Your opinions please. RE Internet Application

[JoeBlack]

Hi all,

I am new to web development and have been asked if the following is
possible, I was hoping some people with more experience than me could
confirm if this is possible and what technologies would be required to
realise it, so that I can then investigate how to do it.

I have a "black box" of electronics with an ADSL connection, the "black box"
has 4 buttons and 4 lights on it.

Basically all I want to do is to be able to view the status of the "black
boxes" buttons and lights in real time (say a 20 - 40 second delay would be
acceptable). I would also need to be able to switch the lights on or off. I
need to do this using only Internet Explorer, a small (activex ???) download
the first time this was used would be acceptable, but if it can be avoided
that would be better, also I would PREFER (but this is not a requirement) to
use a technology that would allow as many browsers (ie netscape, mozilla
etc) as possible to use this service.

The "black box" does not have the ability to host a server on it so it could
only send/receive http requests, therefore I assume that I need a seperate
web server? A database (SQL Server 2000) would be at the webserver that
would log button presses, light activations, connections to the web server
etc. again these would be viewable by IE, this can be a html web page with
data dynamically embedded ito it before it is sent to IE, so not a problem
there I think.

The problem is that the web pages are static, so if a button was pressed the
whole page that was being viewed in IE would have to be refreshed and the
new data displayed, this is unacceptable for the application unfortunately,
I need to update a single part of the web page, this could be thought of as
a label control on a standard windows form, when you change the text on it
the whole form is not refreshed just the labels text changes.

example:

User1 connects to web server with IE and logs in and selects view status of
device and is shown the current status of black box.

User2 presses button 1 on black box.

User1 sees only the label referring to button 1 change to "button
pressed".(no refresh)

User1 clicks activate light 1 button on page in IE.

User2 sees light 1 activiate on the black box.

User1 now sees the light 1 label change to "lit".

Any thoughts or recomendations on this subject would be greatly appreciated,
we have an MSDN Universal subscription and would like to use the
technologies that are available within that scope.

Many thanks

Joe

[Ken Dopierala Jr.]

Hi Joe,

The easiest way is to create your web page and then have it use the
webservice.htc to hit a web service on the server. Have that web service
interact with your black box and return results. The webservice.htc only
works with IE. I've seen messages that say FireFox can call a web service
but have yet to see any code of it doing so. It works great with XP SP2 so
you don't have to worry about that. Another way of doing this would be
using this:

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/Al...asp#xx848063xx

It is pretty cool and works well, it also works with most browsers. The
entire page won't refresh but whenever it makes a request you will see the
request flash at the bottom left corner of the browser. The drawback to
this, is that you will need to put functions on every ASPX page for which
you want the functionality. Good luck! Ken.

--
Ken Dopierala Jr.
For great ASP.Net web hosting try:
http://www.webhost4life.com/default.asp?refid=Spinlight
If you sign up under me and need help, email me.

"JoeBlack" <Jo******@newsgroup.nospam> wrote in message
news:O2**************@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...

Hi all,

I am new to web development and have been asked if the following is
possible, I was hoping some people with more experience than me could
confirm if this is possible and what technologies would be required to
realise it, so that I can then investigate how to do it.

I have a "black box" of electronics with an ADSL connection, the "black box" has 4 buttons and 4 lights on it.

Basically all I want to do is to be able to view the status of the "black
boxes" buttons and lights in real time (say a 20 - 40 second delay would be acceptable). I would also need to be able to switch the lights on or off. I need to do this using only Internet Explorer, a small (activex ???) download the first time this was used would be acceptable, but if it can be avoided
that would be better, also I would PREFER (but this is not a requirement) to use a technology that would allow as many browsers (ie netscape, mozilla
etc) as possible to use this service.

The "black box" does not have the ability to host a server on it so it could only send/receive http requests, therefore I assume that I need a seperate
web server? A database (SQL Server 2000) would be at the webserver that
would log button presses, light activations, connections to the web server
etc. again these would be viewable by IE, this can be a html web page with
data dynamically embedded ito it before it is sent to IE, so not a problem
there I think.

The problem is that the web pages are static, so if a button was pressed the whole page that was being viewed in IE would have to be refreshed and the
new data displayed, this is unacceptable for the application unfortunately, I need to update a single part of the web page, this could be thought of as a label control on a standard windows form, when you change the text on it
the whole form is not refreshed just the labels text changes.

example:

User1 connects to web server with IE and logs in and selects view status of device and is shown the current status of black box.

User2 presses button 1 on black box.

User1 sees only the label referring to button 1 change to "button
pressed".(no refresh)

User1 clicks activate light 1 button on page in IE.

User2 sees light 1 activiate on the black box.

User1 now sees the light 1 label change to "lit".

Any thoughts or recomendations on this subject would be greatly appreciated, we have an MSDN Universal subscription and would like to use the
technologies that are available within that scope.

Many thanks

Joe

[JoeBlack]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for the information, I think the web services is the way to go
for what I want to achieve, many thanks for the quick response.

Joe

Ken Dopierala Jr. wrote:

Hi Joe,

The easiest way is to create your web page and then have it use the
webservice.htc to hit a web service on the server. Have that web service
interact with your black box and return results. The webservice.htc only
works with IE. I've seen messages that say FireFox can call a web service
but have yet to see any code of it doing so. It works great with XP SP2 so
you don't have to worry about that. Another way of doing this would be
using this:

http://www.codeproject.com/aspnet/Al...asp#xx848063xx

It is pretty cool and works well, it also works with most browsers. The
entire page won't refresh but whenever it makes a request you will see the
request flash at the bottom left corner of the browser. The drawback to
this, is that you will need to put functions on every ASPX page for which
you want the functionality. Good luck! Ken.