing. It allows you to develop fully customizable and extendable line of business applications with DHTML or Microsoft Silverlight presentation layers. Developers and user interface designers are invited to join us, you won't settle for less after watching this webcast.

When: 6/16/09 9:30 AM PST

Languages(s): English
Level: 300
Session Type: Live Session
Speaker(s): Itzik Spitzen

Click here to register for the webcast - It's free!

Visual WebGui RIA Platform 6.4 Preview with cutting-edge Web Design Tool released

Visual WebGui 6.4 Preview 1 is available to download!

The 6.4 Preview allows to experience the revolutionary web design tool providing ease of designing DHTML or Silverlight UI with no HTML, CSS or XAML coding, while using your design software of choice such as Photoshop and Expression Blend. This cutting-edge Point & Click Web Design Tool provides, for the first time, a complete coding-free cycle for the creation of complex, enterprise-grade web applications. 6.4 also allows to fully customize application themes using the new designer and by downloading and sharing complete VWG Themes.

Go to the new Web Design Tools page...

“Microsoft is pleased to work with Visual WebGui to deliver the best computing experience to our customers,” said Joe Marini, Director, Platform & Tools Ecosystem at Microsoft Corp. “The newly added features in Visual WebGui 6.4 preview offer developers a flexible way to brand and differentiate their UIs for internal and customer-facing applications.”

Read official Press Release...

The 6.4 Preview version is offered for free and available for evaluation in either Express Studio or Professional Studio. In the future the new design tools will be offered in the Express edition for free, under LGPL license, and in the Professional Studio version.

6.4 also presents new scalability extensions for redundancy and mulit-user SaaS/Cloud Computing level with performance enhancement and memory optimization.

Read the entire Change log...

A web based EDP internally developed by a single programmer

A web based EDP was internally developed in a hospital by a single developer. The project used Visual WebGui and took less than three months to implement the graphical user interface. The overall project, including the creation of the database and the .NET-Remoting DataLayer, which receives the patient data from the database and encapsulates it to classes passed to the GUI, took about a year to complete.

The Klinikum Ingolstadt is a hospital in Bavaria, Germany with 1,200 beds and over 3,000 employees. The staff used an EDP based on a MS Access 2003 database which was no longer able to meet the ever-growing demands of the hospital's intensive care units and it was needed to be replaced with an updated solution.

Since an off the shelf alternative doesn’t exist and a specific solution by an external software house would overrun the budget it was decided to enhance the software in-house. After evaluating Visual WebGui the team realized that a single developers could develop the graphical user interface within the shortest time due to the intuitive drag and drop Form design capabilities it allows.

Learn more about the development needs, process and the solution that they have created using Visual WebGui.

Read the full article...

Visual WebGui open source developers community call to joins forces

The Visual WebGui open source community is calling its members to join forces and share their web development knowledge and resources such as VWG frameworks. Each member's individual strength combined together to a whole will create something that has a greater power and will contribute everyone.

The first initiative is the creation of the VWG Community Frameworks website by rdhatch. This website gives the community a platform to share their code & offer downloads for the entire VWG Community to work with.

Anyone can help. Simply sharing eachother's common VWG frameworks / code libraries, no matter how incomplete - is good for the entire VWG Community. Even if you can provide concepts on how to layout navigation & properly place New/Save/Cancel/Search buttons within an application. We just need to get this conversation started.
Let's do it right here!

Good Luck!

Manufacturing activity management system developed with Visual WebGui

"Visual WebGui makes the delivery of sophisticated applications about as simple as it could be… We delivered this application with 1.25 developers part time over 4 months, including the SQL database design" Geoff Sorensen, Viking Consulting.

Read the full article...

The customer needed to move certain paper based 'activity management' processes to an electronic format. The major concerns were:

• Significant changes to regulatory and insurance requirements for activity/incident recording, management and reporting.
• Achieving consistency in input data for dozens of managers, hundreds of providers and thousands of work locations as they all change and evolve over time.
• Automatic sharing of appropriate information between stakeholders.
• Reporting and review functions appropriate to specific users.
• Easy, ‘non-invasive’ deployment to tightly controlled PC desktop

Visual WebGui Rich Internet Applications Platform provided the ideal technical environment to build and deliver the UI solution to staff. Visual WebGui is entirely server based, requiring nothing to be done on the client PC. "The ability to convert code from WinForms to Visual WebGui with a few searches and replace operations is very powerful" Said Geoff Sorensen.

Performance as a database client is excellent, and the UI styling is very familiar to users - the Outlook style navigation tabs, treeviews and lists are both familiar and powerful, and the ability to push various content types, such as PDF, to the client is powerful. "Visual WebGui makes the delivery of sophisticated applications about as simple as it could be" Said Geoff Sorensen.

