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Best Browser For Using Complex Web Applications?
yanyan writes "I'm fairly new to the field of web application development. Currently I'm working on a big online ticketing system for passage and freight for a local shipping company. It's a one-man show and the system is written in Ruby and uses Rails. Aside from the requisite functionality of creating bookings the system must also print reports and tickets, and this is where I've discovered (the hard way) that most, if not all, browsers fall short. I've had to switch from Firefox 3.6.3 to Opera 10.53 because of a major printing bug in Firefox, but the latest stable Opera is also giving me its own share of problems. To complicate things, an earlier version of Opera (10.10) doesn't appear to have 10.53's printing problems, but I'm wary. What browsers and specific versions do you end up deploying for use with big, complex web apps that include printing? Also consider CSS accuracy and consistency."
Export your data to XML or PDF on the fly and have something sensible print it.
Even though I don't use it for development, I've got several of my clients using Chrome to take advantage of the Javascript engine. My applications use a lot of Javascript for the interfaces, and Chrome speeds up the rendering of large data sets compared to IE or Firefox.
For printing, the only solution to keep you sane is to export reports as PDF and let them print through their reader. That's specifically what PDF is for (consistency in displaying and printing). Depending on the report, they may also appreciate a CSV version that they can do their own filtering and sorting on.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
...is a much more serious bug than any possible printing problem.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
If you forced me to use Opera to use your system I would demand that they find a new developer. Or as a customer I would find a new system.
This is a classic example of a developer trying to tailor the user to the system instead of the system to the user.
Stop your whining and just make it work in one or more of the common browsers. I have been forced to bend crap environments to my will and I suspect that most developers around slashdot have bent bad systems until they cried; but made them work in the end.
Absolutely agreed.
Anything mission-critical like printing a ticket should absolutely NOT use something that could cause the whole system to break down when a single trivial update happens. HTML wasn't designed for printing, and it never will be. The browser is just a band aid put on top of a fundamental disconnect in technology and application.
I'd even go so far as to say that unless you're outputting and printing from PDF or some other well defined and standardized print format, don't proceed any farther. You'll pay more for the problems down the road when the whole she-bang doesn't work for some dumb reason.
AccountKiller
You've got it backwards. You don't write a web application and then go around installing 9 different browsers at 20 different patch levels in a search to find one which finally doesn't break while using your app. Rather, you write an application and install 9 different browsers at 20 different patch levels to make sure none of them break while using your app. Fix the app, not the browser. And if the problem is intractable in the most popular versions of the most popular browsers, change your framework.
Apps like MET (link)
Yes, privacy implications are another great reason to avoid web apps.
Google Apps - YouTube
QED. All of these are pale imitations of native apps when it comes to feature sets, responsiveness and UI.
There has to be huge reasons to abandon web for native development.
Other way round, dude.
Java lost the applet battle about 5 years ago.
What does that even mean? Google Apps are mostly written in Java and translated, so clearly the largest web app producer on the planet likes the language (just not the level of control a client could maintain if Google actually deployed Java). Java is still going to execute faster than HTML/Javascript - hell, we're only just starting to see hardware 3D acceleration, something Java's had since 2001. If you're about to bitch that Swing is ugly, it can be skinned, or you can use SWT which builds on top of native widgets.
Of course, this is just an argument that Java is better than HTML/Javascript for client/server apps; the best solution is whatever gives the user the richest client experience, employing a domain-specific remoting protocol (e.g. IMAP for e-mail) for transferring information between client and server at the business rather than presentation level.
Java lost the applet battle about 5 years ago. JavaScript is now a powerful full fledged language that is FAST!!!
Your definition of "fast" is a comparison with last year's Javascript interpreter/compiler. My definition of "fast" is comparing responsiveness of a whole native app vs a whole HTML/CSS/Javascript app.
Html5 + CSS 3 is an incredibly powerful, flexible
Compared to what? HTML4 + CSS2? Yes, in theory - pity it's not actually implemented fully or stably by any browser yet, just like all recent W3C standards (whence the OP's problem).
Compared to native Windows / Cocoa / Java UI? No.
and extremely easy to use
You need to try Xcode. Or its older (and wiser) sibling, Smalltalk. That is easy to use.
So Ignore what idiot poster posted above
If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning...
If an engineer is asked, "What is the best tractor for me to commute to my office every day in?" one of the first questions should be, "Why do you need a tractor?"
Even if you find out that the man really needs a tractor and isn't just lacking knowledge of alternative automotive technologies, you'll have learnt more about his specific requirements in the process.