WebDaptive: A User's View

by Jeff Thurston, Consultant

When I first began using WebDaptive over two years ago, I was mainly a client-server programmer with very little professional experience coding for the web. My hobbyist web activities didn't require the precision or hold the responsibility associated with an enterprise level web application. Just beginning work on an intranet based project, I was excited but and a bit nervous about the huge learning curve that lay ahead of me. The software development toolset we were using was great for building applications quickly but aesthetics were never its strong point. Web users tend to want aesthetics, functionality, and speed, all over great distances and on every platform imaginable. How would we deliver a state of the art, rich user experience? How would we handle security? How would the application authenticate users? What about logging? These are all questions our client was posing to the project team.

My fears were quickly put to rest as I saw how easy it was to integrate the code I was writing with the WebDaptive framework. It covered nearly every aspect of the software development project that normally takes a developer's focus away from our reason for being... the business. I didn't have to spend time with complicated controls, XML parsers, writing email objects, or writing to the Windows event log. It was all handled for me in a nice, neat package that was simple to install and configure. Within days I had a functioning tree view and tab layout, and had integrated them with some of our user interfaces that were near completion. I could log messages to either the Windows event log, to file, or both. I was authenticating users against our client's Active Directory using the Authorization Web Service and validating application security via the web service enabled QAT Security. With a few more days work, we were storing temporary session information in memory using the Session Service and sending email notifications directly from our application. The team enjoyed the look and feel so much that we began testing our work in the framework. All of this came right out of the box. Still, we were only utilizing about forty percent of WebDaptive's functionality.

Get Free Photos for Web Design

Liven up your Web project with free photos from fellow designers

by Karie Barrett

Today, Web designers can find an abundance of free resources on the web to liven up content. From free textures to objects to people, this article demonstrates that a Web designer can get photos these days at little or no cost.

Sure, Web designers with large budgets can buy whatever resources they need to bring a Web experience from a concept to the page. All they have to do to get the photos they want is hire professional photographers and models to create the images. But not all Web designers are so lucky, no matter how large or small the organization or client they work for is! Frequently, designers are called upon to create Web sites on a small or nearly nonexistent art budget; this doesn't necessarily come with lower expectations for a fabulous Web experience. In cases like these, you need all the help you can get. Design is one area where people are extremely generous and happy to share their knowledge and efforts with others in the field. One result of this is that you can find plenty of photos that are free. If you know where to start looking, you can fill in many of the holes in your budget-challenged projects. I am going to take this opportunity to introduce you to a variety of the free photo resources that I have found valuable for projects both large and small.

The first place I go when I need photography is stock.xchng, even when my budget includes some money for purchasing images. This site has an enormous collection of stock photos, of which a very large portion comes with no use restrictions. By using their advanced search engine, you can find only those images that have no restrictions if providing any type of link or credits with photo is a problem for your project. The images include a wide variety of quality and resolution levels, so your chances of finding something that will work for your project are high. If you find a particular photographer that you like, you can also look through their full portfolio on the site, which may help you find images for future projects. They are constantly adding new images, so I recommend visiting the site and going through their recently added images section at least once a week!