Read the full case study and learn about the process of developing & deploying this solution with Visual WebGui.

New web design tool simplifies DHTML graphic design

Developing and designing AJAX Web applications have always been a complex process that required many different skills and knowledge of various coding languages. Visual WebGui RIA Platform is targeting simplification of AJAX development process by offering a visual development environment that flattened the traditional multi-layered development into a single layer requiring basic .Net development skill set. As a result, building line of business AJAX Web applications became simpler, faster and most cost-effective.

Previous versions of Visual WebGui tool are very efficient, but still required web knowhow for modifications of default themes and skins. But no more! The new Visual WebGui preview version combines the proven ease of Visual WebGui drag and drop application development with visual web design tool. This cutting-edge Control & Theme Designer enables developers and designers to build DHTML or Microsoft Silverlight user interfaces (UIs) with unmatched simplicity compared to traditional DHTML design or to any other existing controls/UI customization frameworks in the market.

Designing Web UI demands graphical skills as well as comprehensive knowhow in HTML & CSS or XAML with Silverlight. With the abundance of popular browsers in the market, there is also a need for cross browsers awareness when styling the UI. Using the new Visual WebGui’s Control & Theme Designer on the other hand, does not require writing HTML or CSS or any technical skills but. The web design tool allows developers and designers to set the styling properties and images for each object and automatically applies those styles to any supported browser or device.

Graphical skills are obviously still needed to edit images but the web design tool provides easy management of all the images that comprise controls or other UI elements and enables editing them in an any existing graphics design software with a point & click ease.

New Visual WebGui web design tool demonstration

Until now…
Using standard web tools the developer / designer has to edit the HTML or an equivalent rendering XSLT and struggle with its complexity to understand which image goes where:

No more…
Using the new web design tool, the developer / designer opens a theme designer within the Visual Studio .NET IDE:

And get to see the whole picture on a friendly view:

And simply point & click the pictures, override only the selected images then edit with any standard graphics designers’ tools such as Photo-Shop or Paint.NET or even provide an alternative image:

Styling

Until now…
The developer/designer had a complicated structure of styling which includes CSS’s of all kinds and local definitions, which always ends in not knowing which property overrides the correct styling. Not to mention each unique browser’s behaviors and CSS properties:



No more…
Using the new web design tool, CSS and the load of properties and definition files become a nightmare history…
The developer/designer can simply edit visual properties of colors & sizes at any desired level, not having to calculate which styling property overrides the other, and it will automatically work well for in any browser:

Behaviors & Extreme lay outing

Until now…
The developer had to find out which JavaScript file and HTML/XSLT files affected which controls layout or behavior… and then struggle with those client side resources in a multi level, multi layers, multi standards environment…

No more…
Using the new web design tool, developers can visually and easily manage any control’s resources, scripts and lay-outs within hierarchical clear environment with clear rules, services, in an intelisense supportive environment (future):

Watch video: Theme Customization with the new Web design tool

Visual WebGui saves LearningRX $100,000 on development of new Application for franchises

"Visual WebGui is second to none when it comes to deployment… the development experience is fast and enjoyable compared to the WYSINWYG (What you see is NOT what you get) in .aspx pages"

LearningRX learning centers are franchises that use the LearningRx HUB application to run their franchise. The application allows those learning center to track & manage client, students, sessions and test scores. The former solution was an ASP.net DNN application and was required to be updated since the database and functionality provided did not meet the needs anymore, due to the company growth.

Visual WebGui provided the platform to build the new HUB application. Visual WebGui allowed the team members which were Windows developers to jump right in with almost no learning curve due to a visual drag & drop designer that is similar to WinForms. "We know the business, and with Visual WebGui were able to get the solution completed in short time window," said Daniel Bardi and added "Other platforms take longer to develop and are not nearly as robust as the Visual WebGui solution."

As a result of developing the new HUB web application with Visual WebGui LearningRX saved more than $100,000 while allowing centers to run more efficiently with the much improved user interface that the customer experiences.

Read the full article:$100,000 saved on developing new Learning Application for franchises

Creating custom controls for web applications with the innovative visual Control & Theme Designer

The visual Control & Theme Designer introduced in version Visual WebGui 6.4 version allows to create cool new designs and themes as well as to create custom controls. The new 'how to' tutorial shows how simple it is to create a Visual WebGui custom control with the new designer tool.

This 'How to' is divided into two parts whereas the first part demonstrates the creation of the programmatic part of the water mark text box control and the second part shows how to add the design time of the control.

