The Wonderful Awful Browser

When a desktop programmer tries to write database applications for the browser, he faces a great many challenges, both technical and cultural. Both sets of challenges appear because the browser and the web were invented for purposes different than our own. On the technical side we must reinvent huge amounts of functionality that we got "for free" with the old desktop systems of Foxpro, Delphi, VB Classic and so on, and on the cultural side we must wade through mountains of irrelevant or downright damaging advice that is aimed at people working on the next version of Facebook or eBay. In this essay we look at as many of these challenges as I can muster.

Why A Desktop Developer Would Move to The Web

When the browser first appeared, it totally lacked the technical powers required to replace desktop applications. Nevertheless, some programmers immediately began to ponder how to move into the world of the browser. The reasons were simple then, are simple now, and have not changed:

• Far easier deployment -- nothing to install.
• Worldwide access -- businesses with multiple locations are suddenly much easier to take care of.
• You could now create a public website and give customers and vendors limited access to certain information.
• Operating System independence. This is far more of a reality now than we dreamed it might be in the darkest days of Microsoft's Total World Domination, but there were visionaries early on who saw the possibilities.

So there are many programmers, and I am one of them, who continue to work on the same kinds of applications we did before the web existed, but who now deploy these applications in the browser, for the reasons listed above. Here now is our tale of woe and sorrow!

The Cultural Divide

While desktop programmers were scratching their heads and trying to figure out how to fit into this new world, a new generation of programmers was growing up who were perfecting this new platform and developing applications that were undreamed of before. Unfortunately, some of the good advice they dreamed up is either irrelevant or counter-productive to the database programmer who is deploying to the web.

The driving reality for the database application programmer is that her users are not surfing. They are using a dedicated program written for the purposes of the business they work for. Most of what the browser can do is either not necessary or positively in their way, and the browser lacks productivity tools that they took for granted in "the old system." This fact is central to the cultural divide between application programmers and web programmers.

The Infamous Back Button Problem

If I surf over to www.osnews.com and click on an article, when I am finished I click "BACK" once or twice until I'm back to osnews, and then pick another article. But to the application user, who is not surfing but is using a dedicated program, who has clicked "New Patient", typed in the info, and clicked "Save", the back button is a positive menace. It is misleading and dangerous. This has led to who-knows-how-many rants from web programmers telling application programmers, "You don't understand the web, you shouldn't write it that way," in which the desparate application programmer replies only, "but you don't understand, I must have it work this way." The simple fact is that when a user is modifying data in a browser there is no concept of BACK. There may "UNDO" or "REVERT", but once the data is saved it is saved. This is why application programmers resort to trying to hide or disable the button, or why they think they should be able to modify the history (which of course they cannot do because that would be a huge security hole for public sites).

Ajax only Makes The Back Button Worse

Picture a user on the customers screen, who then goes to the menu and picks the vendors screen. They work for five minutes on the vendors screen, and their wonderful snappy AJAX application is fetching search results and navigating from row to row and saving changes. Then they decide they made a mistake and hit [BACK] and wham! they're on the customer screen! It seems that the better the applications become, the worse the [BACK] button becomes. In my own shop we have finally decided to have the login program pop up a new window which does not have the [BACK] button or the address bar. This is considered heresy by web programmers (you don't understand the web! they cry) but of course what is true for them is not true for us, and vice-versa.

This also leads to much work. We must provide for such features as UNDO with no native support in the browser, and worse, with whatever native support the browser does have been intended for something totally different.

Your Application Must Work Without Javascript

This is dead wrong for the application programmer. Application programmers have a power that is totally outside the experience of a pure web programmer: we can dictate system requirements to the customer. This led to many unhappy problems before the web, but with Firefox (and firebug!) we now have a platform that is free and robust. We simply install Firefox (or instruct the IT department to do so) and we have a platform that we know will support our application.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Nothing illustrates the divide between the web and the desktop like keyboard shortcuts.

When Windows 95 swept the office world (but before the web really came into its own), programmers developed a new term for applications that required constant use of the mouse: we called them "mousetraps". The worst kind of mousetrap program requires the user to constantly lift their hand from the keyboard and go to the mouse, then back again. This is fatiguing, confusing, and terribly counter-productive for the end user.

But the real problem is that the browser was born a mousetrap. From the perspective of the desktop programmer, keyboard shortcuts are clearly an afterthought, a "red-headed stepchild" as they say. Native HTML supports only the ACCESSKEY attribute, and recently Firefox was changed so that the default key combination is CTRL+ALT instead of ALT. This small change led me to finally realize that these folks, to put it mildly, have never lived in my world and haven't the slightest clue what my users need. I could expect no help from them on this front.

The solution for the web programmer is to remember my users are not surfing, they are using a dedicated program. Therefore it is the Right Thing for the application programmer to hijack the CTRL-N key and have it mean "New Patient" (or New Customer, New Vendor, etc) instead of opening a new browser window. Moroever, he must kill the CTRL-N so that it does nothing on a page where there is no [New] button. If he does not, then sometimes CTRL-N will create a new patient, and sometimes it will pop up a new window with my.yahoo.com! So the application programmer confidently rewires the "standard" browser keys and has happier customers for his effort.

