Help! Quick start needed

[SteveBate]

Hi all,

I'm new to Jade and, at the moment, I am feeling completely like a fish out of water. I have a few questions that I'd appreciate an answer to so here goes.

Can someone tell me:
1.) Where do I go or how do I enable an app to be "Web enabled". The thin client pdf whitepaper shows a picture of a "Define Application" dialog but I don't know where this exists. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.
2.) Will this work if the app is of the MDI variety?
3.) Is it possible to write a Jade "desktop app" yet host it in a web page through an activex control so it could live inside, for instance, an iFrame?

Apologies if these are simple questions but I really am very new to this.

Many thanks

Steve

[murray]

Can someone tell me:
1.) Where do I go or how do I enable an app to be "Web enabled". The thin client pdf whitepaper shows a picture of a "Define Application" dialog but I don't know where this exists. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.

Browse -> Applications (or Ctrl-L), as for a regular Jade application. Add a new application, or select an existing GUI app. When the application type is "Web Enabled" there is a Tab Sheet titled "Web Options" (I am looking at Jade 6.1 ATM). The options depend on whether you are using IIS or Apache.

2.) Will this work if the app is of the MDI variety?

We were running applications in this way, but the MDI child forms were always maximised, so I'm not sure how normal child windows would look/behave.

For HTML applications using Jade forms Jade translates the Jade form to an HTML page. There are limitations to which controls you can use and what they can do. Read Jade's white paper "HTML Thin Client Implementation" (pdf), from their website. I suggest you also read through the "WebApps.pdf' manual.
I suggest trying out a very simple test application first - with just a Button, a Label and a TextBox.

[cnwrd1]

Hi Steve, is this you?

[Dino]

Hi Steve,

A web-enabled forms application doesn't support MDI as per a desktop application. Basically whenever a child form is activated (i.e. needs to be shown), a new web page will be generated to show the form. So if your users expect to be able to work with multiple open forms at the same time, I wouldn't expect web-enabled forms to be suitable.

As Murray has pointed out, web-enabled forms support a limited set of JADE's GUI functionality and typically an application that is to be deployed via web-enabled forms needs to be designed up-front with that in mind. Have a look at pages 20-41 in the following white paper for an overview of the controls, properties and events that are supported by web-enabled forms:

http://www.jade.co.nz/downloads/jade/pa ... LForms.pdf

Re your final question. The presentation layer of any JADE desktop thin client application is executed by the "jade.exe" program (along with several related DLLs). These components are part of the JADE platform; application developers cannot change them. The jade.exe program renders and executes the application GUI based on information that it receives from the JADE application server; this information is based on the form definitions, code, etc that has been built by the application developers (in the JADE IDE). JADE doesn't have a browser-based ActiveX version of the jade.exe thin client. So your question is actually asking, How can I wrap a Windows desktop EXE in something so that it can be hosted within an iFrame in a browser? Other than looking at something like Citrix (which seems like a bit of a sledgehammer), I don't know of an answer (or if it's even possible) and I'm not aware of any JADE applications being deployed in this manner.

Dean.