7 ms·

“ >150 input fields including multiple child tables up to levels 3 deep with their own grids” Yeah i’ve built single page apps with more input fields than this

“ >150 input fields including multiple child tables up to levels 3 deep with their own grids” Yeah i’ve built single page apps with more input fields than this and grid tables all in a single view. Are you sure this cant be easily done? Coincidentally that was first 15 years ago with extjs, second time with react 3 years ago - the latter being a slower process but still pretty much doable.

liveoneggs 4y ago
Does #1 still work?
- yrgulation 4y ago
  It did until roughly 5 years ago. From what i found by googling the product was acquired by a larger competitor and then decommissioned in favour of an existing product. The benefit in web based uis is that they work on any platform a supporting browser can be installed. And if you understand js it can work for a very very long time.
magicalhippo 4y ago
> Are you sure this cant be easily done? No, I'm no web expert. We've not found a way so far, and I've not seen something like this on the web, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. edit: to clarify, I don't doubt one can get 150 fields in a view on the web. But can one dev do it in one day and have it look great?
- auggierose 4y ago
  If you pay me £30000 and give me 3 months, and work with me to determine how your current designs look like, and what your current workflow is, I can make a react based environment for you to do your designs in just as quickly. If you pay me £60000, I do it in 2 months.
  - anthk 4y ago
    Bind your react UI to GL 4.5, DirectX12 and/or Vulkan. Then try to call either the Win32 API, or POSIX.
  - ant6n 4y ago
    I think a couple of Delphi licenses are cheaper.
- jaywalk 4y ago
  I know nothing about Delphi, but I guarantee that I could take any UI you designed in a day in Delphi and get something equivalent on the web in the same amount of time. Sticking a bunch of inputs on a page (even with some nesting) isn't complex at all. I think you are doing your customers a great disservice by not learning about web development.
  - mikewarot 4y ago
    Can you guarantee it'll run on the same machine, with the same browser, in 5 years, with no changes? Win32 is bedrock, the web is quicksand. Look at "HTTPS everywhere" and "you don't need FTP any more", which did little in terms of actual security, but broke almost everything in some small way. The web doesn't value legacy. It's a petulant 22 year old, that thinks it knows everything, and does stuff deliberately against the advice of those with more experience.
    - jaywalk 4y ago
      You are completely exaggerating the backwards-compatibility issues that web developers face. There are web applications I wrote 15 years ago that are still working today, in modern browsers, with zero changes. And I wasn't nearly experienced as I am today, and didn't even think about future-proofing anything. Is the web as stable as Win32? No, of course it's not. But a page with 150 inputs isn't anything that requires cutting-edge web technologies. It'll work just as well today as it'll work in 5 years.
      - wizofaus 4y ago
        I'm not sure backwards compatibility is necessarily the main issue - I agree web apps built 15 years ago are reasonably likely to still function today but user expectations have changed a lot and they will feel like apps that are anachronistic. Plus there are often issues with using older SSL protocols , certs signed by no-longer trusted root CAs, and of choose anything using Flash or ActiveX controls etc. is almost certainly now broken beyond repair. The other difference is that users expect web apps to keep working using a variety of browsers (that are constantly evolving) and the backend hosting side posts presents challenges in terms of keeping it running in the face of changing hosting providers, security and availability concerns, cost etc. etc. On that basis I'd agree a desktop app built now is far more likely to still be working as expected with zero maintenance in 15 years time than a web-based one.
