Zugg Software :: View topic

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 6:44 pm

Yeah, that's an ominous topic, isn't it? I had some interesting thoughts last night and wanted to start a philosophical discussion here, separate from the over-grown Blog topic.

(warning, this is long, but thought provoking...)

Last night I was thinking about this CMS/blog software that I've been looking at (discussed over in the Blog topic). It occured to me that I was getting all excited about having a server-based PHP/MySQL system to handle the web site for me so that I could add content and edit content directly from my web browser, rather than having to use Frontpage or Dreamweaver.

But why? As someone who has regularly trashed web-based applications for their poor user interface and lack of performance, why was I so excited about using a web-based application instead of something powerful like Dreamweaver? Was I just excited about CMS systems because they were something new to me? (I love new stuff)

I decided to look at the pros and cons of this:

PROS of using web-based CMS instead of Dreamweaver (insert favorite web design tool here):
1) Can manage web content from any computer. Don't need Dreamweaver installed.
2) Can edit something as soon as I read it and see a typo. Don't have to wait for Dreamweaver to load.
3) Update occurs immediately. No need to FTP new files.
4) Can grant permission to other people (Gurus) to also edit content. They don't need Dreamweaver either.
5) Users can easily change "theme" to whatever they want.
6) I don't have to worry about HTML or site structure...I can focus on content.
7) It's free. (Dreamweaver is expensive, especially if you have more than one computer).

CONS of using CMS:
1) User interface isn't as fancy. Hmm, sometimes this is a PRO when you want to do something simple.
2) Dreamweaver can do anything...CMS is limited in feature set.
3) ummm...anything else???

Yeah, it became pretty obvious. While I like using Dreamweaver when I'm doing my own PHP development, it's a total overkill for just updating content on the web site. When I just want to add a new announcement to the Zugg Software home page, it's a pain to load FrontPage, load the home page file, edit it, save it, run my FTP program, upload the new file, then test it in a browser. That's a lot of steps. In a typical CMS system, I just click the Edit button on the home page, add my annoucement, and click Save. Easy.

The collaboration aspect is also a big one. A CMS system will let other interested people get move involved in writing articles, updating help files, etc. A lot like the forum software has helped with customer support, rather than doing it all via email.

So, I can see that in some cases, web-based applications are useful. So let's take an extreme step...is this the death of desktop-based software? Am I wasting my time with writing the eMobius email client?

That's a tough question to ask at this point in such an important project. But the more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that I want my email client on my LOCAL computer. I don't want to use GMail, or any server based mail. I want complete control over my email and want to be able to integrate it with other systems that I have, like my customer database. If my email and customer database were online, some hacker would figure out a way to break in and steal it.

So, there are obviously cases (for me at least), where a local desktop application is the better solution. So what's the difference between CMS/Dreamweaver and my email client?

Well, the easy answer is that I use CMS for publishing information that I want other people to see. It's used to manage the content of my web site, which is where I sell and discuss my products such as zMUD. I want this information to get to as many people as possible, and I want as much help as I can get in managing and improving this information to help support customers.

My email client handles my *private* information. Some of it is support email that is similar to the online discussion database, so I'm not worried about that. But I've got more than just my business here. I get personal email from family members and stuff like that. I've got private customer correspondence with sensitive information like credit card numbers or registration codes.

So, to extend this, I like the CMS stuff, but can't use it for "private" or personal information. Because I don't trust it and I don't trust the Internet. I've seen first hand what hackers can do, and it scares me to death.

This led me to thinking about Portal software and what we have talked about regarding the other things eMobius can do, such as being an RSS reader, or even accessing the posts on the Forums. A "Portal" is like my own personal home page. It's my "portal" to the Internet. There are a lot of services that provide this kind of portal (Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and many many more). You can add RSS feeds from your favorite news source, add a block showing the current weather conditions in your home town, have the scores from your favorite sports team listed, have stock market results, etc, etc.

In a desktop "portal" you would have your latest email, a list of recent posts and replies to your favorite forums around the Internet, various newsgroups you subscribe to, etc. Sort of your own "Today" page in Outlook, but extended to the ultimate level.

Your daily "Today" page has all of the information you want at your finger tips, along with all of your tasks, calendar appointments, etc. You load this up first thing in the morning, scan the news, scan the email, look at your tasks and use this to plan your activities for the day.

