> > These are the organizations for whom > > web applications provide nowhere near enough benefit to compensate for > > their eternally clunky, slow, and inflexible nature. > >How long does it take your app to boot? How long does it take to >navigate to a web site?
Celeron 1.12 GHz 256 MB RAM Win 98 SE Internet connection is some portion of a T1, ranging up to 50%. LAN is 10/100 Mbps. The servers are right in my office. LAN web server: Pentium III, SCSI, 500 MHz, 750 MB RAM, NT 4.0 SP 6, IIS Application data server: AMD Sempron 1.86 GHz, 512 MB RAM, CentOS w/ SAMBA Application boot: My app, from mouse click to login screen: 9 seconds (first try--nothing cached; on subsequent tries the time is about halved) Browser Startup: Firefox 1.5 from mouse click to very simple homepage (www.stic-cil.org) fully displayed: 13 seconds (first try--nothing cached) IE 5.5 SP 2 from mouse click to homepage fully displayed: 5 seconds (first try--nothing cached) -- but, of course, if I had a web app I wouldn't want people using IE. Application main window: My app, which uses VFP native data on the server, from login screen to main data entry window (including 3 mouse clicks and quite a bit of time for the main window to appear; much of the display is data-driven, and the window retrieves and displays a full recordset when it opens): 13.5 seconds with multiple users logged in (takes less time if I'm the only user). I know it's slow; in my defense, I haven't really made an effort to optimize it yet. Websites of similar complexity to my app: www.yankees.com -- well, this was probably slow this morning for some reason; it still wasn't fully loaded after 30 seconds in Firefox 1.5 or IE 5.5. It's usually in the 20-second range, though. Universal Thread, in Firefox 1.5 - from link click to full load of the main page: 8 seconds. From login to display of forum messages: 7 seconds. Websites on my LAN: SL Mail Pro administration page -- In IE (won't run in other browsers) to get the login page, 3 seconds; from login to completed display, 5 seconds. But this page has only a handful of controls. To do anything useful, you have to navigate through a few levels of a treeview, each of which takes 2-3 seconds just to open. Trend Micro Officescan administration page -- 7 seconds to get the login screen, 3 seconds to get the main page, in IE (won't run in other browsers). This one is fairly impressive, since the main page has colorful pie charts that are generated on the fly. But it's not as complex as my main data entry window, and to do anything interactive takes 2-3 seconds to display a page and 2-3 seconds to submit actions--for each type of action. Websites create an impression of speed by generating small pages, but then force the user to navigate through several pages, each of which takes a couple of seconds to generate, to accomplish any complex task. In my app there's no additional time cost to do anything in the main window except save or retrieve a recordset. You can carry out dozens of edits, including getting data from several lookup lists, as fast as you can use the keyboard or mouse. >Web development has not stood still. Well written web apps are fast, >smooth and flexible. It's a horse race, and that's a good thing - >everyone improves. Clients are running wickedly fast CPUs, more memory >and disk space are becoming standard, and loading great big runtimes >in a browser has become more reasonable. And my desktop app would see a similar benefit from a faster machine, as would my network if I got faster servers, switches, and NICs. I think my app would still be faster, and would achieve that without the cumbersome requirement to navigate through many displays to accomplish complex tasks. > > This is where desktop apps are needed, it's the arena toward which VFP was > > targeted, and it's a huge market that now no longer has a single major > > player serving it. > >There will always be a place for more than one kind of app, and that's >a Good Thing. I am really looking forward to an opportunity to deploy >a dabo app, for just those reasons. Dabo is where my future lies also--if I can just get the time to play with it. Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
