Question

I am studying the viability of porting a complex flash application (check it here) to HTML and Javascript, as in our organization we think it’s better for the long term.

Although I know pretty much Javascript myself, there is one thing, out of all that are currently implemented in the flash version in the previous link, that I am not sure how could it be ported: loading .xml input files from the user’s PC for accessing them in Javascript, and the inverse, generating .xml output files that can be saved back onto the user’s PC.

For this, I have thought of two turnarounds, but I think none of them is good enough:

1. Using HTML5 File API, which seems perfect for our case, but unfortunately is currently only supported in Chrome, and one of our priorities (the one for which we are actually considering porting the application from Flash!) is getting the maximum compatibility.
2. For loading, uploading the files to the server and from there, loading them through AJAX in Javascript, and viceversa for saving. This option consumes a lot of resources in the server side, and we are a non profit organization, so unfortunately it’s not a good solution neither!

So I guessed maybe someone here could help 🙂

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

1. It’s supported in much more browsers (including Firefox and Safari).
   You could make use of fallbacks in the meantime (ie, even resorting to flash itself).

2. I don’t see why an AJAX call would consume more resources on the server….it’s a normal request like any other.