Technical Problems In the Browser

No Default Focus

Have you ever gone to a website where the first thing you must do is log in, but the user id input does not have focus? That is a sure sign that the page was written by a web programmer with no desktop experience. When you put a database program into the browser, you expect the user to be typing constantly, looking things up, adding information, and so forth. So the application programmer must ensure that his first control always receives focus. Call it petty if you like, but without it your program becomes a mousetrap. Perfection comes by concentrating on these small things that either annoy or please users.

Tabbing Off to Mars

Default browser behavior is to allow the user to TAB through controls in the order they were created. This can be modified by explicitly assigning TABINDEX attributes to the control. However, when you get to the last control, the browser then Tabs you up to the menu, or the address bar, or anywhere else.

In a business application, where the user is not surfing the web, this is wrong. Tabbing out of the content area is equilivant to exiting the application, it throws the user into a context that they do not need and (sad to say) do not understand.

When I first began deploying business apps in the browser I would get calls saying, "it's frozen" or "i'm typing and nothings happening" and other such mysterious claims. Once I observed the users I realized they were "tabbing to Mars", the focus was up on the menu or in the address bar or somewhere else equally irrelevant. So we created the idea of the "Tab Loop", so that when the user hits TAB on the last control it loops back to the first. This completely ended those calls.

The Tower Of Babel

Desktop programmers have a luxury undreamed of by web programmers: they can do all or nearly all of their programming in a single language, like classic Visual Basic, Foxpro, or Delphi (or heck, COBOL or 4GL!). Most of these programmers also know SQL, but it is not seen as a burden to learn it, it is just part of the job.

But when the application programmer moves to the web, he is confronted with at least four systems he must grasp if he is to perform as a master crafstman: (X)HTML, CSS, Javascript, and one or more server languages like Ruby, PHP, Java, etc. These different technologies all have syntaxes and philosophies that are different from each other and from past experience. All I can say is I'm glad I made the effort but I sure as heck hope I never have to make a change that dramatic again.

Let's Not Talk About State

When an application programmer moves to the web, he is confronted with the totally alien concept that he cannot maintain state. This idea has been discussed much in past years, and I suspect it may not be the problem it once was, as most of us have long since gotten past it. I did not want to leave it out completely, but it is way too large an issue to discuss in a paragraph and I doubt anyway that I could add to the wisdom that is already out there.

Lousy Widgets

The HTML SELECT element stinks. Every serious application programmer either downloads a replacement or writes his own replacement. In the old world of the desktop we did not have to do such things.

The final piece of the puzzle in my shop was jQuery. The irony of jQuery is that it seems to me its core function is DOM traversal and manipulation, but its elegant simplicity has drawn creative minds to do things like create really nice widgets for entering time. In my shop we finished off our desktop-in-browser framework by using jQuery extensively, this solved lots of our lousy widgets problem.

Salvation In the New Javascript Frameworks?

I should mention the new frameworks that are emerging for desktop-in-browser, such as extJS and Dojo, not to mention of course the Yahoo! User! Interface! Library!.

In my case I set out on the task of doing browser-based applications four years ago, when none of these technologies existed. So I developed my own simple browser-side framework. jQuery let me round off the rough edges, and now I have no need of a third-party framework. So I am afraid I cannot offer any experience in the use of these others.

But even so, if I could use somebody else's dedicated work and put my efforts elsewhere, that would only be wise, so I continue to watch them closely.

When Do Application Programmers Accept Advice From Web Programmers?

Does all of this mean that we application programmers can learn nothing from web programmers? Of course not, that we be arrogant in the extreme. The answer is that when we enter the world of the public website, we must seek the advice and guidance of the experts in that world. So when I write the public portion of the application, the part that is visible to customers, vendors and other trading partners, I have to follow the standards of common practice: the back button has to work, Javascript should be optional, it should work on IE (arg), and so on and so forth.

Conclusion: When Worlds Collide

The desktop application programmer who decides to deploy business applications in the browser will face two broad challenges: techical and culturual, both of which stem from the origins of the web, which are so different from the origins of the desktop. The technical challenges tend to center around features of the browser that are either lacking or downright counter-productive, and this is made worse because the advice a programmer will receive comes from a culture whose goals are very different from his own. The database programmer who wants to deploy applications in the browser must be prepared to reproduce a lot of features we took for granted in the desktop, and he must also be prepared to filter through the received wisdom and throw out anything that does not meet the needs of his end-users.

Addendum: After reading a few comments on ycombinator.com I should probably stress that the job of getting the application into the browser is completely doable (in fact I've done it myself). The browser can now easily handle the job of desktop applications. The OP lists the hazards I and many other have faced and overcome in getting there. A big part of the conclusion is that it is a lot easier to get done if you recognize why it seems so hard: which is that you may be getting advice from people whose goals are very different form yours.

Next Essay: History Tables