Preferences for accounting software

[Christof Donat]

Hi,

> For a large range of
> application nowadays the question often is: should an application be
> built on a standalone toolkit or as a web interface.

Which not always but often is a question the Marketing asks. Think about those 
who use the Software and what they prefer.

> Perhaps you feel sometimes that GnuCash would do better when
> using a web interface,

Up to now that didn't happen to me.

If you can't install anything on a Client machine, then HTML should be your 
choice. The drawback ist that HTML doesn't have richt widgets.

The easiest and most portable solution is to mimic their behaviour on the 
server side but you buy that with rather long pauses during work. That can be 
verry annoying.

The other way, using JavaScript usually means deciding for one or maybe two 
browsers and writing a real bunch of JS Code. This is the one of the main 
reasons why I chose GNUCash for my accounting.

> or perhaps you can give some good arguments why a 
> standalone approach is way superior when building an accounting software.

You should choose a normal toolkit over HTML if you can. In case you can't 
install anything on the client side but you can dictate the Browser they use, 
XUL yould be a good choice. Actually if GNUCash would start now, I would vote 
for XUL because if done well, you can get the much of the best from both 
worlds.

Christof