We all have a version of this I think at one level or another. Some people read the newspaper every morning, or watch the morning news. Some people read their favorite forums and answer their new email. Some people immediately look at the stock market reports. In both our personal lives and in our business lives, we collect information in order to determine how to organize our day (or we ignore it all and take a day off :)

What tools are we using for this? We have our email in an email client. We have web discussion forums on our browser. We have news in our newspaper, or on television, or on the Internet. We have lots of tools.

The point I'm trying to get to is that this is all *personal* information. If I had some sort of "magic portal" web page that showed me all of this information each day, I wouldn't want it to be hosted on AOL or MSN or something like that! This information has my email in it, it has a list of the stock market accounts that I'm interested in (and perhaps even sensitive banking account information). It has a list of the types of news and information that I'm interested in (which some advertising company would love to get a hold of so they could send me customized ads). Maybe I don't want other people to know what kind of news I read. That's my own private affair.

So, while I can install my own CMS software on my own server and use it for some sort of magic portal, I would never want to do this because I don't want anyone else to see this page.

On the other hand, I might want to "publish" information about myself for other people to see. I publish my Resume, my daily thoughts about the world, discussions of my favorite video games, pictures of my cat, etc, etc. This is information that I *decide* I want to be public, and so this kind of information is excellent to put onto a CMS system to publish to the world. But this is not *MY* Portal to the world. It is my *published* persona.

So, where is the tool that I can use to create my own personal and private "portal" to the world? It has to be a desktop tool, and not AOL or MSN or Yahoo, because this is *private* information. But it certainly isn't Outlook. Outlook can't keep track of the zMUD discussion forum for me, nor does it have RSS capability (well, there might be a plugin for it). Mainly, Outlook is a pain to customize. It's mainly an "email view" of the world. It forces me to look at the world the way Microsoft Outlook wants me to.

I can create a private web page on my ISP that is password protected and has links to all my favorite sites, with RSS feeds, etc. But that page isn't going to have my private email on it.

So, I am force to have multiple tools. There is no "magic portal" software that does all of this for me. The closest thing I have ever seen to this is probably Lotus Notes. But even that is hard to customized and requires a whole infrastructure of backend servers. Your common everyday user isn't going to have all of that backend database stuff.

You can probably guess as to where this is leading...can eMobius be your personal magic portal into the world? Well, it certainly has the customizeability built in to handle this. In theory it can handle email, rss feeds, discussion forums and anything else we write a plugin for. It's private and secure. Hmm...

This is my vision of the future. I run eMobius every morning to see all of the latest news, emails, stock reports, newsgroups, discussion forums, and all of the other information that I need to organize my day and decide what to do. I have a copy at home that I use to remind me of my dentist appointment and my upcoming tasks and activities. I can check to see what chores my wife has posted to my "hunny-do-list". I can see what new movies and DVDs were just released. Everything I need to decide how to spend my day. I have a copy at work that shows me all of my meetings and tasks, the jobs my secretary has posted to my urgent list, stock market and news feeds related to my job (and maybe a few personal feeds like a daily fix of Dilbert). Whatever information you need to plan and organize your activities for the day.

It's more than just email. It's more than just a giant PDA. It's more than just a calendar. It's more than just a customized web site of RSS feeds and links. It's everything. It's what my portable PDA of the future would be if it had fast wireless network capability and could connect to the Internet no matter where I was, and if it could somehow handle the task of displaying all of this information in a customizeable manner. I'd honestly do my email from a large desktop screen anyday rather than use my little PDA or cell-phone screen. But maybe my PDA can synch with this desktop version so that I can read some of the news articles a bit later (during a boring meeting).

A lot of other companies have tried this...why have none of them succeeded? Why can't Outlook do all of this (well, Internet Explorer is a separate product and not fully integrated into Outlook, and with all of it's security issues, nobody would want to do this anyway!). Why can't Mozilla do this (well, actually they are probably the closest in terms of capability, but this is a huge project that requires a lot more coordination between various plugins than you can typically manage with an open source project). Besides, am I going to buy an open-source product like Mozilla and have all of my employees use it and risk my company on it? Some might, but most want a *real* company with *real* support behind a product. And is my Mom going to learn how to install Mozilla and customize all of it's plugins to set up her own personal "portal"? No, it's way to complicated for non-geeks.