- SomeCallMeTim 4y ago
  Depends on what "look great" means. And I've seen Delphi apps; I recently worked on one. In my experience they don't look great. Maybe you've done a lot of work to theme the controls; if so, wonderful. But what I'm familiar with just brought up Windows dialogs, and ... well, that's functional but I wouldn't say it looks great. But here are a few examples of ways you could create 150 fields in a day on a web app and have them look great: Arrays of control types: https://formik.org/docs/examples/field-arrays https://formik.org/docs/examples/field-arrays for simplicity of creating the controls plus something like https://chakra-ui.com/docs/components/input https://chakra-ui.com/docs/components/input to make them pretty. Spreadsheet look (with spreadsheet functionality!) in one control: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-spreadsheet https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-spreadsheet Want to build the form by hand and customize it? https://www.form.io/ https://www.form.io/ Form should follow a database schema and automatically display database records? https://marmelab.com/react-admin/ https://marmelab.com/react-admin/ (I used this approach to bring up an admin panel for more than 150 fields, though spread over a couple dozen pages, because of course that looks better than trying to bring up 150 fields on one page.) The standard way to create a large form (or any data table on a page) today is to iterate over the fields you want and add them to a page. There are frameworks like Chakra that can help you make everything look attractive--and you can theme the result in whatever color scheme or styles you like. I really don't want to have to touch Delphi ever again; it felt like I'd fallen back into the 1990s in code development terms, and I missed all of the modern features I'd grown accustomed to. If it's what you like, and it pays the bills, then enjoy. But know that people who have used more recent tools like myself consider it to be anachronistic.
  - mycall 4y ago
    Beyond Compare is a lovely Delphi application.
    - SomeCallMeTim 4y ago
      Good to know. I use that; didn't know it was Delphi. It's...not terrible looking. It's all Windows controls, as I mentioned above, which makes it look, well, simple. And it's a utility that really doesn't need to look fancy, so it's fine for what it is. It doesn't seem to have a dark theme, which is a bummer, but otherwise it does the job. But that doesn't mean I want to work on it.
- junon 4y ago
  Err... Yeah, depending on what you mean by "field", the answer is yes. In one day it is possible to stick 150 fields in an HTML document and apply some CSS to make it look nice.
  - watwut 4y ago
    Including functionality? Like including making them do what they are supposed to do? From what I recall about Delphi from years ago there is massive difference in amount of boilerplate and wiring to make stuff work. Delphi has almost none, while most tech I have seen on web has a lot of it.
    - yrgulation 4y ago
      Depends. Slow development frameworks such as react or vue may take a while. Vanilla js with something like axios should be straight forward. All you need is calls back and forth to your server to fetch and apply data. A trivial thing. Edit: However, my challenge is on wether it can be done or not. Delphi is cool, and tbh any tool you are an expert in will let you do something quicker than a tool thats new for you. It will probably take me a while to achieve the same goal in delphi.

