IntraWeb 11 is now IntraWeb XI

11/1/2009

It is more than a name change. In fact, its because of the other changes that we felt we had to change the naming to signify those changes.

Our original plans for IntraWeb 11 are just too big to perform in one step. During the beta, we still need to maintain 10, and overall it would prolong the development. Because of this, we have decided to split the original plans into IntraWeb 11, and IntraWeb 12. IntraWeb 11 will be a major change in our development process moving forward.

IntraWeb XI

To differentiate this, it will be called IntraWeb XI (11 in roman numerals).

We wanted to avoid the confusing mess that some companies have created with version identifiers (Windows 3, 3.1 numbers, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, and finally back to numbers again, 7), but still somehow signify that XI is not just the next version of IntraWeb, but a major change.

IntraWeb XII

IntraWeb XII is the next version after XI and will contain the integration with CrossTalk and ASP.NET. IntraWeb XI lays the groundwork for this major step and will allow us to spend less time on maintainanence versus IntraWeb 10.

Goals

The goals of IntraWeb XI are as follows:

• Simplified code base for easier maintenance
  
• Very high level of compatibility with IntraWeb 10
• Provide foundation for IntraWeb XII

Discontinued Features

IntraWeb XI will discontinue many older features to allow us to clean the code base. Because there are some users using some of the discontinued features, unlike previous releases, IntraWeb 10 will continue to be supported after IntraWeb XI is released for these features.

Discontinued - WAP and HTML 3.2

Both of these features have been mature for several years. While they are supported up through IntraWeb 10, no major changes to their functionality has been made since their introduction to IntraWeb several years ago. A few users do use these features, but they add complexity to the code base. WAP and HTML 3.2 users will continue to be supported with our extended support of IntraWeb 10.

Discontinued - Older Browsers

We have yet to decide on what the minimum browser standards will be for IntraWeb XI. However currently we are investigating the following:

• Firefox 2, possibly 3.0
  
• Internet Explorer 7, or possibly 6. - IE 6 is waning quickly in usage in favor of 7 and 8. By the time IntraWeb XI is released, IE 6's numbers are expected to be very minimal. In addition, there are several active web campaigns to eliminate support for IE 6.
• Opera
  

Discontinued - Development Environments

IntraWeb 10 supports Delphi 5 to Delphi 2010 (except Delphi 8), and C++ Builder 5 through CDS 2010. At a minimum we know that we must support Delphi 7. Supporting Delphi 6 and Delphi 5 do not require much extra effort, but do complicate the build process quite significantly. Our proposed development environment support for IntraWeb XI is as follows. Users of discontinued environments will still be supported for IntraWeb 10. IntraWeb 10 is not being "end of lifed".

These are the proposed supported environments. If there is enough demand for ones marked as "no", they will be re-examined.

Discontinued - Client Side Data Sets (Completed)

These are not the VCL CSDS, but the IntraWeb ones. These use an older technology, that we will replace at a later time using newer functionality now available in browsers.

Discontinued - Client Side Charts (Completed)

For the same reason as Client Side Data Sets.

Discontinued - umPartial (Completed)

umPartial was many years ahead of its time. Even today umPartial can do many things that AJAX cannot. However maintaining two implementations has grown quite complex. From IntraWeb XI and forward, we will continue to upgrade our AJAX support so that it can match all the features of umPartial and also remain more powerful than other AJAX implementations.

Discontinued - Page Mode (Completed)

We are considering discontinuing the existing page mode for a newer more modern page mode with more features and better integration with application mode.

Discontinued - Apache DSO (Completed)

CodeGear discotnineud it a long time ago and we only "unofficially" support it now, now we will fully discontinue it. Further, Apache can now run ISAPI DLLs.

Discontinued - DynGrid (Completed)

The DynGrid depended on client side datasets (discontinued) and will be replaced with an enhanced SilverLight based control.

Discontinued - Tracking Options (Completed)

IntraWeb 10 supports tmURL, tmHidden, and tmCookie. When the tracking options were first designed, most websites did not use cookies and many users explicitly blocked all cookies. Browsers and websites have matured, and on today's Internet, cookies are much more common. In those days, many users also completely disabled Javascript. Both Javascript and cookies are essential to the modern Internet. Users who which to control cookies, control them with granularity by monitoring them, rather than restricting all. Corporations, instead of applying blanket policies, enforce URL based restrictions.

Using cookies to track sessions allows IntraWeb to implement many more features, including a better page mode that is integrated with applicaiton mode, and URL mapping. Because of this, all sessions in IntraWeb XI will be tracked using cookies.

Some users used tmHidden or tmURL to allow single users to run multiple sessions in separate tabs or windows. tmCookie does not allow this. We are aware of this need, and will provide a low impact solution that will preserve this capability for those developers that require this.

What's New?

Some users may be wondering about all the discontinued features. But not to worry, there will be many new features as well in addition to the new sleeker cleaner code base.

New - Code Cleanup and Streamlining (Completed)

Despite the fact that IntraWeb some time ago dropped support for Kylix, Visual Studio.NET, and Delphi.NET there are still many IFDEF statements and extra code left over. We generally left them because we did not want to risk changing working code. As part if IntraWeb XI we will remove this extra code, and refactor many areas to be much simpler now that we can focus exclusively on native VCL.

New - Custom Session Tracking

For developers requiring multiple sessions per user, we will create a custom session tracking option that will require minimal coding to implement. We envision only a few events on the Server Controller will need to be implemented.

New - WebKit support

We are going to explicitly support WebKit based browsers like Chrome and Safari.

New - HTML 5 Base

HTML 5 is not official yet and still changing quite a bit. However IntraWeb XI will be prepped to be ready for HTML 5.

New - Language Specific Versions

We plan to target specific countries and languages with local pricing. For example, we may produce a version of IntraWeb that can only server Russian content, but available at a localized prices for Russian speaking economies. We will target several languages, likely Russian, Chinese, and others. Spanish and Portuguese are more difficult, because they are used in both Western European countries as well as developing countries.

New - Silverlight Enabled Controls

For many years we have wanted to create "super" controls. We experimented with both Java and Flash. However for many reasons we found the path undesirable. Silverlight finally enables us to move toward this path. Use of Silverlight will be optional, and IntraWeb XI applications will still be able to be developed which do not require Silverlight.

New - Website

The complete Atozed website is being redeveloped from scratch. We will keep the general design and layout, however the content is being reworked from scratch. Other parts of the Atozed site have already been completed. Next is the IntraWeb section.

New - Language Support

We plan to specifically target Portuguese, Spanish, and Chinese in addition to English with website content, documentation, and eventually support.

New - Page Mode

A new more modern page mode that allows finer grained control and better integration with application mode.

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