We have developed a standalone application using visual basic 6.
Now we are changing the standalone application to web application.
Is there any way to convert VB6 forms into plain HTML forms so that my work will be reduced alot.
please give your suggestions.
Edit: I am new to VB6 and .net technology
Don't even think about "converting". It's not just a "conversion" process. The entire paradigm is different between web applications and desktop applications. They're just totally different.
ASP.NET web forms try to make the differences less apparent. However, the differences are still there, and are still huge.
What you should do is separate your business logic from your forms logic in your VB6 application. You will then be more easily able to convert the business logic into .NET business logic. You'll still need to create equivalent forms, but the logic will be the same.
You cannot simply convert VB6 form to html, there is some website which provides this conversion.. but this will increase your work more
refer - VB to HTML convertor
I have what I think it is a very popular problem. I have a legacy app that contains rtf fields. rtf in my case is used only for very basic features (font: size, style, color, ... hyperlinks). Anyway since I allow to paste from word sometimes some more complex things can go in there.
Now rtf is ok, even because with Report Builder I can get reports where rtf is printed.
The problem comes with web application. I am developing a web application that is basically an optional interface for my legacy application.
At this stage I solved the probelm by removing the rtf formatting (I use the TRichEdit trick discussed here).
Anyway ideally I would like to be able to see and edit formatted text in both the web application and the win32 application.
What can be the solution?
In this question I found a link to the ScroogeHTML converter.
But even if I convert there are these points that i cannot reconcile:
Storage: what to store? Currently of course I store rtf.
Should I convert rtf to html every time I show the rich text in web app and then convert it back to rtf for storage?
Your could implement a RTF editor in your web application.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_rich-text_editor
This way you don't have to change the storage format.
I want to develop a delphi application with an HTML/CSS graphical user interface, not necessarily running from within a web browser. I want to do this do create a richer graphical user interface with animations etc. and break away from normal VCL components / Windows look. Any suggestions?
HTML and CSS won't deliver animations or a Rich User Interface to your feet. Far from it in fact. Quite the opposite. You will need to invest in a toolkit to provide that sort of functionality and almost certainly involve JavaScript. And even if you don't want your eventual application hosted in a web browser, your application will itself have to host a web browser to render your HTML/CSS/JavaScript UI, and you will then have a much more difficult job of connecting your GUI to your application logic (unless you do actually embrace a web application architecture).
Delphi (or any Windows application development language for that matter) gets you much, much further down the road towards a more simply, effectively and quickly implemented Rich User Interface than HTML or CSS.
If you don't like the look and feel of the standard Delphi controls (which in essence is what you are saying) there are numerous alternative libraries available.
Also bear in mind however that when someone uses a Windows application they expect it to look and behave a certain way to a large extent. Using fancy, web based paradigm's in a desktop application simply for the sake of it is likely to confuse and frustrate users if taken too far.
I'm all for user interfaces breaking with convention where it leads to a more intuitive user interface, but simply being "prettier" does not necessarily lead in that direction and is just as misguided as dogmatically adhering to convention.
In one of my applications I have an an embedded browser and I have implemented the IDocHostUIHandler interface. This allows me to expose a COM object via the "GetExternal" method. I simply have a COM object that exposes methods and properties of my application which makes them available to the web pages hosted inside the embedded browser.
So the script in my web pages has lines like "external.DoSomething()" and "i=external.GetThisValue()". So, for example, behind button onclick events you can run a method of your application (implement in the main form, in the COM object itself, or whatever you like).
This site has lots of info on embedding a browser in your Delphi app:
http://www.delphidabbler.com/articles?article=22
It can certainly be cumbersome to implement a lot of this stuff and in many cases there are probably better options. But for my specific purpose I am able to offer a "home page" which can easily be modified to change its layout, look and even expose more (or less) functionality as required by myself or my users.
If you want a Delphi program with a better-looking interface, HTML is really not what you're looking for. What you really need are better-looking VCL controls.
Take a look at TMS Smooth Controls, for example. If you're on Delphi 2009 or 2010, you can get it as a free download here. That's one of many component libraries that can bring a slicker user interface to your program.
HTML / CSS offers some nice features which are (not yet?) available in Delphi and the VCL. They are also a good starting point for client/server programming, separating the user interface and the business logic is a key factor here.
One popular library for Delphi is the extpascal project:
ExtPascal is an Object Pascal (Delphi,
FreePascal/Lazarus) wrapper/binding
for Ext JS, a complete GUI Ajax
framework, made in JavaScript, for
Rich Internet Application (RIA)
development. ExtPascal lets you use
Ext JS from Object Pascal commands
issued by the server. It brings the
structure and strict syntax of the
Object Pascal for programming the web
browser. ExtPascal will wrap Draw2d
into future releases.
Some demos are online here and here.
p.s. and I really like the HTML / CSS support for element and font sizes in relative units (for exampe percent). Combined with browser zoom in / zoom out and WCAG, user interface ergonomy can not be much better.
HTML Option 1
If you relly want to use HTML+CSS(+JavaScript) to build a GUI, you can have a look at HTML Applications, a very fascinating concept from Microsoft. HTML Applications, .hta files, have been supported from Windows ME, if I remember correctly, and they are still supported on Windows 7.