liveoneggs 4y ago

Does #1 still work?

yrgulation 4y ago
It did until roughly 5 years ago. From what i found by googling the product was acquired by a larger competitor and then decommissioned in favour of an existing product. The benefit in web based uis is that they work on any platform a supporting browser can be installed. And if you understand js it can work for a very very long time.

magicalhippo 4y ago

> Are you sure this cant be easily done? No, I'm no web expert. We've not found a way so far, and I've not seen something like this on the web, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong. edit: to clarify, I don't doubt one can get 150 fields in a view on the web. But can one dev do it in one day and have it look great?

auggierose 4y ago
If you pay me £30000 and give me 3 months, and work with me to determine how your current designs look like, and what your current workflow is, I can make a react based environment for you to do your designs in just as quickly. If you pay me £60000, I do it in 2 months.
- anthk 4y ago
  Bind your react UI to GL 4.5, DirectX12 and/or Vulkan. Then try to call either the Win32 API, or POSIX.
- ant6n 4y ago
  I think a couple of Delphi licenses are cheaper.
jaywalk 4y ago
I know nothing about Delphi, but I guarantee that I could take any UI you designed in a day in Delphi and get something equivalent on the web in the same amount of time. Sticking a bunch of inputs on a page (even with some nesting) isn't complex at all. I think you are doing your customers a great disservice by not learning about web development.
- mikewarot 4y ago
  Can you guarantee it'll run on the same machine, with the same browser, in 5 years, with no changes? Win32 is bedrock, the web is quicksand. Look at "HTTPS everywhere" and "you don't need FTP any more", which did little in terms of actual security, but broke almost everything in some small way. The web doesn't value legacy. It's a petulant 22 year old, that thinks it knows everything, and does stuff deliberately against the advice of those with more experience.
  - jaywalk 4y ago
    You are completely exaggerating the backwards-compatibility issues that web developers face. There are web applications I wrote 15 years ago that are still working today, in modern browsers, with zero changes. And I wasn't nearly experienced as I am today, and didn't even think about future-proofing anything. Is the web as stable as Win32? No, of course it's not. But a page with 150 inputs isn't anything that requires cutting-edge web technologies. It'll work just as well today as it'll work in 5 years.
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      I'm not sure backwards compatibility is necessarily the main issue - I agree web apps built 15 years ago are reasonably likely to still function today but user expectations have changed a lot and they will feel like apps that are anachronistic. Plus there are often issues with using older SSL protocols , certs signed by no-longer trusted root CAs, and of choose anything using Flash or ActiveX controls etc. is almost certainly now broken beyond repair. The other difference is that users expect web apps to keep working using a variety of browsers (that are constantly evolving) and the backend hosting side posts presents challenges in terms of keeping it running in the face of changing hosting providers, security and availability concerns, cost etc. etc. On that basis I'd agree a desktop app built now is far more likely to still be working as expected with zero maintenance in 15 years time than a web-based one.
SomeCallMeTim 4y ago
Depends on what "look great" means. And I've seen Delphi apps; I recently worked on one. In my experience they don't look great. Maybe you've done a lot of work to theme the controls; if so, wonderful. But what I'm familiar with just brought up Windows dialogs, and ... well, that's functional but I wouldn't say it looks great. But here are a few examples of ways you could create 150 fields in a day on a web app and have them look great: Arrays of control types: https://formik.org/docs/examples/field-arrays https://formik.org/docs/examples/field-arrays for simplicity of creating the controls plus something like https://chakra-ui.com/docs/components/input https://chakra-ui.com/docs/components/input to make them pretty. Spreadsheet look (with spreadsheet functionality!) in one control: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-spreadsheet https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-spreadsheet Want to build the form by hand and customize it? https://www.form.io/ https://www.form.io/ Form should follow a database schema and automatically display database records? https://marmelab.com/react-admin/ https://marmelab.com/react-admin/ (I used this approach to bring up an admin panel for more than 150 fields, though spread over a couple dozen pages, because of course that looks better than trying to bring up 150 fields on one page.) The standard way to create a large form (or any data table on a page) today is to iterate over the fields you want and add them to a page. There are frameworks like Chakra that can help you make everything look attractive--and you can theme the result in whatever color scheme or styles you like. I really don't want to have to touch Delphi ever again; it felt like I'd fallen back into the 1990s in code development terms, and I missed all of the modern features I'd grown accustomed to. If it's what you like, and it pays the bills, then enjoy. But know that people who have used more recent tools like myself consider it to be anachronistic.
- mycall 4y ago
  Beyond Compare is a lovely Delphi application.
  - SomeCallMeTim 4y ago
    Good to know. I use that; didn't know it was Delphi. It's...not terrible looking. It's all Windows controls, as I mentioned above, which makes it look, well, simple. And it's a utility that really doesn't need to look fancy, so it's fine for what it is. It doesn't seem to have a dark theme, which is a bummer, but otherwise it does the job. But that doesn't mean I want to work on it.
junon 4y ago
Err... Yeah, depending on what you mean by "field", the answer is yes. In one day it is possible to stick 150 fields in an HTML document and apply some CSS to make it look nice.
- watwut 4y ago
  Including functionality? Like including making them do what they are supposed to do? From what I recall about Delphi from years ago there is massive difference in amount of boilerplate and wiring to make stuff work. Delphi has almost none, while most tech I have seen on web has a lot of it.
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    Depends. Slow development frameworks such as react or vue may take a while. Vanilla js with something like axios should be straight forward. All you need is calls back and forth to your server to fetch and apply data. A trivial thing. Edit: However, my challenge is on wether it can be done or not. Delphi is cool, and tbh any tool you are an expert in will let you do something quicker than a tool thats new for you. It will probably take me a while to achieve the same goal in delphi.