HTML Question, Really

I’ve done only a little HTML; however, web sites have a lot of problems, e.g. text on top of other text, text entry boxes that are too short or too thin so text is cutoff, blacked out portions of pages (see Washington Examiner when your browser page is not wide enough) and many more such things making nasty presentations.

My purpose is a technical Business Web Ap (math, science, eng, etc). Usually my stuff is complicated and done for the desktop; however, some years ago I made a complicated Java Applet which was a great success. I would just make a Java Ap (WebStart or such) but my client would like iPad support and that damn Jobs did not like Java, so HTML5 on the client is a consideration and Vaadin looks good (except I don’t know enough to know if it can draw 2&3-D graphics on the client canvas).

Question: How can I be sure my Ap will look good on the common browsers when the user can change so much (e.g. Firefox Ctrl+ blowing everything up, etc)? I’m afraid of HTML and looking for some feedback that it really does work. Some techies say HTML5 is the future but just not ready yet including Zuckerberg who said using HTML5 for the Facebook Ap was his biggest mistake and reverted to native code.

Thanks all.

Well, this sounds like a too general question and not really vaadin-related, but I’ll try to share some thoughts.

  • HTML is not suitable for every type of application, for example if you have heavy 2d/3d graphics;
  • if you need business application, you can check some of existing ERP/CRM apps with HTML UI (there are free packages also) and get the idea what can be achieved;
  • the problems mentioned arise from flexibility (users can control fonts, sizes etc.), they exist in many applications, but also most of them are solvable (check responsive layouts).

Vaadin is a poweful base for developing technicel apps. At first you have many Vaadin addons which integrate popular JS frameworks - see addon directory. For our own project we developed helper classes to integrate scientific JS frameworks.

https://vaadin.com/forum#!/thread/4991257