Question

I am looking at moving my company’s internal business app from VB.NET to PHP. Some of the people were worried about losing GUI features that can be found in .NET. I am under the impression that with the right javascript framework, anything in .NET GUI can be replicated.

While I am still researching this point, I would like to ask if form features in .NET GUI can in fact be replicated with javascript and slightly more importantly, will it take much longer to develop to get the same results?

Answer 1

First off: to answer your question.

A Tree Control is hard to emulate in a web environment. Doable, but hard (look at Yahoos YUI for an example).

• State: you get it in WinForms, not in the web. This has more to do with how people use the application.
• Interaction: That is easier on WinForms than web. Again, it is doable, but more layers are involved.
• Data Size: How much data is being displayed? You don’t see grids with thousands of records on the web, that can be common on WinForms. This can effect web load times greater than WinForms.
• Testing: how many browsers to you have to test with. The JavaScript/CSS differences between the browsers can make life difficult. Ah heck, IE6 will make your life difficult if you have to develop for that.
• Development time: that is about the same for a developer experienced in both environments.

But, there are a number of other questions that pop up in your initial statement.

Why go from WinForms VB.Net to PHP? Instead, go to ASP.Net with VB.Net. Might save you from completely reinventing the wheel. Also, then you wont have to learn how to convert between frameworks.