Can offline web apps be a replacement for desktop apps? - offline

I work on a desktop sales app that is run off a tablet and was wondering if this and other "traditional" desktop tablet applications could be viable as a offline web application. The main difference with tablet applications being the inking support. I think a web app can get close with browser gestures.

The main different is the inking (gesture) support.

I don't see the distinction between a tablet and a laptop. The decision to build an off line web application should be no different regardless of the medium.

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Using the power platform for a multi tenant web application

I need to build an application that mostly displays grids of DB information, and drill down edit forms. It has a few "analytics" on it, but nothing fancy. The application must be multi tenant and hold a load of a few thousand concurrent, external users, that authenticate using SSO/JWT.
Is the Microsoft power platform a viable platform for this type of solution?
Thanks.
Building such kind of applications is the main purpose of Power Apps.
Build apps in hours—not months—that easily connect to data, use Excel-like expressions to add logic, and run on the web, iOS, and Android devices.

Microsoft edge remote debugging

Is there any way to remotely debug a mobile web app in a W10&Edge phone from a computer through a USB connection? I mean, the same way we debug web apps in Android and iOS through Chrome and Safari dev tools.
If it is posible, which are the requirements of the computer? Would it be posible from a W7 or W8 computer?
I do not believe it is possible via USB, but you can use something like VorlonJS to debug websites remotely, even on mobile devices.
I demo exactly how to do this in a sample on GitHub.
Developer:
Simply navigate to your dashboard at http://vorlondebugger.azurewebsites.net/dashboard/default. This is your dashboard for viewing who is currently on the Vorlon demo site.
Users:
Instruct them to navigate to http://vorlondemoapp.azurewebsites.net/, which is a basic HTML5 boilerplate site.
Usage:
Look at your dashboard, and you'll now see that the users are viewing the page. You can alter their code on-the-fly.
I had a same question. But I solve my problem with this:
I copied html+js code into my UWP application and then I can remote debug it with Visual Studio

Which Platform of Unity is best for Facebook Canvas App

I want to deploy my Unity3D game on Facebook as canvas App. There are two platforms in unity version 5:
WebPlayer
WebGL (Preview)
I have no idea about both of these builds. I am using Parse to store my user data. And Facebook Unity SDK for social gaming. I have built for IOS platform and now for Canvas App deployment I want to know:
which one of these would be best for Canvas App?
I want to know if there are any issues regarding Parse API or Facebook Unity SDK for
WebPlayer/WebGL build?
EDIT:
I have built for WebPlayer and i can not run it on Google Chrome.
does it have to do anything with Canvas App too?
I have built for WebGL and tried to run it on Google Chrome and got this alert:
( I am using Google Chrome Version 44.0.2403.107 (64-bit) )
Any suggestion/help is highly appreciated.
I will suggest you to not build your game in webplayer, because chrome is dropping support for unity webplayer(Google Chrome version 42 and later has disabled all NPAPI plugins), and other browser will also drop the support sooner or later. The best way forward is to use webGL. WebGL in unity is still getting evolved, but this is the future. I also have developed game for webGL, I didn't face much problems except data storage. Parse does not support webgl yet, you have to look for other services. In my case I have build my own php server and it is working fine. Anyways you have to choose what is best in your case. You should use webGL , but thats my opinion.
The error message is more or less self-explanatory: Chrome doesn't support running Unity WebGL when it is run from a local file on disk, because of Chrome security. This is not a real problem, as in production it will always be run from a webserver (http://).
During development, your options are:
Start chrome with access to local files: chrome.exe --allow-file-access-from-files
Host a local webserver (Apacha/WAMP, IIS, etc)
Use firefox
You are correct. Building the unity for the web is the way to go. You select web from the build settings and you can upload it to the facebook canvas. The thing with chrome is that it no longer supports NPAPI and that is what the Unity web players uses. You can manually enable it and try out your game in chrome. But for the majority of chrome users unity web player no longer works.

WAMP servers... why just for web development

What is to stop you using a WAMP server (or similar) to run single-user business database applications day-to-day?
I read everywhere that WAMP and the like are intended for the development of web apps, but why can't they be used to deploy desktop apps - what're the downsides?
Personally I think WAMP/MAMP/LAMP are great applications that CAN be used for production servers.
I have started doing this myself as I do not have the complete knowledge in server administration on the linux end and my PHP applications are not compatible with IIS.
If you are a small operation than it should save you time then go for it.
If your business grows and you can afford to put on staff to manage dedicated servers with the Apache, PHP ect all installed separately then I also recommend this.
The main difference I can see is that WAMP probably wont be as scalable as the preferred setup. The binaries are all integrated and sometimes I have had issues trying to figure out which php.ini file the system is using.
WAMP is just as secure as any other server as long as you know how to do so, is provides a UI layer which cost CPU time but like I said if you are only serving small web sites/apps than this should be just fine.
My other recommendation is to install it on a Server (Windows 2008 RS or 20012) Windows servers are more reliable and powerful than the Windows User version. Just remember to turn off IIS and any other roles not used by the Windows Server.
Make sure you your WAMP folder backed up regularly!
Good luck
I haven't found one yet. I guess the speed won't be as good as a 'pure' setup, but it sounds like that isn't an issue.
I run an epos web app for a photo studio no problem at all!
WAMP usually stands for Windows, Apache, Mysql, PHP or whatever your particular choice for P is. It describes a stack meant for specifically for deploying/developing web applications and is a rough equivalent to LAMP. Most things that would be considered desktop applications wouldn't use a webserver and more than likely would not be written in PHP.
The issue is not so much one of downsides as it is Apples and Oranges: Desktop applications are usually built with a less web centric stack.
Actually i used with wamp for many purposes; I used it with VB.NET apps, PHP, etc...but I think if you want to use it for deployment, you should start by configuring it to do so.
For example, for PHP deactivation errors display in php.ini, start listening on all allow all in httpd.conf, activating safe mode, setting a password for MySQL; and many other options that have to be configured.
I personally prefer because it is a quick and lightweight tool.

UI and platform choices for developing desktop widgets

I've been asked to build 'widgets' that let users of a web application install a desktop, or web-based widget which will provide:
Notifications of new content.
Personalized access to key performance indicators
I'm looking for some information to inform our requirements and design discussions.
On the desktop you can target the Vista Sidebar, or on OS X there is the Dashboard, as well as others. From the web perspective you can target iGoogle and others. If I was to start by developing for the widget framework that had the greatest number of users, which would I choose? Does anyone provide statistics on the number of users?
The client would prefer to provide a richer experience for end users and I think this could be achieved using a desktop widget framework. However there would be some questions around the number of users that we can hit with any single framework (eg. sidebar). What technology or framework could I target that gives me cross-platform compatibility? Should we embed Flash?
Rather than live within a widget framework, I was going to suggest the creation of a standalone application. Are there any frameworks that help facilitate the creation of widget-like applications?
Target platforms:
Windows (Windows XP and newer)
Apple (OS X 10.4 and newer)
Linux (nice to have)
You can put a glance on Adobe Air.
It allows a cross-platform development in Flash/Flex or HTML/JS.