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Good idea to host 2 versions of map app due to browser support?

Permanently deleted user

Hi guys

I'm primarily a web developer working in an IT department.  I have no experience working with GeoCortex, so the question may seem rudimentary...

We're running GeoCortex 4.1.1.  Our GIS guys want to use the Silverlight viewer as they feel the HTML5 viewer is limited and slow to respond.  We're pushing for HTML5 as it should work on mobile devices and there's no support for Silverlight on mobile.  Looking at our Google Analytics traffic I see the majority of desktop browsers hitting our servers are running IE.  All versions of IE don't score very well with the HTML 5 scorecard.

I'm considering asking out GIS department to publish SilverLight AND HTML5 (I'm assuming this does not place a lot of additional burden on the GIS technician, but could be wrong?).  I'd then set up a landing page, sniff the client, and redirect to either SilverLight or HTML5 based on what's discovered.

Is this what others are doing or is there an alternative I'm not seeing?

Tks

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  • Permanently deleted user
    Steven, you can have multiple viewers accessing the same site. Silverlight is still more feature robust, so I would use that for your main internal site. You can then also have an HTML5 viewer for mobile devices. It sounds like it will be another year or so before HTML5 catches up to Silverlight. The UI is fairly similar, so transitioning later should not be a problem. Also, Silverlight will not be going away for a number of years, so you could keep it longer if you wanted. Alternatively, if you have relatively simple site needs to start, you could just use HTML5, and grow your site as HTML5 matures. Silverlight is a more stable product, however, and you should take that into consideration.
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  • Permanently deleted user

    Tks Mike

    You say I can have multiple viewers accessing the same site.  I'm not sure what's involved in configuring this, but I assume the SilverLight and HTML5 versions of the site would have distinct URLs? 

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  • Permanently deleted user

    Hi Steven,

    I'm a developer working on the HTML5 viewer here. Mike's points are valid, and utilizing both the Silverlight and HTML5 viewers is a common pattern.

    Just to clarify, when Mike refers to the Site, he means the actual Geocortex Essentials Site: the Essentials objects representing collections of GIS data and workflows managed by REST Manager. Sites are technology agnostic which is a large part of their value. Sites are a way of aggregating and configuring GIS data for consumption in different viewers and technologies. It's easy to configure a Silverlight viewer and an HTML5 viewer to point to the same Site. Both viewers will have distinct URLs, but they will both consume the same Site object (which has its own REST URL). This can all be done in REST Manager.

    If you're looking to redirect to a particular viewer, have a look in Index.html of the HTML5 viewer. That page does some very simple user agent detection in order to decide what type of device is consuming the viewer. That might be a good starting point for your redirection mechanism.

    You're right about IE. It's got a troubling past and a bad track record with regards to support of open standards. That being said, recent versions of IE (10, 11) have gotten a lot better. We've invested a lot of effort into ensuring that our HTML5 viewer is IE compatible all the way back to 8, but we definitely recommend IE 9 or above. IE 9 support in the HTML5 viewer is quite good, and we're actually finding that Chrome, Safari, and Firefox are the more problematic browsers these days, given their fast update tracks and competitive, evolving natures.

    -Jason

     

     

     

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  • Permanently deleted user

    I took a slightly different approach and branded my feature-rich Silverlight viewers as 'Advanced' and my simpler HTML5 viewers as 'Lite' versions of my maps. Yes, each viewer has its own distinct url. All of my maps have both Advanced and Lite versions. This is not really much more trouble for me because both Advanced and Lite viewers point to the same exact Geocortex site. The additional overhead with multiple viewers involves the initial configuration and infrequent maintenance/updates to the two viewers.

    I don't consider this to be too bursensome but I don't presume to speak for your GIS staff. :) As the HTML5 standard matures and the GC HTML5 viewer gains more functionlity, I may have to rethink how I brand and deploy my map applications but for now this works for me.

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  • Permanently deleted user
    Most of the work to set up a site is done in REST Manager. Configuring the viewers is a much simpler matter. So having multiple viewers is not much more work than just having one viewer. I actually point my HTML5 viewer to a simpler site than I use for Silverlight, but mostly because I published my HTML5 site early, before there was proper layer control. If I were to do it now, I would have them both point to the same site.
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  • Permanently deleted user

    Thanks for all the feedback.  This gives me a few ideas and I'm starting to feel a little more Geocortex literate now :)

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