Visual WebGui helps Dawsons put its Windows Forms HR system on the web

Dawsons needed to upgrade their existing Windows Forms LAN human resources system to allow better and flexible access to the ever increasing data size as labor hire clients are demanding easy access to copies of tickets and licenses and etc. The company has some 30,000 applicants on file, but access to this data has been complex and limited with the current system.

Therefore the IT department was asked to find a possible solutions that would allow creating a web based application while utilizing as much of the existing Windows Forms code as possible. Visual WebGui was found to be highly regarded in many frameworks comparisons so the team decided to give Visual WebGui a try. It didn’t take long for them to recognize that the Visual WebGui controls appear and react over the web the same as desktop controls. This and the fact that most of the code was directly ported which saved Dawsons hundreds of development hours are what make Visual WebGui so unique and productive.

“My first impression of Visual WebGui was perhaps disbelief. Not being a seasoned Web programmer, I initially found it hard to accept so much functionality from a web based application. Also, the speed is exceptional” said John Sainsbury, Financial Controller of the Dawsons Group who added “Since working with Visual WebGui, I have showcased parts of the application to our major clients, some of whom use SAP portals, and they are amazed.”

The result was so satisfying that the company is now looking to produce a mobile version for accessing the labor pool on the go. “By removing the barriers of the local network, Visual WebGui has changed how we can do business” said Lloyd Everist, General Manager Dawsons Group.

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Tips for IT Security in RIAs - Visual WebGui Blog


Rich internet applications are growing fast in the business and enterprise application landscape as more and more software managers and corporate decision makers are electing to place rich internet applications (RIA's) into their organizations. But with the many advantages of rich internet applications over the client/server deployments, organizations also find many new aspects they need to master and overcome - one of them is understanding the new security vulnerabilities of the rich web based applications and taking the right measurments to protect their systems.

The following guide posted on Visual Studio Magazine contributes to understanding RIA security vulnerabilities and how to cope with them.

Security - Overcoming Data-Centric RIA Challenges - Visual WebGui Blog

This is the 4th and last (but not least) post discussing the challenges in developing business RIA applications.

According to leading IT analysts, web applications and in particular Ajax RIA’s have become the most vulnerable elements of enterprise IT infrastructure. As an increasing number of organizations come to depend on rich Internet-based applications that leverage the power of AJAX, Silverlight Flash and the emerging HTML5 technologies, businesses must find ways to secure their web applications and protect sensitive data that may be exposed through the use of these technologies.

The post describes Visual WebGui "Empty Client" architecture as a great solution to avoid security volnurabilities and thus minimizes the need to search for security solutions as it is designed to simplify, enhance, and protect the deployment of complex, enterprise level applications.

Security - Overcoming Data-Centric RIA Challenges - Visual WebGui Blog

Why Windows 8 does not mean the end for .NET development

Since the demo of Windows 8 given by Microsoft Vice President Julie Larson-Green at the recent D9 conference windows developers have been described in many articles as feeling "Horrified" "Worried" "Deeply Concerned".

But no matter what Microsoft confirms about Windows 8 come September, whether they decide to stop supporting .NET or put more emphasis on the advantages of HTML5 over it, VWG enables .NET to appear as HTML/HTML5 on the client. Visual WebGui ensures that Windows 8 does not mean the end for .NET development.

Read the full blog post on GeeksWithBlogs:

Why Windows 8 does not mean the end for .NET development

State Management - Overcoming Data-Centric RIA Challenges - Visual WebGui Blog

A major part of any web-app developers process, is to decide whether or not to keep the state of a particular control or function and what data to retrieve from the server. While with stateful environment developers work within a structured, well-defined and visual environment in a stateless environment developers work in a fluid environment and have to take critical decisions and choices by themselves. The stateless environment is much more complex and risky as the developer also needs to write explicit code for each element based on their decision. Visual WebGui offers a solution that unlike ASP.NET and most web frameworks is stateful.

