A person can't expect every web-applications developer (or someone who wants to be that) to be a rocket scientist. Or for that matter, to know to code in High Level languages. Assuming that a lot of people who progress to the level of wanting to develop web applications will be comfortable and familiar with a fair bit of coding, but given that nearly 99% of the population using Internet wants to create web applications, it is only logical that the process be made simple. With the complexity of web-apps increasing, the amount of coding that goes into creating it is humongous. (Let alone the fact that even many rocket scientists may not know Java or HTML)
I was introduced (or sent an invite) to Zoho Creator. I haven't created any web-apps before. The last time I learnt about Database and SQL was nearly four years back in school and having no memory whatsoever of one, I had to try and figure out their significance before creating one. After becoming fairly familiar, I created a proper application. My first one on the web - a movie Database! It works fairly simple:
- Created a form called YOMDb - Your Own Movie Database - having heads like "Title", "Year", "Genre", "Your Ratings" etc.
- Made a couple of fields mandatory - "Title", for instance, without which it'd make no sense.
- Started adding the titles I had in mind.
What started out as a sample title got converted into a full fledged catalogue of all the films I'd seen (and remembered). Complete with my ratings. 43 titles in all.I could sort them based on my ratings, the year of release, alphabetical order or the genre. And as I was scrolling down to the bottom most part of the list, I realized that I'd made a typo. And when I hit edit - the edit field options appeared right there, instead of making me scroll up by approximately forty lines. It reminded me of Gmail - upon hitting "Reply", the field opens immediately below, instead of letting you scroll up. People who lack that feather touch when it comes to handling the mouse - and hence spoiling the scroll wheel to the extent of it being non-functional will associate with that previous sentence.
I would have been absolutely satisfied if there was some ease when it came to linking other web-sites. As such, I tried using the anchor tag, which it didn't recognize. I wouldn't want to leave a lengthy permalink which points to, say (as in my case), a critic's review, for it spoils the otherwise chic look of the web-app. (There's an e-mail field, though)
Rocket scientists or not, it is time to rejoice, for, the web is heading in the right direction. Which means a lot of such web technologies will let users of the web to think on a higher level (such as the relevance of the application they've created or regarding the loop holes) and not worry whether they've got the syntax for a particular code right.
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