I want to build a "mobile first" ASP.NET MVC (ecommerce) Website, and I need it to be as "Internet" light as possible on the company agents' cellphones since they may have limited Internet in the field.
Is there a way to create a .NET Website, and have it check for local files when it's run through a mobile device?? The kind of files would pretty much be anything that's static for the site (CSS, JS, Images, some htmls...) so they get loaded from the phone's SD card instead of downloading from web.
The website will be mostly used by field agents that need to ask for equipment when with a customer, so any required configurations can be made to their phone beforehand.
Also, this website should be able to work normally when using it from a PC. So it should be able to work with Local files and normal Server files
Any ideas?
Related
If i write an desktop app in tidesdk or tide kit will it be possible for users to read my source code, just like from ordinary web page or not ?
Yes, if the user knows where to look. It's not viewable by right clicking the window and selecting source, but if they browse to the install directory, all the HTML / related files are there in broad daylight.
You could come up with some strategies to protect them, either using encryption or just providing a bootstrapper application which downloads the rest of the source from a server on startup or something like that...but if it's a huge concern of yours you're probably better off using a different platform.
I need to build a website that can be downloaded to a CD.
I'd like to use some CMS (wordpress,Kentico, MojoPortal) to setup my site, and then download it to a cd.
There are many program that know how to download a website to a local drive, but how to make the search work is beyond my understanding.
Any idea???
The project is supposed to be an index of Local community services, for communities without proper internet connection.
If you need to make something that can be viewed from a CD, the best approach is to use only HTML.
WordPress, for example, needs Apache and MySQL to run. And although somebody can "install" the website on his own computer if you supply the content via a CD, most of your users will not be knowledgeable enough to do this task.
Assuming you are just after the content of the site .. in general you should be able to find a tool to "crawl" or mirror most sites and create an offline version that can be burned on a CD (for example, using wget).
This will not produce offline versions of application functionality like search or login, so you would need to design your site with those limitations in mind.
For example:
Make sure your site can be fully navigated without JavaScript (most "crawl" tools will discover pages by following links in the html and will have limited or no JavaScript support).
Include some pages which are directory listings of resources on the site (rather than relying on a search).
Possibly implement your search using a client-side technology like JavaScript that would work offline as well.
Use relative html links for images/javascript, and between pages. The tool you use to create the offline version of the site should ideally be able to rewrite/correct internal links for the site, but it would be best to minimise any need to do so.
Another approach you could consider is distributing using a clientside wiki format, such as TiddlyWiki.
Blurb from the TiddlyWiki site:
TiddlyWiki allows anyone to create personal SelfContained hypertext
documents that can be published to a WebServer, sent by email,
stored in a DropBox or kept on a USB thumb drive to make a WikiOnAStick.
I think you need to clarify what you would like be downloaded to the CD. As Stennie said, you could download the content and anything else you would need to create the site either with a "crawler" or TiddlyWiki, but otherwise I think what you're wanting to develop is actually an application, in which case you would need to do more development than what standard CMS packages would provide. I'm not happy to, but would suggest you look into something like the SalesForce platform. Its a cloud based platform that may facilitate what you're really working towards.
You could create the working CMS on a small web/db server image using VirtualBox and put the virtual disk in a downloadable place. The end user would need the VirtualBox client (free!) and the downloaded virtual disk, but you could configure it to run with minimal effort for the creation, deployment and running phases.
I am new to windows azure. I've created simple HelloWorld ASP.NET azure application and published it. I know I can republish whole application in Visual Studio by clicking right button on project and then publish it. But is it possible to update only one file (aspx page, picture etc.)
Thanks!
Regards, Alexander.
I think if you're just learning Windows Azure, the most helpful answer is "You can't." The way Windows Azure works is that to update an application, you create the full package and deploy it again.
This isn't to say that David's answer isn't also correct. I just wanted to directly answer the question of "How do I change just one file after I deploy?"
