We have a large IW application dating back some 20 years. It is designed for desktop/laptop use and (currently) does not work very well on a mobile device (it basically requires a lot of zooming and panning from the users in order to see / do what they want on a phone). For this reason we also added a mobile friendly web application built with IW + CGDevTools JQuery Mobile, providing a subset of the functionality in the main web application. This combination has been sufficient for most of our customers, but now we have a large public procurement where our system would be a very good candidate, except that one of their requirements is that the (main) web application should be "responsive", i.e. automatically adapt to desktop/laptop/tablet/phone screens.
Technically, all web forms in the main web application inherit from either a "base menu web form" or a "base web dialog", both of which are inherited from the same "base web form". These base forms both contain some common visual elements (e.g. at the top of the screen) and some common code. We also use frames a lot, both as reusable parts in web forms and for modal dialogs. Controls used in the forms are mainly standard ones that existed in the early IntraWeb days, e.g. TIWLabel, TIWEdit, TIWButton, TIWCheckBox, TIWComboBox (and the data-aware versions), TIWDBGrid, TIWMenu, TIWImageFile, TIWLink, etc. And we have CSS files to control colors, fonts. etc.
What are the options for making such an existing IW application "responsive"? I assume one option would be to use IW Bootstrap controls? But I guess that would mean rewriting basically the whole web application? I could note that we could probably be satisfied with the web application being just "acceptable" on a mobile device, so that we can "tick the box" in the procurement requirement list for this potential customer. Then in practice, their end users will probably use our web application from a desktop/laptop anyway.
All feedback on this is appreciated.
Best regards
Magnus Oskarsson
Technically, all web forms in the main web application inherit from either a "base menu web form" or a "base web dialog", both of which are inherited from the same "base web form". These base forms both contain some common visual elements (e.g. at the top of the screen) and some common code. We also use frames a lot, both as reusable parts in web forms and for modal dialogs. Controls used in the forms are mainly standard ones that existed in the early IntraWeb days, e.g. TIWLabel, TIWEdit, TIWButton, TIWCheckBox, TIWComboBox (and the data-aware versions), TIWDBGrid, TIWMenu, TIWImageFile, TIWLink, etc. And we have CSS files to control colors, fonts. etc.
What are the options for making such an existing IW application "responsive"? I assume one option would be to use IW Bootstrap controls? But I guess that would mean rewriting basically the whole web application? I could note that we could probably be satisfied with the web application being just "acceptable" on a mobile device, so that we can "tick the box" in the procurement requirement list for this potential customer. Then in practice, their end users will probably use our web application from a desktop/laptop anyway.
All feedback on this is appreciated.
Best regards
Magnus Oskarsson