RE: [PHP-DEV] Totally Blue Sky

Sounds like a great idea. You could probably improve it by not using an actual browser, but by using the browser properties in a standalone application. Here me out... I am confident there are some Windows widgets that let you easily build you own browser.. which is actually Internet Explorer without all of the options. If you were to make a more limited browser interface (so that you cut out the browser functionality that an application shouldn't have "home,forward,back,view source, disable javascript,disable cookies,etc, etc, etc"), and then install the "browser" application... you could probably make it a standardized .EXE so that any user written PHP program would run on it. Other than that, you just need to get the web server figured out. How hard would it be to customize this "browser application" to start and quit apache in tandem with the application. Again, agree on a standardized apache config so that there is only one site running... which is on local host, you're pretty much set. I think its a great idea. Brian Tanner Project Manager Zaam Internet Solutions Toll Free: 1-866-225-2675 info@zaam.com http://www.zaam.com 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. -- PHP Development Mailing List <http://www.php.net/> To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-dev-unsubscribe@lists.php.net For additional commands, e-mail: php-dev-help@lists.php.net To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net