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A
Anonymous
February 4, 2011
Answered

Please help a muppet!!! Just need a steer towards basic web app development

  • February 4, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 895 views

Hi I've got DW/CS5. I've used it to create a website for a mate, www.wyevalleyarchery.co.uk, but now I want to create a very basic app.

What I've got is a spreadsheet with numbers and calculations in it. Its a math model for a bow and arrow.

What I would like to do is make it available to my web site users so they can tune their bows and arrows.

What I think I need to do is create a form with some text fields with default but editable fields - that way they can use my numbers as an example and then enter thier own numbers according to thier equipment.

What I then think I need is a button that says "do the math" - when the user clicks it the app/spread sheet computes an output based on thier data.

I'm pretty damn sure that DW can do this, without resorting to learning to code, but I'm too thick to work out how to make it happen.

Can anyone provide either a steer on some reading or just an example that has 2 input boxs and an output box with a button that adds the 2 inputs. From that I can scale it up?

Many thanks and best regards,

Andy

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer bregent

"Server side JS is supported on ASP, but is much less commonly used. Classic ASP is usually used with VBScript."

hmmm - confused.com!

Whats ASP?

Should I used VBScript then?

all I'm after is a simple form with some fields in. the user updates those fields and presses a button that computes an answer. from the example JS scripts i have seen on the web you should be able to do that I think.

Regards

Andy


Sorry if my last post was confusing. You need to first decide if you want to do this with client side, or server side code. Since you do not have requirements for persisting the data, I would suggest client side since it would lead to a better user experience.

Javascript or Flash are probably your only two viable client side options.

ASP = Active Server Pages. This is Microsoft's server side scripting engine. It's not a language itself, but supports scripting languages like VBScript and Javascript. I only mentioned it because you asked if there was server side Javascript.  ASP, or "Classic ASP" as it is now referred to, has not been actively supported by Microsoft in over 10 years, so if you need to learn server side scripting I would not recommend it. It was replaced by ASP.net, but that's way overkill for your needs.

If you decide you do need functionality of server side scripting (storing data in a database for example), then I would suggest PHP.

1 reply

B
bregent
Participating Frequently
February 4, 2011

DW is not going to really do much of this for you so you are going to need to learn some server side programming. What scripting language will you be using?

A
Anonymous
February 4, 2011

Really? But in DW you can create java, php, vb pages etc - surly Adobe would have built in some basic functions like "add" and "subtract" no???

Done some digging on the web - apparently you can build a calculator using flash but still need to know about scripting. Why can't you just add math buttons and associate them with fields??? Sorry for sounding like a Whinger but DW is so powerful in so many respects - why make a simple task difficult? IMHO a simple job like that should be click, drag and drop etc.

Thanks for your help Bregent.

In terms of scripting, "I know nothing"!!! - what ever is "free" and "easy to use" would be great.

Cheers,

Andy

B
bregent
Participating Frequently
February 5, 2011

>Really? But in DW you can create java, php, vb pages etc -

>surly Adobe  would have built in some basic functions like "add" and "subtract" no???

Right. "You" can create any type of dynamic page in DW. DW won't write that code for you.

DW does come with several server behaviors for things like inserting the contents of a form into a database. But there is not visual GUI to associate fields with math functions.

But in reality, it's not difficult to learn. Do you have experience with any type of programming language?

>In terms of scripting, "I know nothing"!!! - what ever is

>"free" and "easy to use" would be great.

It depends on how much interactivity you expect from your users. If the users will be adjusting values and tweaking things over and over, I would tend to use client side javascript because it is fast. If they are just going to enter values once and want to see results, then I would lean towards PHP.

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