On 8/13/11 11:11 AM, daverch (AT) gmail (DOT) com wrote:
I just did.

--
frosty

Yes, another good article from Clif (whom I have enjoyed since Infocus days-- from the Pr1me side of the house).

If I were an existing MV VAR reading this, depending on the application, I would likely think about how to move toward SaaS in a way that end-users could be positioned to adopt your software application. End-users do not careif your app runs on database ABC or XYZ. They want software that works forthem.

While I am definitely in the camp of moving away from green-screen as the primary user experience for most software apps, I did have to smile the lasttime I checked out of Nebraska Furniture Mart. They migrated to Reality, so I was expecting a new UI, but nope, it's green screen, looking much like it looked like before the migration. I suspect that was the charm of the conversion for them, but I had some combination of amusement, delight (knowing the app in use was pick-based), and also some disappointment when seeing it. Maybe this is a workhorse retail app that really would not benefit froma facelift? I dunno.

The Pizza Hut in our town has a Paradox app running on the front-end, it appears. It is a lot harder to retire old technology and UIs than to introduce new.

cheers! --dawn

My guess is that you will be gone before the green screens, and that will be
many years.

"frosty" <frostyj (AT) bogus (DOT) invalid> wrote

Thanks for wishing me a long life! =`:^>

--
frosty

Excalibur21 wrote:

I think selling the benefits of a character interface compared to GUI
has about as much resonance as saying a horse doesn't consume
gasoline, that it won't get you pulled over for a burned out tail
light, and that you don't have to worry about the kids getting into a
bad accident when joy riding. It's all true, but hardly compelling
when someone is looking for transportation to get them somewhere fast.

If I may extrapolate, part of Clif's point is that Pick people are
still trying to refine that sales pitch rather than just moving on to
selling what people want. Consumers are bypassing internal IT and
their "Value-Add" providers and buying their own solutions to get
where they want to go. Pick people need to get ahead of that cycle.


I created a new thread for that topic titled "MV code design for use
with the web".

I haven't seen RD/TL coaching anyone on coding practices but I won't
doubt that this is your experience.


I wrote blogs today about how to break up those large programs. See
that other thread for links.

I believe you're missing something significant there. Thick client and
browser forms aren't disappearing because people use mobile phones.
All of these UI's have their place. As someone mentioned recently the
thick-client is mostly dead for traditional apps. That client/server
paradigm was on the way out over a decade ago, and yet some people are
still trying to figure out how to get on the bandwagon. No, these days
there is the browser UI (I call it the BUI), and phones are separate.
You don't need one or the other. It's not "Goodbye this and hello
that". As Clif said in his article, if you've waited too long then you
now need to do both!

T

Interesting retail example. Here in Australia, many of the LARGE
retailers (K-Mart springs to mind, as well as Harvey Normal) still
deploy character/green screen apps for POS. From the perspective of a
"checkout chick", having a GUI will not make the action of scanning a
barcode any more (or less) efficient.

That said, from my CASUAL observations, many more of the smaller
independants have a GUI as their front end POS solution, probably
because of smaller infrastructure and also because the POS is part of
a broader ERP solution, and a well designed GUI can greatly simply
back office functionality, and THAT may have been what drove the
overall purchasing decision.

I would hope that we can all agree that green screen applications are
in decline in terms of market share (not that you are necessarily
losing your existing green screen clients, just that for every 1 NEW
sale made of a green screen application, hooked into ANY backend
database, there are probably at least 1,000 GUI equivalents sold)

Whilst you may take alarm in Clif's statement "If it looks like a
dinosaur, waddles like a dinosaur, grunts like a dinosaur, well then,
it must be a dinosaur", the reverse is also true, and opens up the
future ....

Historically people may have asked "Does you application run on
<insert database name here>?", now the leading question is more likely
"Can your application be deployed via the web" .... tick that box and
you get in the front door!

Add the application heritage & richness of experience and knowledge
that you leverage from your existing applications (and also the
ability to possibly run your existing green screen application
alongside the nice shiny new gadgetized version for your existing
users), and you can be on a winner.

Of course, I think Visage offers a great (short & easy) pathway to
move you from "here to there", but at the end of the day, the
important thing may not necessarily be the path that you take on the
journey, so much as taking the first step

I'll just add that MV app providers have one advantage over their
competitors: If you can _add_ an attractive GUI to you app, you now
have what others offer, _plus_ you have an optional CUI for fast
back-office data entry.

When your hand is the same as the other players, the one with the high
card wins. It doesn't have to be a pretty face card.

T

Truly excellent topic and article. Not to blow my own horn but, I have been preaching this for years. I am going to try and not make this sound likean Ad, but it probably will anyway (sorry in advance).

I have many customers that have moved from green screen to web based applications using our product and have done so in much less time than Clif suggests. One in particular went from discovery to live in 9 months. This example is a little extreme and most take about a year (given adequate resources).

If you are worried about learning new technologies, don't be. With our tool, you don't need to learn any web technology. All you need to know is howto place a field on a web form and then call your existing subroutines to update your data.

The point here is that you CAN do it also. If you would like me to show you how, just ask.

Rick Weiser
DesignBais International
+1 877.889.9777

As perhaps many of you know, we moved to DesignBais some years ago with
great success. There are vitually no problems and the systems are very
stable.

The nicest part is that every time I do a demonstration of our software the
reactions I get are always very positive. I stopped worrying about peoples'
reactions years ago and now enjoy many compliments.

I am happy to show anyone on this list a quick demo (though I'm also sure we
are using only a small subset of DB's capabilities).

Jeff


"Rick Weiser" <rick (AT) designbais (DOT) com> wrote

Truly excellent topic and article. Not to blow my own horn but, I have been
preaching this for years. I am going to try and not make this sound like an
Ad, but it probably will anyway (sorry in advance).

I have many customers that have moved from green screen to web based
applications using our product and have done so in much less time than Clif
suggests. One in particular went from discovery to live in 9 months. This
example is a little extreme and most take about a year (given adequate
resources).

If you are worried about learning new technologies, don't be. With our
tool, you don't need to learn any web technology. All you need to know is
how to place a field on a web form and then call your existing subroutines
to update your data.

The point here is that you CAN do it also. If you would like me to show you
how, just ask.

Rick Weiser
DesignBais International
+1 877.889.9777