If you want to update individual files such as images, one thing you can do is store all images (and css, javascript, and any other static content) in Blob storage. This has several advantages:
Easy to upload new files individually, with both free tools and paid tools. For instance: Cloudberry Explorer is a free app, and Cerebrata Cloud Storage Studio is a paid app, both which let you manage containers and blobs individually.
Smaller deployment package, because you've removed images and other large files
Less load on IIS, since image requests go directly to blob storage, not to your role instances
You can't store your aspx files in blobs, though you can store static content like html in blobs. To update aspx, you're basically updating the deployment. You can now do this as an "upgrade" which doesn't disrupt your IP address and, if you have multiple instances, doesn't take down your service during upgrade.
You can either use webdeploy (which should do a selective update of all files) or connect via remote desktop and update certain files yourself.
Like the comment and MSDN says: neither of these two ways are recommended/usable for production deployments. They are only meant as a shortcut for certain development scenarios.
I have built a website with asp.net jquery sql server 2008.Now i want to build a mobile version of it(web,accessible via the browser).Do i have to to migrate data to the cloud?if i build in .NET mobile ,will it be accessible from iphone and adroid as it will be accessible via browser?my website is social directory for places,is there a gps api that can help me to indicate that a user is near a place?
If you're creating a mobile version of a current app that has existing data sources etc theoretically the only thing you should have to change is your front end to be suitable for a mobile browser.
In the end you web server will still be serving the pages as if it was any other normal browser (except it would just be the mobile version), and have the same access to resources (eg. databases0 that the standard site does.
In terms of "the cloud" there is no reason that you need to really host anything in there (web/data server) but if you site ends up getting large and/or you don't want to worry about managing infrastructure issues etc investing in the cloud may be a good idea, there is plenty of reasons to go to the cloud but for what you are trying to achieve it is not a necessity.
Please feel free to add multiple answers, each with a single point, to make the voting work well... and don't add something someone else already said.
All I know about AIR is you can have local storage, but there must be more to it... offline access is another key one but then you can run a SWF locally if you save it to your PC.
The biggest benefits (in addition to LocalStorage/SqlLite support) would be...
Read/Write Access to the local file system (including support for native file system dialogs)
Native Drag and Drop Support
In addition, Air apps aren't just Flash based, but can also use HTML/JavaScript via WebKit
Update:
All the info you need on Air is on the Wikipedia page. (and it's external links) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Integrated_Runtime
In short, if you need native filesystem and limited desktop interaction Air is the way to go, if you don't need these features, use Flex in the browser.
If you need additional system integration but still cross platform, try Appcelerator/Titanium, Java/JavaFX, Python with WxWidgets, or C++/QT.
It really depends on what you want to build.
You can find all features specific to AIR here :
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/features/
Running a swf file locally doesn't really work for applications that have been pushed out to end users. The user's won't have access to any updates of the application (which an Air application does). Also a swf run locally might not be able to connect back to the server it came from, depending on the security settings.
In reality the nice part of flex is you don't have to commit to web or air. You can develop an application that can be built to run in both the web and on the desktop. For example you can put a majority of the code in a library project and then have a web specific and desktop specific projects that use that library.
Two other advantages of Air - one is that it allows you manage updates to your application and have the updates automatically pushed out. Second is it supports drag and drop (similar to native file access) so you can support dragging pictures or files onto your application.
AIR apps run using Adobe AIR runtime. It has access to your file system and includes more powerful capabilities. Whereas, a web-based flash/flex app runs in a flash player within a web browser. It runs in a sandbox. It has limitations. It can't access local file systems (without user intervention).
Features of AIR:
Can access file system.
With AIR 2.0 you can access (communicate) to native file (executables) of that OS. Means you can communicate to a C app which does some OS specific functionality from the AIR app.
Encrypted Local Store for securely storing credentials.
Easy drag-and-drop functionality.
Behaves as native desktop applications.
Notifications.
System tray icons.
.. and much more.