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Decreasing Software Expenditures with Web Standards

Decreasing Software Expenditures with Web Standards. Using Thin Clients, Mozilla, and XUL. Overview. Costs of running a small business with third party software Using Web technologies to decrease costs and open new revenue streams Research methods, and problems

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Decreasing Software Expenditures with Web Standards

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  1. Decreasing Software Expenditures with Web Standards Using Thin Clients, Mozilla, and XUL

  2. Overview • Costs of running a small business with third party software • Using Web technologies to decrease costs and open new revenue streams • Research methods, and problems • Recommendations on how to proceed • Questions

  3. Costs Of Running A Business With Third Party Software • With a staff of 20, using only MS Windows and MS Office, costs are: Approx. $1, 000 PER YEAR! PER USER!

  4. Reading The Fine Print These costs do not include: • Customer Management Software • Shipping Software • Accounting Software • And a staff to administer all of this

  5. The Web Can Save The Day • Mozilla Web Browser, formally Netscape Navigator • XUL (XML User Interface Language) • JavaScript

  6. Mozilla Web Browser • An example of a “Thin Client” • Formally Netscape Navigator • Open Source Software • Used by ~1.5% of the ~1,000,000 Web users • Gecko (Mozilla’s rendering engine) is used in over 11 different web browsers • FREE!

  7. What is XUL? • Created to make Mozilla easier to develop for multiple operating systems • Based on XML (Extensible Mark-up Language), a standard of the W3C • Specifically oriented towards user interface design • If you can develop a web page you can develop a user interface in XUL

  8. With This… <?xml version="1.0"?> <?xml-stylesheet href="chrome://global/skin/" type="text/css"?> <window id="example-window" title="Example 3.4.2" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"> <groupbox flex="1"> <caption> <checkbox label="Enable Backups"/> </caption> <hbox> <label control="dir" value="Directory:"/> <textbox id="dir" flex="1"/> </hbox> <checkbox label="Compress archived files"/> </groupbox> </window>

  9. Mozilla Gives Us This!

  10. Mozilla Can Also Give Us This!

  11. JavaScript • Developed by Netscape in 1994 • Version 1.5 was standardized in 1999 by ECMA International (ECMA-262 v3) • Used in ~25% of the Internet’s web pages • Allows XUL to be more than something pretty look at!

  12. Research Methods and Goals • To emulate most of the functionality found in the sales departments customer management software • To build this software using only Mozilla, XUL, and JavaScript

  13. Research Problems • Some components of the UI were more difficult to develop in XUL • XUL did not offer all the same UI components as the original software • JavaScript failed to scale well as the software increased in size

  14. Recommendations The Present The cost of development does not justify the savings The Future Microsoft’s Longhorn, XAML & .NET Products Ximian’s Mono Project Perl 6 & Parrot

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