You can view the full tutorial here:Design Visual WebGui custom controls with the new Control & Theme Designer

Migrating Desktop Spreadsheet applications to the Web

After evaluating Visual WebGui on a few small projects WorksLink decided to employ it on a major project and upgrad their desktop spreadsheet applications to a user-friendly Web UI. "Not only were we learning how to use Visual WebGui, but we were learning how to write web applications for the first time" Said Andrew McGrath. The WorksLink team took the previous .NET WinForms framework and with minimal changes brought it across to Visual WebGui with the VWG toolset.

Visual WebGui RIA Development Platform was as fast to develop with as standard desktop .NET and it only took a week for the team to get to know Visual WebGui and to find the best strategy for converting our framework. "For many years we looked at ASP.NET and other web technologies, but none of them allowed us the flexibility, speed of development and ease of maintenance that we could deliver with a desktop application. Visual WebGui changed that" Said Andrew McGrath.

Read the full showcase:
Desktop Spreadsheet applications to Web UI

Deploy Visual WebGui web applications with a ASP.NET extension

Learn how you can select any of the 18 defined by default ASP.NET extension that are allready defined and associated with the Aspnet_isapi.dll instead of the standard .WGX extension in the following article written by Páll Björnsson:Deployment of DHTML Visual WebGui application with different extension than the standard .WGX

This tutorial is important since there are various occations when it may be necessary to deploy your DHTML Visual WebGui application with different extension than the standard .WGX extension. One such common scenario is when you are deploying to a web-hosting company (like GoDaddy for instance), which is not willing to add the necessary Application Extension (or Handler mapping in IIS7) for allowing deployment with the standard .WGX extension.

TYCON developed a Telemedicine application on Web with 1 developer in 1 month

Gizmox published a new case study showcasing TYCON's reasons for choosing Visual WebGui RIA Development Platform as the core platform for the Web UI in their.

Click to Read showcase...

Using Visual WebGui allowed TYCON South America to deliver the new Telemdicine Second Opinion solution faster than expected saving time and resources due to the easy and quick implementation process of the existing WinForms code. The original plan to convert the WinForms generated code to web was a 5 month/man effort. With Visual WebGui TYCON completed the job using only 1 developer for 1 month.

"With Visual WebGui we were able to build an agile and secure web user interface that meets the requirements of our customer in terms of functionality and time-to-market Interface" Ariel Schwindt CEO of Tycon S.A.

Read the full showcase: A Telemedicine Second Opinion application developed on Web with 1 developer in 1 month

First Visual WebGui 6.4 Theme & Control Designer tutorial released

A new "How to" tutorial (The first for 6.4) showing the basic usage of Visual WebGui Rich Internet Applications Platform Theme & Control designer was published on visualwebgui.com.

The Theme & Control designer is the major new web development & design feature that will be introduced in version 6.4. This new visual designer enable developers to create or edit a control skin and make custom themes. The Theme & Control designer consolidates all the resources that build the control into one place.

View the Basic usage of the new Visual WebGui Theme & Control designer tutorial and learn how to edit images that make up a standard button and quickly transform it to Mac styled buttom.

Sneak Peek video of Visual WebGui 6.4 released

A preview version of Visual WebGui Rich Internet Applications Platform 6.4 will become available in a couple of weeks, but Visual WebGui released a short video as a sneak peek to the new version and its major new features - the Theme & Control Designers.

The new designers which will be available with the upcoming 6.4 Preview version enable simple and quick customization of controls and themes thus enabling developers/designers to create rich, branded, and engaging customer-facing UI's.

Click to watch the Theme Customization with the new Designer video.

Visual WebGui RIA Platform 6.4 Preview to be released soon

Gizmox announced that Visual WebGui RIA Platform version 6.4 will be released as a preview version in the beginning of May.

Since 6.4 includes many major, all-new features Gizmox decided to release it as a free Express Studio Preview version first, allowing Visual WebGui developers & community the opportunity to try it as soon as possible and experience its remarkable potential and value.

In the meantime, 6.3.x which is now a stabilized version continues to be offered as a pre-release version. This will also give the devoted Visual WebGui developers community the opportunity to benefit from Visual WebGui's pre-release discount for a bit longer. Gizmox is offering a free upgrade to 6.4 for perpetual licenses and will reset the subscription period to start when the 6.4 version is stabilized and offered commercially.