You could create an HTML Application (i.e. an HTA file), and by so doing, creating a GUI using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. When the user double-clicks the HTA file, it will open like a program, but the GUI is entirely based on HTML; in fact, the entire Window is an Internet Explorer window in disguise.
And now comes the important part: you could create non-GUI Delphi applications (i.e., Delphi applications that are not console applications, but that have no forms either), and start them via hyperlinks (or JavaScript) from within your HTA GUI. (Well, it is probably better to create one such Delphi application, and use command-line arguments (ParamStrs) to communicate the desired action.)
Just an idea...
HTML Option 2
Alternatively, you could create a normal Delphi GUI application, but fill the entire main form with a TWebBrowser (a IE control), using Align := alClient. Then you could either load static HTML pages (stored in the Program Files folder or on the Internet), or you could use Delphi to dynamically create HTML pages to show. I think it is possible to intercept links from the control, so that you could respond to links using Delphi code.
What about OpenGL?
If you want to "break away" from the normal Windows look and feel, then I would recommend you to create your GUI using OpenGL. It is very easy to make a Delphi application with OpenGL (as long as you are familiar with OpenGL) - just add "OpenGL" to your uses list.
First this: I completely agree with Deltics' answer.
Having said that, if you master HTML and CSS (and JavaScript and AJAX etc etc) and you are looking for a way to use the power and speed of the Delphi compiler to run the dynamics of a website, this may be of interest.
I've created a project that uses the Delphi compiler to build a library that runs a website. The source-files combines HTML and Delphi, much like other web-scripting tools out there, but gets processed on a page-refresh, and compiled automatically. It uses a 'library handler' that plugs in the website library into pretty much anything you like: IIS, Apache, a stand-alone HTTP server (for hosting), or directly into InternetExplorer or FireFox (which is great for developing).
http://xxm.sourceforge.net/
New versions of Qt contain ability to use html/js for interfaces. I don't know if there is Qt library bindings for Delphi, but Qt is exactly what you want.
for Rich GUI and animation, have you looked at KSDev DXScen and VGScene ?
If you want to keep your delphi/Pascal Object 'background' and have a Web like RIA you also have a look to Morfik : link text
We're not doing real web development. We get our HTMLs from our designers, and have our web app generate those HTMLs (with some specific content). Simply put, we don't use any major web development infrastructure (ASP, PHP, JSP etc). Having that said, we sometimes do need to edit HTML, JavaScript and CSS files, and I'm tired of using rocks and stones and having no proper backup. What I'm looking for is a rather simple editor that would handle those kinds of files, and most importantly - will support source control, and will be free (or very cheep).
I've been looking into Aptana, and it seems to be a bit of an overkill. It has a lot of features we can do without, and this makes it too heavy. VWD express is lighter, but has no source control integration. There are probably a million other HTML editors, but I couldn't find one that satisfies the basic requirements - relatively lightweight, supports source control and is (almost) free. Any suggestions?
Not exactly what you want but you could try and use Notepad++ combined with TortoiseSVN.
Eclipse is pretty good. It's also very popular among developers and can edit HTML.
Why is supporting source control a requirement? I find that the place for good source control is not in the editor. The editor just gets in the way and only implements a subset of functionality.
NetBeans can edit about anything, is free, cross-platform, and directly supports CVS, Subversion and Mercurial version control systems. It's not exactly lightweight, although it is lighter than any comparably featured competitors I'm aware of.
Pick your poison at Wikipedia's Comparison of HTML editors page.
The Revisionator is a cloud based html editor that has built in source control. It'll even do wysiwyg diffing and merging of different versions.
I need to
convert my Sandcastle Help File
Builder (SHFB) output that is a Web
site (HTML) to Media wiki format
Find a way to transfer/include the
converted pages directly into the
MediaWiki we have set up.
Any ideas? we have over 1000 pages of HTML files inthe Website (output of SHFB).
I thought of using a html2wiki converter ..I could think of looking around for a script to convert those 1000 pages into wiki format... that could take care of (1).
But I would still be left with the block in the last bit of the pipeline - how to feed converted pages directly into the Wiki?
Take a look at Help Server. It allows to publish .CHM / .HxS produced by any tool (including Sandcastle) on the web and provides URL-based integration API.
We use MediaWiki as well. A set of templates for it allows us to create links to class reference shared by Help Server. Some examples of such links can be found right on that page.
Note that DataObjects.Net Help web site is running on Help Server 2.X, but the newest one is 3.X (example web site is here).
I did some work with ingesting existing material from several sites into a comprehensive Wiki. It did not involve Sandcastle, but if you're dealing with HTML it shouldn't matter much. html2wiki extensions are out there, and from what I have read they can solve a lot of problems. I needed a little more control over each node in the DOM, so i used Simple HTML DOM Parser. It's in PHP and was easily dropped into Mediawiki's includes.
For creating the new pages, I ended up writing a small script that uses Mediawiki's Article class, specifically the doEdit function. this allows you to create new articles programatically, without user interaction. Of course, you'd want to be careful with this... The last thing you need is to create 1000 pages that are no good and have to be deleted. But perhaps this will help get you going.