Decreasing Software Expenditures with Web

Standards

Using Thin Clients, Mozilla, and XUL

Overview

• Costs of running a small business with third party software

• Using Web technologies to decrease costs and open new revenue streams

• Research methods, and problems

• Recommendations on how to proceed

• Questions

Costs Of Running A Business With Third Party Software

• With a staff of 20, using only MS Windows and MS Office, costs are:

Approx. $1, 000

PER YEAR!

PER USER!

Reading The Fine Print

These costs do not include:

• Customer Management Software

• Shipping Software

• Accounting Software

• And a staff to administer all of this

The Web Can Save The Day

• Mozilla Web Browser, formally Netscape Navigator

• XUL (XML User Interface Language)

• JavaScript

Mozilla Web Browser

• An example of a “Thin Client”• Formally Netscape Navigator• Open Source Software• Used by ~1.5% of the ~1,000,000 Web

users • Gecko (Mozilla’s rendering engine) is used

in over 11 different web browsers• FREE!

What is XUL?

• Created to make Mozilla easier to develop for multiple operating systems

• Based on XML (Extensible Mark-up Language), a standard of the W3C

• Specifically oriented towards user interface design

• If you can develop a web page you can develop a user interface in XUL

With This…

<?xml version="1.0"?><?xml-stylesheet href="chrome://global/skin/" type="text/css"?><window id="example-window" title="Example 3.4.2" xmlns:html="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul">

<groupbox flex="1"><caption>

<checkbox label="Enable Backups"/> </caption> <hbox> <label control="dir" value="Directory:"/> <textbox id="dir" flex="1"/> </hbox> <checkbox label="Compress archived files"/>

</groupbox></window>

Mozilla Gives Us This!

Mozilla Can Also Give Us This!

JavaScript

• Developed by Netscape in 1994

• Version 1.5 was standardized in 1999 by ECMA International (ECMA-262 v3)

• Used in ~25% of the Internet’s web pages

• Allows XUL to be more than something pretty look at!

Research Methods and Goals

• To emulate most of the functionality found in the sales departments customer management software

• To build this software using only Mozilla, XUL, and JavaScript

Research Problems

• Some components of the UI were more difficult to develop in XUL

• XUL did not offer all the same UI components as the original software

• JavaScript failed to scale well as the software increased in size

Recommendations

The Present

The cost of development does not justify the savings

The Future

Microsoft’s Longhorn, XAML & .NET Products

Ximian’s Mono Project

Perl 6 & Parrot