For those who would like a taste of the next version Gizmox will soon release a free preview of 6.4. Visual WebGui 6.4 discovers a leap forward in Visual WebGui's evolution and it will literally change the way you develop and design Rich Internet Applications. The new version combines the ease of Visual WebGui drag-and-drop application development with graphically-engaging visual designers to build Web UI's. The 6.4 preview brings a new dimension of collaboration between development and UI design tasks enabling simple and productive customization and creation of rich, branded, creative customer-facing Web 2.0 like UI's. This is enabled by new Control & Theme Visual Designers that add up to the Form designer and integrate with existing design software such as Photoshop, Expression Blend, Flash CS, and more to enable the most efficient developer and designer collaboration when customizing and creating new themes and controls. Both Theme and Control Designers provide easy management of the entire project's resources and the integrative capability to edit those resources.

Visual WebGui 6.4 also introduces a new scalability server extension allowing multi-users usage scenarios. The Cluster Server also provides important redundancy to Visual WebGui web applications.

Stay tuned for more information, samples and downloads to be released this month...

Putting a trading desk application on the cloud in a few weeks with Visual WebGui

I would like to share with you the following story showcasing how Visual WebGui Rich & Cloud Applications Platform enabled MBI to replace the old VB 6.0 with a modern web application that presents an enhanced user experience for the trading desk system. With the old VB 6.0 based system the trading job took a whole day to complete, but with Visual WebGui the process takes only a few hours and is nearly automatic.

Using Visual WebGui for this project contributed to delivering an application that is easy to use, intuitive and responsive in a short period of time. "Developing an application with Visual WebGui is a charm. UI design is done in a snap and coding is as easy as building a Windows application."

MBI had a VB 6.0 application that didn't meet the requirements anymore as the trading process was too long and complicated. As a result, it was decided to create a new trading desk application which would be simple, easy to use and reliable. It should be used by the Money Market traders and must allow them to get the trading job done in a few hours instead of the whole day with a nearly automated process.

This intriguing showcase is available here:Trading Desk application's UI completed in a couple of weeks

Live MS Techdays Session: Security is enterprise RIA show stopper

Hi,

You can join Visual WebGui and Itzik Spitzen to a live session during Microsoft Tech-days 2009 which is taking place tomorrow, April 1st at 7:30am GMT

The session, MBL305 Security is enterprise RIA show stopper will discuss the new web 2.0 AJAX, Silverlight and Flash development nature are rapidly puling developers to develop fat clients downloading the entire application to the client. Enterprises cannot live with the huge hidden security compromise they do when using such technologies and this fact becomes a major show stopper for creating RIA in enterprises. Come and see how Visual WebGui and the "Empty Client" paradigm has proven to thoroughly solve the security issue of RIA seamlessly from the developer's aspect and still keep the richness, accessibility and productiveness of the applications. Visual WebGui enhances AJAX and Silverlight making them secured by design.

Languages(s): English
Level: 300
Session Type: Live Session
Speaker(s): Itzik Spitzen

Go to the following website to register for the session - it's free
www.msfttechdays.com

Visual WebGui released its 6.3.6 RIA Platform

Visual WebGui released yesterday its Rich Internet Applications Platform version 6.3.6 which allows simple and fast web development using the VWG SDK, Express Studio and the Professional Studio with the WYSIWYG Form Designer.

This new version includes implemented support for Microsoft Silverlight 3.0 beta presentation layer and is the latest and most stable Visual WebGui 6.3.x version

Visual WebGui downloads are free and available from here.

Debt Collection Management System Web UI developed in less than a month

Torq Software decided to allow web access the internal systems so that they can be accessed by more field agents and clients via the internet with a manageable impact on the processor and bandwidth usage footprint.

The team chose Visual WebGui RIA Platform and soon enough discovered how easy it was to start developing Visual WebGui screens due to the fact that it uses the same GUI designer technology that was already used to develop the Windows Forms version of the application.

It was relatively easy to develop the screens for the application as the existing Windows Forms UI was used as a guide. Even though Visual WebGui was still in a beta form, the overall web development was simple and quicker than expected. "Not having to learn ASP.NET in its entirety meant that we could leverage our existing knowledge for most part to produce an effective application" Said Apolon Ivankovic. Deployment turned out to be relatively easy as well and only required the team to learn the basics of IIS deployment.

To read the etire showcase click on the following link:Debt Collection Management System Web UI developed in less than a month

A Linux Web based deployment tool completed in just 2 weeks

A new Visual WebGui RIA Platform showcase is published:A Linux (Mono) Web based OS Deployment tool completed in just 2 weeks

The company needed to develop a solution which would operate as an OS Deployment tool that is customized for the needs of their Datacenter according the specific design parameters given.
The team decided not to use PHP but to use Mono (mod_mono) with Visual WebGui because of the short timeframe they had for deploying the solution and since Visual WebGui provided the easiest and quickest graphical development possible.