Let's face it, this is a huge project! Can eMobius do all of this? I'm not even sure. Perhaps it is beyond the capabilities of a single programmer. Perhaps I'll end up relying on plugins just like Mozilla and end up with a mess that is hard to customize where all of the pieces don't integrate nicely.

But it is still a worthy goal and a worthy dream. And this is my dream. This is where I want to take eMobius into the future.

zMUD brought scripting to the masses to allow them to customize and play their MUD games the way they wanted. eMobius will bring this kind of scripting power and customization to the masses to allow you to organize, customize and "play your life" they way you want to.

Is this something the rest of you can get excited about? I'd love to hear your comments. Fire away!

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 7:08 pm

Btw, I think it was Darker who expressed a similar "dream" early in the eMobius discussions. It just took me a bit longer to embrace some of those ideas myself. So, thanks Darker!

Enchanter Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 698

Sounds like zuggOS is inevitable no matter how much you've scoffed about it before. Laughing

I wouldn't say I can get excited about it -I dislike routine schedules and this outline you've provided is certainly much too organized and pro get-it-done for excitement from me-, but it is something I would use...until MS makes you a bazillionaire and ruins your hard work.

I got the sense you were wondering "What's next?" after zMud 7.x was released. Not a problem now, huh? Wink

This is certainly thought-provoking.

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 7:59 pm

Zugg,

I know that you are using tools on your Linux box, and I wish I could recommend stuff on that platform. I'm mostly a Windows guy.

CityDesk is one commercial CMS package that is actually a desktop client. It is a product of FogCreek, the guy who owns the Joel On Software forums. This product actually does what you want, or at least most of it. CityDesk's web page is here: http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/index.html

I'm currently using DotNetNuke and it does a lot of stuff you outlined above. I had found all kinds add-ins that has made my new site very easy to maintain. I have been able to give other people access to specific content, so that they can maintain it as well. DotNetNuke was modeled after PHPNuke, IIRC. The website is http://www.dotnetnuke.com/ There should be other links for sites using this portal software.

If you want to see a customized DotNetNuke site, you can check out my new portal at http://www.wheelmud.net My most favorite feature is that I can put just about anything on a RSS feed. I now have 2 RSS feeds coming out of my portal, and I don't have to do a thing. The portal software automatically updates the feeds whenever I add content.

I would love for eMobius to really take off. I'm waaaaaay tired of Outlook. It is one of the most frustrating pieces of software I had the displeasure of working with.

Anyways, just wanted to point at stuff for you to look at and compare. Wink

Posted: Fri Sep 10, 2004 9:37 pm

BortaS, when you say "this product does what you want" I think you are referring to my other post regarding CMS and what I want to do with my *published* web site. Correct me if I'm wrong, but none of these products "do what I want" when it comes to the dream for eMobius were they can be my portal to all of the information that I need. I don't see any email support there. They all look like CMS products designed to create your own published web site. Same thing with DotNetNuke. These products don't provide the information that *you* need, they provide information to *others* that you want them to know about.

Just wanted to make sure we were clear. I want to keep this thread on track about eMobius and it's use as a personal portal for private information. Discussion of CMS solutions should go in a different thread. And yes, I'm getting away from Windows on the server and want cross platform solutions, which means PHP and MySQL. That doesn't mean linux-based...it means cross platform, which means I'm *not* going to choose a Windows-only solution no matter how good it is.

But back to the eMobius topic, yeah Mr_Kent I understand exactly where you are coming from. I do tend to be a pretty organized person most of the time and a know a lot of people who would like more control over the information that they want. But I also understand your attitude of not really *wanting* to be this organized. For that, it's possible that eMobius will be a total overkill for what you want or need.

But I'll use zMUD as a great example of this. There are some people who don't use zMUD because they are overwhelmed by it's features and don't want to learn it all or don't think they want it all. But they forget that zMUD also has the best user interface for novices too. A novice can click New, select the MUD they want and click Connect and never need to know about scripts or aliases or triggers. What they get "for free" is stuff like a split-screen scrollback window so they don't die while reading their scrollback text. They might never even think about this "feature" if they have never had the experience in the old days of getting killed while they were busy reading some chat message someone had sent them during their combat spam.