The following blog post describes the unique Visual WebGui approach that allows a stateful solution while eliminating the usual obstacles of storing the state of a web application.
State Management - Overcoming Data-Centric RIA Challenges - Visual WebGui Blog

Gizmox Ranked in Top Ten of Cloud Vendors by SD Times

Gizmox Ranked in Top Ten of Cloud Vendors by SD Times

For the 2nd year in a row Gizmox is recognized by SD Time as one of the top industry leaders and innovators that "write the songs that make the whole world sing".

See SD Times 100 Winners list

Visual WebGui has recently released an HTML5 supported (beta) version of its platform. Needless to say this new .NETHTML5 version generated a lot of buzz and interest which were followed by many inquiries so I want to share more information and the Gizmox vision for the HTML5 version.

To learn more about this new version read the full blog post.
Bridging the .NET power and HTML5 richness

Getting From .NET to HTML5 without Getting Lost

You can’t go anywhere online these days without reading something about the new web standard: HTML5. HTML5, the latest version of the hyper-text mark-up language, enables a better web experience, with richer graphics, animation and web multimedia. Many pundits see it as the next generation web - web 3.0 if you like - and an open standard replacement for propriety plug-ins, Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash. With so much hype surrounding HTML5, and the benefits it brings, there’s one major question that’s being asked: can we Microsoft .NET developers create HTML5?


Fortunately Visual WebGui ProStudio .NETHTML5 enables just that. It’s a unique, end-to-end combination of pure Microsoft .NET development, abstraction of Java Script / HTML5 functionality through jQuery and the abstraction of Ajax, database connectivity and data binding. In its release of ProStudio .NETHTML5, Gizmox, the creator of Visual WebGui has created the only total development environment in which programmers can develop efficient-running, data-centric HTML5 web apps in Visual Studio.

This has several applications (ignore the pun):

1. It empowers jQuery developers to go data centric.
   Using its abstraction of data binding and built-in state management, ProStudio. NETHTML5 opens the way for UI developers to create data-driven, line-of-business applications, while staying focused on their core skills of user interface building.
2. It allows the creation of HTML5 web applications now.
   The unification of the Visual WebGui development platform and the latest jQuery animation and rich web interface function library empowers web application developers to take advantage of HTML5's power and build applications having browser compatibility across all mobile, tablet and desktop environments.
3. It is the ease of data-binding with standard .NET practices
   VWG takes care of AJAX, session management and lets developers easily bind to data using VB.NET or C#
4. It is a .NET framework.
   The only simple way to do HTML5 or jQuery development in .NET. That means the experience of developing desktop .NET applications, with the ease of deployment of a standard Window Forms application and ASP.NET deployment on IIS, which amounts to no more than copy/pasting a couple of DLLs. 
5. Uncompromised security by design.
   VWG with built-in jQuery produces rich ASP.NET, Ajax-based web applications with a high performance interface whose security cannot be compromised.

Visual WebGui ProStudio .NETHTML5, by incorporating virtualization and streaming paradigms, creates a unique HTML5 development environment. This enables stateful applications that are fully scalable and have no client security vulnerabilities whatsoever.

The VWG development framework is integrated into Visual Studio, allowing .NET programming code, Visual WebGui data binding functions and jQuery to achieve a potent combination of technologies that achieves a high degree of abstraction for defining screen behavior and communication between database and browser based applications. In other words, this is the only way to write .NET and get HTML5.

Please click here to see an HTML5 email app developed with ProStudio .NETHTML5.

To download a trial of the ProStudio .NETHTML5 please visit the Download page now.

Everyone is talking about Cloud computing and moving to the cloud (public or private), but very few have actually done so. The reason is that the process of migrating existing applications to the cloud is a lot more complicated than you may think and this is where we come in.

In the past year we have been intensively working on a tool-based solution that gives application developers and enterprises a simpler way to migrate to the cloud. And now we are proud to present the Visual WebGui Instant CloudMove, which is the only solution that transforms desktop applications’ code to the cloud, in addition to web and mobile deployments.

To learn more, you can check out our press release and watch the video below. And if you have any feedback, we’d love to hear about it.