The development process was straight forward. While the final goal was well defined, some of the concepts and functions were being defined while coding the solution. The Visual WebGui unique approach enabling easy integration of UserControls and intuitive graphical development allowed for this unstructured development cycle which led to an extremely shortened process as stated by Axel Westerhold: "Because of the easy graphical development environment and the integration into Visual Studio we were able to roll out the product within 2 weeks."

Go to the full case study.

Web enabling data warehouse solution made possible with Visual WebGui

"Visual WebGui Rich Internet Applications Platform reduces the complexity of web development to a minimum. The fact that the developer no longer needs to think like a web developer saves a huge amount of time and allowed the application to be market ready in a very short time." said Joerg Stieg whose company TIP management AG ported its data warehouse solution's configuration and planning tool UI to the web and redesigned the HCe® Web front-end.

"Creating such a feature-rich application in this very short time would have been impossible without Visual WebGui." Joerg Stieg

Go to the full case study.

WinForms over Web - A unique approach to AJAX development

There is a really good article posted on programmers-tech explaining Visual WebGui's Web Development platform uniques approach and benefits for developing web applications.

"Visual WebGui a unique approach to AJAX development Visual WebGui is not just another AJAX framework but rather a different approach to web application development, specially designed to simplify building highly complex applications like Outlook Web Access (OWA). Visual WebGui makes it possible for developers to create applications that were previously developed only by the "big guys". While web development environments such as ASP.NET and JSP have made huge strides in creating a rich environment for developing web applications, they have always targeted a very wide range of applications from content rich sites to OWA like applications. By doing so, they forced a compromise that was very painful for applications developers. Concepts like pages, html, requests and responses, which originated from the historical evolution of web development, are not really suitable for developing applications.

Visual WebGui uses a proven application development toolset that was designed for application development from the outset. Visual WebGui’s methodology – Winforms over Web (WOW) - originates from environments like MFC and the popular Visual Basic environment."

Click here to read the full article.

A full Help Desk Ticketing System completed with 1 developer in only 8 months

Visual WebGui provided the RIA platform/framework to build Help Desk Ticketing System solution that actualized the requirements and met the challenges as a cost effective alternative to other RIA platforms. The drag and drop page development experience was an enormous benefit. This compared to the hours it would take to build the same pages with traditional ASP environments. “Visual WebGui claims of 90% reduction in development time and providing the bridge between desktop and web technologies were substantiated through the design, development, and deployment of our help desk software solution.“ Brian Butterfield

Brian Butterfield added that “There is no other software platform on the market today that can give traditional desktop application developers the ability to transition that knowledge and experience directly to a web development environment – providing an unprecedented development experience.”

Read the full case study.

Visual WebGui RIA platform 6.3.4 released

Gizmox released its Visual WebGui RIA Platform 6.3.4.
This version is released as part of the continuous efforts to stabilize 6.3 web development environments. It is another step towards a stable 6.3.x which is expected to be released in the next couple of weeks.

This is the change log for version 6.3.4

Bugs fix----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VWG-4142 - Rich Text Editor RibbonBar buttons throw errors
VWG-2913 - When image was larger than the PictureBox if set to Zoom the image was not rendered properly.
VWG-4137 - When session state was active clicks where disabled on main window.
VWG-4129 - "Textcontrols" did not allow edit navigation via arrow, home, end keys etc in FF3.VWG-4136 - Component tray did not display datasets and bindingsources in visible space after realoding form
VWG-4135 - An exception was raised whenclosing a form designer.

All 6.3.4 downloads can be found here.
Professional Studio can be downloaded directly from here.

Visual WebGui saves a multi-lingual search engine 2 years and $250k

The new case study showcases the remarkable cost savings of the development and deployment process of FindItByMe.com multi-lingual search engine with Visual WebGui's Rich Internet Applications Platform. The project was to create a multi-lingual search engine that runs as a website that is accessible to the public from any standard web browser. This means that any internet user should be able to surf onto this website with no need for any specific installations or browser plug-ins.
In addition to and as a result of this requirement, the search engine should use a technology that provides a secure environment. A simple deployment process of the unique interface was also important for the project's success.
"In terms of cost savings, Visual WebGui allowed to complete the project with only a single developer in a year. According to John Graffio the company saved at least $250,000 this year since with any other solution, there would have been the costs of additional developers and equipment. Furtheremore, John Graffio stated that Visual WebGui saved the company a remarkable amount of time. "VWG has allowed me to come to market anywhere from 24-30 months ahead of anything I could have remotely dreamed of."

Read the entire case study here.