ADV: Browser-based development for filePro

[Bruce Easton]

Bob Rasmussen wrote  Thursday, March 26, 2009 9:53 PM:


> Please pardon me in that I have not included the large original post.
> 
> Most web-front-end environments will run into the challenge of printing. 
> Web browsers are seldom a good option for doing the printing. They're 
> unpredictable and to a degree uncontrollable. They're the wrong tool 
> for the job.
>
> That is why we designed Web Print Object (WePO). This is an ActiveX 
> (OCX) version of Print Wizard that can be embedded in a web page. 
> When the user clisks the button that says "Print", the object fetches 
> a specified file (typically from an HTTP source), and prints it, 
> renders it to PDF, adds an overlay, etc. See website for details.
>
> Regards,
> ....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

I agree about trying to print from browsers - especially for any 
kind of form printing.  I have not yet had the need to use WePO, 
but I'm sure the need will come up and I expect it would work just 
fine with fPageBuilder.  I can say that using PrintWizard for 
kicking off legacy reports from the browser application (to 
produce PDFs) works just great!  In most cases the original forms 
needed no modification whatsoever.  Just select the report name 
from a pull-down field defined in fPageBuilder click the button 
and up it pops. (Hmm - should I talk about how amazingly fast 
this worked on a Windows 2003 server - I'd rather not - OK I won't.):)

The report writing tool we are working on to go with fPageBuilder 
by the way will not be a form-design tool, but rather more of a 
data-mining tool - more like sql or extended selection with output 
to the browser - not for any kind of fancy output and not for 
handling actual print requests.  

Bruce

Bruce Easton
STN, Inc.