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PROFESSIONAL NEWSGROUPS
WINDEV, WEBDEV and WINDEV Mobile |
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| Started by 4xjbh, Nov., 21 2010 4:27 AM - 2 replies |
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Registered member
1 message |
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Posted on November, 21 2010 - 4:27 AM |
I have been curious about PC Soft's products for a couple of years now and I am curious on anyones opinions on how they perform. How good is the support? How good are the learning resources, documentation etc. How good is the product, particularly interested in webdev.
Thanks in advance, James |
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Posted on November, 26 2010 - 6:52 AM |
My experience with WebDev is only for about three months now. Compared with WinDev I would say it's the weaker product.
Still I'm impressed what you can do with all the functionality that WinDev offers and how nice that looks. But in practice and in detail it's hard to handle.
I've never called support because all I heard here on the forums is that you rarely get an usefull answer from PC Soft. So compared with other products the support could be better. But as I said, not my own experience.
You get three books with the product. One about concepts, a comprehensive tutorial and an extra one for reports. In many cases the tutorials says: '... this is not going to be explaind in detail here'. The help file is good but not always the best help since some topics are hard to find.
The best thing is the language (WLanguage) itself. Very powerful, very easy to learn.
You have the ability to do static pages, AWP-Pages which are kind of scripted pages with a WebDev module working like PHP and PHP pages. The problem with AWP pages is that you have to install this modul on the webserver which can be kind of hard in usual hosting environments. Funny thing is that there seems to be a lot of companies offering WebDev hosting in France. But I've never seen an english speaking company offering the same.
Still there are the PHP pages. But you can't access HyperFileSQL from PHP pages. You could say, never mind, MySQL has the better reputation anyway. But then, to distribute your database from your developer machine to a webserver this webservers MySQL needs to be accessible from the outside which isn't the case in all hosting companies I know (for security reasons). You end up defining tables on your machine, make a SQL script from the structure and import them in PHPMyAdmin on the server. Not funny.
Just to mention another related annoyance, there is no sftp to transfer files with the WebDev deployment module, only insecure ftp.
I really learned a lot from the vids on the website. They are a great source especially at the beginning. I did one or two of the tutorial chapters but never really found what I was looking for.
All I can say as a conclusion, there is no so called manual where everything is explained in detail. You get the concepts, the tutorial and some samples. That's it. Maybe this is because WebDev is a very powerful tool with lots of features (and gets lots of new features in each version). But this isn't counterbalanced with a helpful support.
The english speaking userbase is by far not that big as with other developing tools like PHP or some Microsoft products. But from my experience with the people here in the forum you can be lucky and get some help. Depends on what problem you have and how good you describe it.
PC Soft is a french company and I understand that its kind of hard to develop a powerful tool in french language (even the programming language is in french first) and then translate everything in english. This is the biggest difference I see to other tools and other companies. They do everything in english and maybe some parts (IDE, docs) are translated into another language. PC Soft is doing a great french product which has its success and its userbase, but mostly in France. Then, with a little delay of a few months the english version follows the french one.
It is my belief that the english WebDev is a very good product. But it suffers from only being the little brother of the french version.
HTH, and please let us know if you know a better product than WebDev. |
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Registered member
14 messages |
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Posted on December, 04 2010 - 8:05 AM |
Hi guys
I agree with Sebastian. All in all, a VERY good product, very powerful. But the web is quite a different world and Windev is more mature than Webdev. Still it is worth the cost, and to my opinion by far the most advanced product on the market, from an integration standpoint: think about getting together html, javascript, AJAX and some other required language (ASP, C#, Java etc.) in one integrated platform and one common language to learn instead. Plus you get the database, report generator etc.
BUT (there is a big one) be prepared to struggle for a few months when you start, as Sebastian explained, only the very basics are provided by the supplied documentation, tutorials etc. So you will have to spend a lot of time consulting the online help and the forum and the key is self-training. Start with a small project that will allow for smooth ramp-up.
As far as hosting is concerned, you will find very neat hosting plans in North-America at www.kalanda.ca. These include the webdev engine so you do not hav eto buy one for your production sites.
My advice (I started with a PHP site) is to go directly to Webdev technology and forget about PHP with Webdev, as there still are too many restrictions when you use PHP.
All the best to you and good luck with your developments!
Renaud |
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