People who have never used plain telnet might not appreciate the separate command line that you can easily edit while text goes scrolling by. They might not appreciate the fact that zMUD handles all of the different MUD protocols that they might connect to. When I first started playing MUDs, many clients didn't even have ANSI color support of all things. All of that is taken for granted now. zMUD just works the way you'd expect and doesn't get in your way until you go exploring into the Settings and Preferences.

eMobius will be a lot like that. If you just want to read your email, it will do that exactly how you want it to without getting in your way. It's not going to force a whole "contact management" and "calendar" system on you if you don't want it. The power will all be lurking behind the scenes ready to be used when you want it.

But once you find out how easy it is to add a button to the toolbar that automates some mundane task such as sorting your email into different folders, or once you get used to not getting any more spam because of it's excellent spam filtering, then like with zMUD, you might find it hard to go back to older solutions. This can be true even if you never explore the RSS feeds, or calendar system, or any of the other power behind the scenes.

I'm not sure if I'd call it ZuggOS or not. I think the term "OS" has been misused for a long time now. When I think about an OS, I think about all of the low-level stuff in the background that provides an interface for high-level software to access your computer resources. The OS is responsible for providing the "APIs" for the video, keyboard, mouse, sound, disk, network, etc, etc. The "user interface" isn't part of the true "OS". It's an application module written on top of the OS to give the user a default interface for working with their computer. This user interface should be completely replaceable, like it is in *nix.

So, what you see and interact with on a daily basis isn't really the "OS" in my definition, but is simply a "shell". It's an application that works the way you want it to so that you can solve the problems you need to solve.

So, eMobius is really that "shell" in a partial way. It is certainly *not* an OS. I'm not providing any way for people to add drivers for new hardware or anything like that. I'm providing a customizeable user interface for access and organizing information. It doesn't replace your desktop interface. It's focus is information. It's not going to replace the Windows Start bar to run applications for you. It's not going to replace the File Explorer to let you browse the files on your hard disk. It *might* let you create a list of links to important documents on your computer so that you can access that information as well as online information. But it's not going to replace everything that the Windows desktop shell does for you.

No, eMobius is still going to be just an application. Sure, some people might run it in full-screen mode and leave it running continuously. That's fine. But that isn't forced upon you. Again...you use it the way *you* want to, not the way some company or programmer decides you should.

And you know, just because you brought it up and because some people might be curious...I have no interest in MS making me a billionaire. What would I do then? I'd be bored. I don't need to be rich. I just need to make enough money to support my family, have a nice vacation now and then, and to keep doing what I like to do. I am hopeful that customers will take care of that without MS having to intercede. After working for myself for about 7 years now, I have no desire to work for anyone else ever again. It would be incredibly sad and depressing to see someone buy my product and then ignore customers and ruin it with their marketing and bureacracy. I *like* to program and I *like* to hear from customers and try to improve what I do to help someone else. My favorite emails are from people who tell me about the creative ways zMUD has helped them with some other problem not even related to MUD playing. That incredible help and support from many people in the forums, like the Gurus, keep me going. The satisfaction of solving difficult technical problems keeps me going. The money is just part of life and something that is needed to take care of stuff like the house, car, etc so that I don't have to worry about those things and can stay focused on the fun stuff like programming.

Does everyone have a price? Maybe. Mine is so high that I'm not even sure MS could ever match it. It's so high because I value what I do too much to see it messed up by someone else.

When people ask me what I'm going to do when I retire, I tell them that I'm already retired. After all, what do you do when you retire? You do what you want, right? Well, I'm already doing what I want. What I want is to make a difference and help other people however I can. eMobius is exciting because I can finally see a way to help a *lot* of people and to make a difference. I don't want to be Microsoft. I never want to be so big that I need dozens of employees. I just want to make a personal difference to as many people as I can myself..that is what is personally satisfying to me. My biggest fear is that eMobius will be *too* big and that I will be forced to get help to support it, even knowing that the support I hire is never going to meet my high standards. But that might help you understand some day if I'm not marketing eMobius as hard as some people might...because I'm not looking for a big corporate buy-out. I am selfish and want to keep having all of the fun myself. Smile

GURU Joined: 24 Sep 2000 Posts: 1237 Location: USA

See, I'm a visionary. A kung fu master of ideas. I planted the seed, I let it grow, now there's a beautiful bloom. Mwahahaha.

