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!