Apollo for Web Site Administration
If you’ve ever built a dynamic web site before, you know that there’s almost always some degree of administration UI that needs to be created. Sometimes this UI might be as full-featured as the web site itself, and in other cases it may be more limited, but it almost always means some fashion of user management. Rather than build the administration entirely online, what would happen if you leveraged Apollo for offline access too?
At the Web 2.0 conference a few weeks back, I had the distinct pleasure of encountering Dan Zeitman of DVPWeb. We’d met before, but this time he had an application to show me that he built using Flex and was running on Apollo. This application was created around the desire to allow for user management outside of the browser. Dan’s end user can run the application from their desktop, just like any other application.
It seems to me that there are a number of interesting use-cases here, not the least of which is offline web site administration. Manage users, product availability, and product details, all without being connected – and all customized to your web site (not some random tool).
Dan let me use the application a little, and I think there’s an air of familiarity that goes along with it as well. The end user doesn’t write down any secret URL’s, they just launch the application. Since they are on the desktop, they expect desktop functionality like being able to work offline.
I can see a version in the future where the application even allows native drag and drop. You drop a Word document on the application and it adds it to the inventory. You need a flier version of the product? Just drag and drop it to the desktop and the application generates a PDF that you can send to the print shop.
Dan was nice enough to send me a brief case study on the application complete with additional screenshots and application behavior. It’s his application, so he provides a more thorough explanation of the functionality. Nice work Dan, and I look forward to seeing this application evolve!
May 23rd, 2007 at 9:17 pm
That is pretty sweet. I suggested this type of application in a discussion about possible use cases for Apollo. It’s cool to see it being implemented.
May 27th, 2007 at 4:19 am
It should not take too long until someone has created an application like this that can allow people to update their wordpress blogs via an offline (desktop) application utilising Apollo Based technologies:
http://ni-limits.com/blog/index.php/the-future-of-the-web-aka-the-apollo-era/
If anyone knows something (relevant to this future) that we don’t, please let us know…
By the way Kevin, this is our first time into this blog and we have immediately added it to our RSS feed - nice job all round - well done!
May 29th, 2007 at 10:34 am
NI-LIMITS,
Great! I’m happy to hear that you’ve found some content useful. Stay tuned, the best is yet to come.
Thanks for reading,
Kevin
May 29th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Now that’s just teasing…
We just hope we have time to get ourselves a new flash developer before you do, or else it means our Creative Director will be doing all the flash work. Out of interest, what’s the learning curve on Apollo (for UltraDev-era users)…?
Does anyone know any flash-gurus in Malaysia that aren’t afraid of a little bit of actionscripting…?
(If you don’t ask, you don’t get)
May 30th, 2007 at 1:28 am
What can I say, Apollo is in alpha right now, so there had better be something more/better around the corner (smile).
To be clear though, no Flash/ActionScript is required to learn/use Apollo. In fact, I’ve written a number of Apollo applications using nothing but good old HTML/CSS/JavaScript. An example is the file upload utility posted at the following URL. Also, one of the sample applications, Fresh, is an RSS aggregator built on the Ext framework (i.e. HTML/CSS/JavaScript).
File Upload
http://blog.kevinhoyt.org/2007/05/21/file-upload-with-apollo-and-javascript/
Fresh
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Apollo:Applications:Samples
Ext
http://www.extjs.com/
To answer your question then, if you’re an UltraDev-era developer, then you should feel free much at home with Apollo. The only difference being that your JavaScript now has a host of additional classes (i.e. File, NativeWindow, etc.).
Hope this helps,
Kevin
May 30th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
It helps me get even more upset with myself due to the fact that we have not yet installed and tested it, and that we do not have a flash developer on staff, but other than that; at least it’s now here for those that follow…
Nice one!
December 29th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
i want to thank you for such a great work.