Actually, I've been imagining a beautiful extension to this idea, Zugg. Make it online. No, not online as in, anyone can see it. Online as in your *preferences*. The stuff that makes the system personalized to YOU, online. But not so that just anyone could use it. PGP (or GPG) encrypt it with a key that only you know.

What I'm getting at is, make the information portable, so no matter where you are, you install a (relatively) lightweight client -- eMobius, and point it at your online preference file. It downloads the preference file, asks you for a password to access it, opens, then customizes that installation of eMobius -- even so far as downloading extensions necessary to enact your preferences, and is your personal desktop home away from home. And as soon as your preference file is done being read to customize eMobius, it's deleted (or at least, the decrypted version is).

Here's where I'm going... I'm online all day from work. I read news feeds, email, news sites, dvd releases, etc. I want access to the same set of info when I'm at home. It would be *great* if I could access my portable set of preferences (stored on my website, or in my hotmail/gmail account, or anywhere), download them, decrypt them with my personal passphrase, and get the same user experience from anywhere, knowing that as soon as I log off eMobius, my information is updated (so I don't lose my place in my rss feeds, for example) and secure again.

Whatcha think?

Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 12:16 am

Yep, I didn't mention that, but it was already on my mind as well. In fact I think we had a thread on storing preferences online somewhere in here. I also want to be able to access this from "anywhere" (anywhere that has eMobius of course). Security is the big issue, but I think with PGP encryption it shouldn't be a problem.

Also, my guess is that when you work "online" like this that your unencrypted preferences stay in memory and never hit the disk. At least that would be the most secure method. Let the encrypted preferences get cached on disk, but never save the unencrypted version. That way you don't have to worry about programs that retrieve raw data from the disk. Since this encrypted preferences might contain other passwords, this security is important.

This should certainly be part of the "dream" in any case. Not something that will be done soon, but it fits with the vision.

And yes, you *are* a visionary...a lot of really good ideas have come from you...even when my initial reaction is "you must be crazy" Wink

Of course, many other people have also contributed. In a lot of ways this thread is just a summary of many things that we have discussed in this forum over the past year. It's just coming together a bit better in my own mind.

Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 3:40 am

Damnit Zugg, I love you.

Well, ok, I love the things you turn your software into.... Yeah, that's a better way of saying it.

Anywho, thinking on this for a while after giving my eyeballs a rest from the reading, I got thinking of an idea I had in my mind that fits right up this ally. I've always liked the idea of a centralized portal for getting my daily information, and the more I thought about this, the more my mind started to contemplate the possibilities.

First and Foremost, lets face it, with CMS's and Blogs being all the rage anymore, a "portal" should allow me to (while reading my news) throw out pieces of dribble to my blog. And fortunately, most modern blog software supports the AtomAPI (formerly known as the BloggerAPI), by which any remote software can actually publish to a blog. It really got me thinking that "hey, blogging is nothing more than writing an email to the whole world", and it's true, it's not. So please PLEASE Zugg, add this to your list of "ideas for said portal", cause I really think that would be a very nice feature (plus a big selling point for all those bloggers out there) for a client.

Also, I got thinking on what you said about why a CMS is easier than Dreamweaver... You know, I think there's an underlying point that really needs to be brought out to the foreground. People are Lazy. Not lazy in a bad way, but lazy in that they like things to be done in as few steps as possible. Sure, we all COULD upload static code each time we wanted to update our websites, but that's requireing what? 4-5 pieces of software atleast? Why can't this all be accomplished in one like you said? So if I could post to my blog, read my email, get my daily dose of slashdot, and check my various community forums all while getting an up-to-date weather report and eating my morning muffin, so much the better. The less software I have to start in the morning before my 3rd cup of coffee, the better off I am (and the less likely I am to screw something up).

I'm quite inspired by this whole thread, and it's got me thinking of all the possibilites that could happen within a "portal" system. The idea of keeping my preferences on my own private webspace so that I can keep the same profile information wherever I head.... AWESOME. The idea of being able to finally have that illusive swiss army knife for my desktop daily routine? Priceless.

