OpenBeOS Project - Displaying Newsletter

OpenBeOS Project - Displaying Newsletter For those of you who may not be so "enlightened" as to the purpose and concept of .Net, let me attempt to explain from a high-level perspective. The concept, at least as far as I have seen, is that web pages can be authored using an object hierarchy. This object hierarchy uses JavaScript as its basis for client-side interactions. You can derive from a standard object and build a new object which other .Net programmers can use. These objects can have two different types of interactions - server-side and client-side. Client-side interactions are typical JavaScript callbacks (mouse over, etc). Server-side interactions are what we used to call "Submits" - so named after the concept that the end user would fill in some data on a web form and press the submit button. The page's information, including object states is sent back to the web server where it is processed.

The clever part of this, on the business side of things is that, of course, you need a web server. And guess who makes the only web server that handles .Net objects? Yes, surprise, it is IIS. Microsoft sells updates to Visual Studio to developers, and more web server licenses.

The clever side of this on the technical end of things is that developers are being pressed to make everything a "web application". Much of this perspective relates to the poor way that Windows (even the vaunted XP) deals with the installation of software. You have to be an administrator to install a good deal of software. Since IT staff can't/shouldn't/won't give that right to everyone, IT staff has to install all of the software, which makes every upgrade that a company goes through costly (overtime, etc). Compare this to installing the software once, on the web server, and letting everyone access it - no licensing issues, no dll misery - just apps. Reminds me of my mainframe days.