My point with FIC is that it can be used a developmente environment on its own for new projects. They have enought VFP characteristics translated and they generate the JS/CSS stuff needed. For the West Wind stuff, they may negociate a version with 30 or su uses w/o the nagscreen. But you can't simply run the FIC installers and watch the magic happes, you have to set up IIS, permisions, change your VFP code and so on. One downside, of course, is IIS itself. You can't target a standard Apache server.
About Lianja, there is a lot more. Today they released V6 wich I'm looking right now.
I tried Qoxdoo and it's good but is no datacentric RAD like Lianja and wakanda. There is another one I tried, smartclient, wich is also a good start but both are not so ambitious in their RAD features.
Meteor I'm using in my startup engineering course (great course BTW, free in coursera) and its very good , if you love to code :P. There is more interest in templating (using angular.js maybe, they are discussing this) but for the kind of apps we are trying to do is not RAD enought. And the same fulll stack concept is used by Wakanda, with an aditional business framework.
I didn't test java stuff, was sold the idea that JS is the future. looked at wavemaker but just after thei first sale, the community was not optimist about that, and you tellme there is a second one...not a good sign. Also the screen layout was not on par with other products.
>>First I looked at FoxInCloud (
www.foxincloud.org). I don't know why FIC is not widely used by VFP developers. It has made a huge effort to bring VFP to the web. Maybe the way to enable VFP apps to show in web, the way the samples are packed
or the dependency on West Wind Web Connection are hiding how good the product really is, once properly configured. Maybe it needs to redefine certain ways to make the environment work, or develop a simple mode wich make much more assumptions about your code with dummy callbacks that would reduce or eliminate adaptation efforts on forms, just to show the product out of the box. But FIC is awesome.
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>If anything is read into a dependancy on West Wind it should be that they built on the best base available in vfp for web. Rick's stuff was IMO the best even when there were still a few others in the web vfp pond. And yes, besides of the smarts of the FIC devs to pick West Wind it also reminds you how small vfp has grown. No reason not to look at FIC if you have an existing vfp solution. But to build a new solution also targeting web and then argue for vfp because FIC exists ? Not good enough in my book, look at newer tools because vfp might be bitten again by something similar to SMB2 bug (yes, supposedly fixed by SMB3, but damage was done well inside promised support time).
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>>Then I looked to Lianja and
found that it's mostly what I wanted on its own, but at Beta level. The new 5.8 RC is awesome and with the new widget stuff it's amazing. It lets you make a complete app pretty soon and ready for web using VFP on the client and the server. The roadmap shows that they are covering every angle and they have certainly a much wider user base than FIC.
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>Beta Level: no counter arguement, and to further your arguement, even considering Lianja DB engine builds on Recital, the rest is Ver. 1.0. But my comment is that they ARE good at fixing things. Lianja will give you client side cursors and a combination of script running on a machine code level engine - the first being an architectural element I like and the second probably neccessary for speed of the first. It also gives you freedom across all major script languages and an IDE. Not a sure bet, but a horse you should watch in the future at least ;-)
>...
>>In the field of stuff that are not related to VFP at all I came to wakanda (wakanda.org). This is a very advanced framework with a RAD environment wich do something more than Lianja in its App editor (and something less too). It's a full stack in pure javascript and is very, very good. Also, the price is right (free for server and client) and have a big comunity. It is also a business framework, like Lianja. I was able to develop a real world app in a couple days (the same app I did with Lianja in a day, but that was because I had to google for javascript help, wich I didn't need to do in Lianja since it uses VFP). I'm learning to like it a lot and the roadmap looks impressive.
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>Another great stack might be Qooxdoo - actively developed but AFAIR the RAD element mostly missing. Meteor backed by interesting people.
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>>I guess that by the end of this year we could count with a very solid and RAD replacement for the Fox.
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>Only one aternative if you hope for cursors - and you already mentioned Lianja...
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>>So, there is the field as I see it now. I would love to hear about more alternatives (not too expensive ones like Servoy) and experiences.
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>xDev3 in java land, but they have problems moving from the desktop. Servoy is expensive, but they finished integrating Phonegap/Cordoba. Wavemaker being sold off again is a warning signal.
