Developing Code for Web Applications
"As an information medium, the Web lies somewhere between print and broadcast."
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The upside of programming for the Web is that it provides pages that are active and highly interactive and timely, a factor important for Web-based training, which has heavy demands.
The downside is the openness to vandalism. Programs can be downloaded, so they're vulnerable to malicious damage and have to be protected. Plus you have to be familiar with Web technology.
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A Microsoft approach to downloading safety, called the Internet Component Download Specification, provides "a mechanism by which components can be packaged, downloaded, verified, and installed on a client computer."
The steps are listed by Guy and Henry Eddon:
Click here for more details of these and other programming tools.
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Your code for the Internet likely will be downloaded dynamically from the server to the client, or you will have to download data, should the program already be on the client's computer. Delays could create serious program disruptions. So downloading time becomes critical. For training programs, particularly, delays could be lethal, since they could easily destroy the trainee's feedback process.
To avoid disruptions at the user's end, it pays to download asynchronously.
In essence, asynchronous downloading involves parallel programming. Portions of the transfer are done on their own time, so there has to be communication between the parts. In effect, one part talks to another part, which is to say that information is a key element of the process.
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