We claim that our approach based on the HTML Application model has many advantages over custom development based on Excel, Word or Infopath.
Our solutions use XSLT stylesheets executing within the HTML Application environment to present the data/document exactly as you prefer. Unlike some generic editing tools, we don't display tags or an editing harness, and we don't require a separate program such as MS Word to present a final-form appearance. Our solutions are interactive applications which are packaged and presented to suit your business environment. If you need a variety of different extracts, summarisations and appearances, we can provide them.
Benefits of our user interface include:
The form views used to edit content can be tailored and optimised for the particular data and context. This flexibility extends to item positioning, generation of selecton lists, smart selection of defaults, instant validation, inclusion/exclusion of optional fields, captions and prompts/confirmation requests.
Logic can be included 'behind the form' to enforce business rules, perform reasonableness checks or auto-generate default or computed values. The flexible architecture of our custom solutions enables validation within a field (such as check digit validation), across fields (date range checks), by table lookup, by reference to the XML document itself, by reference to external XML or relational data, or by querying the author.
We provide popup help screens, for both the general application and for each editing form. You can use our Manuals Machine to maintain and extend these. You can add in your own specific business related instructions, problem handling procedures, support contact information and the like.
Our solutions are programmed in HTML and Javascript - the same as used by website developers. But the HTML Application environment enjoys access to a far richer set of features than permitted to web pages. Usually all class libraries installed in the Windows machine will be available, including:
Access to these means that business rules and communications processing that previously required development in compiled programming languages is no longer necessary. (Note - while the XML and file system APIs are available on all systems, Excel and others mentioned above may require installation of additional products for which license charges may apply).
The user interface is provided by HTML, and can be made highly adaptable to context or data by using Dynamic HTML or by generating the screen layouts on-the-fly using stylesheets.
Although we normally work in Javascript, any installed scripting language can be used. If you're an existing ASP shop that already prefers to use VBScript, that's no problem!
Although our solution architecture currently works only in the Microsoft environment, it's developed around non-proprietary standards from the World-Wide Web consortium and others:
Capable and interoperating implementations of all of these currently only exist for Windows, but we expect them to be available from others soon. We have verified that recent improvements to Mozilla allow our stylesheets (which are complex) to work in that browser as well as in IE. We now test our Manuals Machine stylesheets against Firefox as a matter of routine, the rest of the programming tools should become widely available quite soon, and we look forward to using XML Forms for definition of input screens once solid implementations of that standard become widely deployed.
There's nothing magic or proprietary about our approach to XML authoring. If your organisation already has a computer and website programming capabilities, the prospect of developing inhouse skills to enhance or maintain our custom applications may be appealing.
We would not recommend learning the entire XML environment from scratch to create your first applications, since there are many related components and total learning time would be long and expensive. Unlike Word/Excel macros, it's not possible to record keystrokes to get started and then build on this.
We offer turnkey solutions, but if you want to develop capabilities in-house we can discuss possibilities for your own technical staff to contribute to the project, and propose a programme to establish an XML capabilities set within your organisation.
This might include your staff working with us on an initial project, augmented by classroom training, workshops or one-on-one mentoring. We can also discuss strategies for joint development of your applications. For example we could perform some functions such as data analysis and schema design, specification of reader architecture and data navigation strategies, and your resources could code some of the stylesheets, editing forms and business logic.
Interested? Please call us for a discussion.