IntraWeb XIV and Future happenings

IntraWeb XIV and Future happenings

IntraWeb XIV and Future happenings

This post will be a bit informal but I wanted to take some time to 
inform IntraWeb users what’s going on and what they can expect to see in 
the coming weeks and months. 
 
The fork – 12.2 is now the stable work branch. Version 14 is where some bigger 
changes are occurring and is a separate work branch from 12.2. Version 14 will 
have test releases in the coming weeks, but 12.2 is the tree that is 
being maintained and fixes applied. 
 
Things no more… 
 
1) ISAPIChecker.dll – Probably wont see the light of day. This is 
because of new IIS deployment options, see below. We hope that most 
users will migrate to the new options and ISAPIChecker wont be in 
demand. Furthermore, 12.2 and 14 are friendlier with permissions of 
temp files and thus should be slightly easier on ISAPI deployment. 
 
2) IW Server – Wont really be needed because of the new IIS options, and 
serious improvements on MS side with regards to IIS 7. SA however has 
plans to be upgraded and some features of IW server will likely be 
brought into the SA server. 
 
New Things 
 
These are all for 14. They do have some code impacts, although we hope 
they will be negligible. This is why the rev bump and why 12.2 is still 
being maintained until 14 settles down. 
 
Less RAM, fewer temp files. The old streaming mechanism has been 
replaced (much of this was done into 12.2 also). IW now is quite a bit 
faster in the lower areas with regards to serving content. It uses far 
fewer temp files and uses far less RAM, as well as CPU. 
 
Content – In recent versions we added wwwroot and started migrating 
features from IntraWeb Studio. 14 brings in a lot more of these 
features and makes IW viable for building non app type websites and 
expands abilities greatly. 
 
ASPX – New option to deploy on IIS, and fully debuggable. Its still 
Delphi code, its still IW. But we have a new wrapper which allows you to 
deploy your IW app as an “ASPX Application” on IIS. Its easy to deploy, 
easy to configure, and easy to debug. 
 
ISAPI – ISAPI is still supported and will not go away any time soon. But 
we hope users will migrate to the ASPX option. What ISAPI users really 
want is IIS deployment, not ISAPI itself. ASPX offers this, with a lot 
simpler deployment. Each new IIS release causes changes and 
compatibility problems with ISAPI which impacts both us and users. ASPX 
however enjoys a smooth upgrade. I think this is some secret plan to 
frustrate ISAPI users on MS behalf and try to encourage them to move 
away from ISAPI where possible. 
 
Swamp Stuff 
 
In recent times we eliminated pre Unicode environments. We eliminated 
older browsers. This has allowed us to be free and not worry about 
“WWIE4D?” (What would IE4 do?) Although we finally killed these older 
things off form the support perspective, a lot of code still existed 
that was written for these older browser. And we caught a lot of flack 
about IE6, despite is being used by only very small single digits at the 
time. But we weren’t the only ones – many large websites killed off IE6 
support including Google Apps and others. 
 
Now its time to clean this code. Much of it is old and based on things 
that don’t exist any more. Its created a situation that often a bug fix 
takes us 1 step forward and 2 back. 
 
The major dispatch code is actually a huge sore spot for us. In fact we 
did a small rewrite in 12.1 and even named the old code “ExecuteSwamp”. 
14 throws the swamp out and rewrites this code finally from scratch, 
written for modern times with no workarounds for proxies and browsers 
that no longer exist. I cannot under emphasize how much this and some 
other areas that are being redone will help to move IW forward by 
minimizing the amount of time required to debug and apply changes and fixes. 
 
Docs – In recent months we deployed the docs wiki. It didn’t go as 
expected, but did highlight what parts of IWS needed to be brought down 
to IW ASAP. 14 brings in those pieces and we hope that the docs will 
finally move forward and we can consolidate and update the older 
disjointed documentation. 
 
Website – The website is currently in IWS which has been deprecated for 
several years. 14 will allow us to port the website to IWS and finally 
not only update it to where we want, but to make it a real demo of IW 
itself. ASPX deployment is also part of this.