Posted: Sat Sep 11, 2004 4:33 am

Yes, I'll definitely add that to the list. It actually fits nicely into the model. After all, if you are reading the "recent posts" from the zMUD forum in eMobius, it's natural that you should also be able to send a reply to a post or create a new topic. Just like replying to an email or creating a new email. So, I think sending an "email" to your blog and having it get added makes perfect sense. And all of this really goes a long way in distinguishing what eMobius really is and how it differs from Outlook and Mozilla and the rest of the competition.

And yes, I'll be the first to admit that I'm lazy, but in the "good" way that you mentioned. If I can buy quality 3rd party components for Delphi, for example, I'm happy to do that rather than spend my time writing them myself. I'd rather be creating something new and innovative rather than reinventing yet another edit-box component. The quicker and easier something is, the more I tend to like it.

After all, think of this forum software...I actually didn't like it at all at first. Then I realized what I was missing. It was this Quick Reply box. I didn't realize how much I missed this feature. It only saves a couple of mouse clicks, but I just can't live without it.

Adept Joined: 12 Nov 2000 Posts: 268 Location: Canada

I'm replying before reading anything except the first post:

I personally have thought about the idea of an integrated solution for all of my 'stuff'. I have a weblog, a livejournal (seperate!), I have about 4-5 sites I read daily, and some I don't just because I've run out of room in my 'links' toolbar on firefox, I have about 4 forums I check, 2 rss feeds (That list would be larger if more sites supported rss).

I like interoperability. This is why I use Trillian. If you want to find a user base of people who want 1 program to do EVERYTHING under the sun look no further than the trillian community. eMobius is not a competitor of Trillian, so I don't think that would be a problem...these guys LOVE interoperability.

Infact, at one point in my junior 'discovery' of the internet world, I came across tools such as Litestep to customize my desktop to every degree, and I made a VERY convenient/easy to use desktop that had (at the time) alot of the things I wanted to do..however it was ugly, and rigid, and litestep crashed alot, so that went out the window without a thought.

(sorry for the group of random thoughts together, It's hard to organize thoughts at this hour)

As far as this project being too much for you, in my personal experience it's best to start with something small, and build up on that as time comes, with very small goals set at each end. Right now it appears your #1 goal should be eMobius, followed quickly by the Zeus scripting language.

After eMobius is code-complete, you could start tweaking, and seeing where people TAKE zeus..see what needs to be refined, and work on the next zeus project...

I worry that at some point Zuggsoft may be too much for you to handle..I"ve been using your software for like..6-7 years...and will use nothing else to mud (although I don't really mud anymore much). You write amazing software, and people love it....anything is possible...

Magician Joined: 13 Oct 2000 Posts: 463

I've always been a fan of separating the backend and frontend of an application. I love a well designed server that runs as a backend to the well designed user interface. Even when done on a single computer... I prefer my applications to continue running when I 'close' them. I like my email to be fetching all the time, even if the UI is down.

This ties in directly with remote preferences... if the eMobius client is designed to interface with the data store in a loosely coupled fashion, then it becomes a simple matter to have roaming preferences. Run eMobius, connect to your home computer's data, and get crackin'. Or have an office share a single eMobius server, with 30 clients connecting to it, locally and remotely.

Perhaps a pipe dream, but that's how I imagine my perfect email app. And if eMobius is created to conform to the vision Zugg is discussing... that would be something I would be even MORE in need of having remote access to. If my portal to the world was stuck on a single machine, I'd be lost of that machine was down or unavailable or in a different state. I'd desperately wish that I could connect to it remotely.

The more dependant on an application you become, the more important it is to make it easy to access from anywhere. While I don't think a web interface is appropriate for eMobius, at least having remote access built in would be almost a requirement for me. Without my start page, I'd be... adrift, lost in the internet. Rather than having the cohesive 'what's new' all in one place, I'd be driven back to the old 'visit every site to see what has changed' method.

After having this dream-version of eMobius for a few months, having to revert would be physically painful. :-/ So I strongly encourage anything that makes universal access, like a remote SSH pipe, as simple and universal as possible.

Raven

Wizard Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 1551 Location: Australia

A few 2c's of ramblings before I've fully injected this morning's caffiene intake...

