Totally Blue Sky

Situation: PHP is the greatest damned language I've ever used. With PHP and a database on the back-end, and a decent browser capable of running Javascript/JScript on the front end, you can create beautiful, seamless web applications with so little work that it almost seems like cheating. Problem: If you don't want your application to be just a web application, then you're stuck using some other relatively stinky language. <Shudders while thinking back to the days when you had to write thousands of lines of code just to put some graphics on the screen or open a socket to a web server> Variation on a theme: I'd love to be able to create a PHP Windows .exe that installed just like a regular application. This ideal program would run just like an application too. You'd launch it and it would open an application window, but the window contents would be the current web browser installed on the system, pointed to the index.php page in your newly installed application's directory. In other words, it would be like installing a PHP-enabled webserver whose output could only go to the application's main and child windows (if any). I do NOT want to require the user to install a webserver and I do NOT want the server to keep running after the application has quit, but I would LOVE to be able to do basic application type actions like saving files without having to resort to lame, bloated, miscarriages like signed Java applets. Also, I would LOVE to be able to simply create user interfaces without writing tons of code like in Visual C++. Admittedly, Visual BASIC is similar in purpose here, but as we all know, VB ain't got nothin' on PHP. Questions: [1] Does such a beast exist? [2] Can anyone think of a fundamental reason why we couldn't do such a thing? [3] Is the general consensus that this would be a handy thing to have, or is it just me? Please be kind with the flames, I'm new here... Gre7g. ================================================================= Gre7g Luterman gre7g@wolfhome.com http://www.templeofluna.com/ Stay informed: http://www.templeofluna.com/keeper/mailinglist.htm I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather ...not screaming in terror like his passengers.