>>But since you are starting a fresh project I would suggest you investigate other tech than Fox. It will take a little time to learn but don't let that scarce you - if you can learn Fox you can learn Web. The biggest issue would be data access (at least that was mine). The web in general does not have an easy way to access databases - they normally use a server side solutions or a RestfulAPI of some sort. You can help yourself by choosing a web Framework that is has everything built-in - Django (uses python - very easy to learn and very popular language), Ruby, Node Express, and many others. What they do is provide the server side of things - like access to data. But they also require a web server like apache or nginx. So deploying is also a challenge. If you believe you can handle writing functions to access data take a look at any of the RestfulAPI tools available - Flask, Django, Node. Using a RestfulAPI make the front end so much easier.
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>This is a good point and I have thought about that already. I guess I continue trying to figure out what is best. The data access and creating Restful API is the least of my problems because I have sufficient knowledge to create the business and data part. Deploying might be a challenge, and security aspects can also add to the complexity.
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>But what scares me the most is the front end, for example using Bootstrap, Jason, JavaScript, CSS can be extremely time consuming, from what I have seen other people struggling with this. I would not have a problem investing time into this, if I would not be already so busy. FoxInCloud would give me a real simple way of creating those UI interfaces and I can concentrate on the important parts of the project.

Christian,

I think you've understood the philosophy behind FoxInCloud: even if learning HTML, CSS, JS, REST, JSON can be fun and interesting, we're business men constrained by time and budget; we've already invested a lot in understanding our client's business, keeping up with daily evolutions, managing the client relationship, developing applications that match this whole complex stuff… why the outcome of a new UI technology (the Web) would force us to re-develop all this asset in a technology that is far more complex (argument of my blog post) that the '4G' integrated dev. environment that's we've built our businesses on?

It's been written here and there over and over, current state of the 'mainstream' web stack (HTML+CSS+JS+MVC framework+REST+JSON+Server-side framework+Server-side code+Database) takes us back to some sort of 'screw and bolt' era where you have to build your components, make sure they can play with each other, assemble, adjust, fail, try again, etc. Every layer being independent from each other, you have to keep in mind an huge number of names, structures, rules; manageable for a simple web app, becomes awfully complex for any application that seems quite simple in VFP. Why? because while VFP provides the 'RAD' structure where every components integrate with each other, in web development layers are independent by design, it's up to the developer to make them fit together.

So we came with the idea that a product like FoxInCloud could help:

• value the 'functional asset' inside the application regardless of the technology -- the underlying structure and knowledge
  
• consider the Web as merely a new GUI technology, as opposed to the common idea that it would be a revolution constraining to a complete change
  
• build 'forms' in web tech (aka HTML pages) that behave just like the original forms: same events, same behavior, same functionalities
  
• take care of the user events processing and state maintenance
  

To be perfectly clear, FoxInCloud does not use the REST + JSON technology: FoxInCloud runs the adapted VFP app. within a Web server, and just replicates the user interface in HTML with a similar layout, either 'classic' (absolute positioning like in VFP) or 'responsive' (relative positioning using Bootstrap); it collects the user event from the HTML GUI and sends to the server for execution by the VFP app, identifies the changes that the user event has triggered on the VFP UI and replicates them into HTML.

FoxInCloud can also be taken as a first step into the Web, a way of gaining a Web exposure and acquire some knowledge and experience in this area without putting the whole business at a huge risk. Because they can adapt their application progressively, by sets of forms, VFP software companies can somehow measure their [prospective] clients' responsiveness to this new channel and decide whether they want to invest more in this area… And if some day they decide to move the whole application to the Web and drop the desktop, they can do it with FoxInCloud and in parallel develop 'mainstream' web techs (like those above) if they also want to drop VFP.

Somehow FoxInCloud can help address both the VFP end-of-life and the Web issues with a controlled risk.