Clarion

Clarion-H5

The options to provide access to your Clarion program on non-PC devices now range from using RDP products, creating pure Web apps, or with @Thin or ClarioNet. And we’re going to be offering some more options for Clarion9 and Clarion.Net.

Today I’m writing about a new product (internally named H5 Builder). H5 is a blend of the best features of Internet Connect (IC) and Web Builder (WB), joined with the jQuery family and HTML5/CSS. Both IC and WB were products ahead of their time. As an example IC was using an async data packet methodology to refresh client side pages before technologies like Ajax were on the drawing board. With the addition of a global template both IC and WB allowed Clarion apps to run over the internet without (hardly) any work at all from the developer.  Drop in the template, remake the app, and deploy. However, they both had the same limitations; difficult (or impossible) to work with the web UI presentation to fit within existing web sites, and they required IIS experience.  They also weren’t positioned properly.  Developers who tried to use either product to create a “web site”, or create a web app that needed to scale to 100’s-1000’s of simultaneous users found neither could meet their requirements.

Flash forward to today and H5.  The intended use for H5 is not to create a “web site”, nor to create a highly scalable web app.  Instead H5 is positioned to make it dirt simple to make your app available as a private web app for a given business/enterprise via a web browser, whether that’s on a PC or on a smartphone/tablet. And it’s built upon today’s standards for the web; HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. These standards are open, secure, and efficient, and they allow developers and web designers to create apps that look modern, can fit into existing sites (sharing CSS styles) and can run on modern devices like phones and tablets.

H5 apps use the jQuery library, either jQuery UI or jQuery Mobile (UI), and JSON for updating client side data without a full page refresh.  They run under the AppBroker SE, so you just install the service and deploy — no IIS knowledge required.

The use of the jQuery family of technologies will be shared with Clarion.Net.  So becoming proficient with one group of technology will lead to being able to create web apps, mobile apps, native apps and hybrid apps.

What’s coming up

We’re currently working on updates for both Clarion 8 and Clarion.Net.  On the C8 side we’re focusing on the first maintenance release for 2012 – lots of bug fixes and some popular feature requests.  On the .Net side we’re working on the next iteration of the 3-tier templates for both desktop and ASP.Net apps.  Additionally we’re adding the option to use the Clarion LINQ provider as the data model, bringing in ABC-like FILE access to your TPS (and other ISAM) tables.  We’ve simplified the steps needed to create the 3-tier app such that running the wizard creates both the model and the base application – and attaches all required extensions automatically.  End result – you won’t have to do much more than just select your Dictionary and then select the data model.  And if you choose the Clarion.Linq model there is no ADO.Net connection to configure.

We expect to release C8 next week to external testers, and a general release to follow the week after.  We’ll be ready to release the updated T4 templates around the same timeline, and once we’ve firmed up the changes we’ll schedule a webinar on ClarionLive.  The webinar will focus on how to use the templates (as opposed to how to write T4 templates).