1- On Dreamweaver and websites... to me, a well designed website (even your front page) should be database driven... you shouldn't have to manually edit the code every time you want to post a 'new' announcement. These kinds of things should be autotmatically grabbed outta a database and displayed on your front page.

Think about it from a software perspective... you don't hard-code data. You wouldn't want to edit the source code for Zmud every time you wanted to add a trigger, so why would you want to edit the source code for your web site every time you want to change the 'whats new' data on it?

Same should go for your blog or CMS or whatever... which brings me to:

2- Methods of updating the webserver database. Typically these days there's just the good old 'add new post' box that you use to update your database. It's web driven and really quite useless... no inline spellchecker, no autosave as you type, and god help you if you accidentally hit refresh. But everybody loves it because they don't have to load up a separate app to make a post or do a quick reply.

There's nothing to say that eMobius couldn't read from or update to the same database via some kind of protocol, it would just be a matter of designing the databases carefully so that they were compatible (or adding a translation layer to them). You could even have eMobius browse and reply to these forums. The important thing to remember is that you want to keep everything together... maybe even have the 'quick reply' box in eMobius.

One thing to remember is an email client doesn't do is editing... so you may need to consider how that fits in to the scheme of things. You can edit forums after you've posted but you can't edit an email after you've sent it.

3- I'm with The Raven on the remote SSH pipe or similar, if I was to trust my life with eMobius (and ditch all my favourites links from the browser etc) then it would have to have a central server (I would probably host this on the same box as my MUD) so I could connect from work, home, laptop. I would like to think that there would be some kind of web-based eMobiussing to be had from e-cafe's too, but how that would work I'm not sure, since that kinda skips around the whole elicense thing and the box the eMobius server would run on would have to be cross-platform capable.

...

Here's my thoughts on how it should work from a client-server perspective.

1- You get a server and put your favourite DB package on it (MSDE, JET, MySQL).

2- You install the 'eMobiusD' on that server ... this is a cross platform transaction manager daemon which handles the DB queries and commits. It means we don't have to expose the DB on the internet in any fashion and also means that large result sets don't (necessarily) have to be passed back and forth. eMobiusD should use the zlib compression protocol (like MCCP) and optionally be encrypted eg SSH or SSL or PGP or something. It should also (in a later version) support remote DB synchronization, eg for offline browsing/editing.

3- You install your eMobius client and point it at the server, too easy (or really, if you're a non-geek, too hard).

...

I just had a second thought as I was re-reading my client-server architecture and deciding it was too hard for novices, but I'm not sure how flawed this will be so let's bounce it around. I'll start a new topic.

Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2004 5:39 am

Keep in mind that this "remote client/server" is only *one* way to use eMobius. I'm still committed to supporting a flexible backend so that if you don't have a database server and don't care about security you can just store stuff in plain files on your local hard disk (which is how the first version will probably work). I agree with The Raven that keeping the front-end and back-end separate is really important. The eMobius front-end just need to be flexible enough to work in a bunch of different situations.

RE: Editing Emails: I actually want to support a version of this. It's really collaborative editing. But when I write an email message that I'm sending and put it in my "secretary's" to-do box, she should be able to edit it, fix grammer, etc, and then send it out. So editing email is something I've wanted to do in my email client before. It's no different than editing an existing draft in a way, but doing this with multiple access control and security. So, editing is already part of eMobius...it's no stretch at all to imagine editing web posts or blog posts or anything else like that. That's why I put so much time (and money) into getting the editor component with the spellchecker for Zeus.

And about the web site: Yes, I want it to be database driven now, but that wasn't always the case. Early on with Zugg Software we had a lot of stuff written in Cold Fusion, but the server hardware and software was unstable, and if the database was down, then nobody could even view the home page. WHen we had all of that trouble I went to a lot of effort to make as many pages on the site static as I could. Now that servers and web software has gotten more reliable, this is no longer a big issue. So now I'm moving back to wanting everything database driven. But I'm more willing to do that now that we have PHP and MySQL on a linux box than I was with ASP and SQL Server on the Windows NT box.

But even though I've become more willing to use databases and scripting on the site, that doesn't mean I've had the time to write anything. The main reason I'm interested in the CMS solutions is that I don't personally have the time to write my own customized stuff in PHP.