Challenges Encountered Using Web Technologies

Although it has many benefits, the Web also carries certain challenges:

• Limited Interactivity: Interactivity is limited since a web page cannot communicate with the server in real-time except when the page is submitted to the server by the user. For example, if a program needs to populate a particular list box field, it needs to refresh the whole page when the user reaches a particular field on the screen.
• Lack of Skills: The web is still foreign to many developers who have been busy developing mainframe, client/server, and standalone applications. These developers are often unfamiliar with web technologies, web programming, and web scalability issues.
• Security Risks: Utilizing the web exposes the company's network to new security risks and programming vulnerabilities that can expose private data to the public.
• Browser Compatibility: Unfortunately, the competition between web browsers has resulted in many differences in supported standards, thus creating confusion between users, and more importantly, compatibility issues with web applications. It is recommended that you test your web application with several browser versions, on several operating systems. A useful tool for this task is NetMechanic's Browser Photo service at http://www.netmechanic.com/browser-index.htm.
• Lack of Web Development Tools Until Recently: The development of web applications is time-consuming due to the lack of professional web development tools. The available tools are usually coding environments that require a solid programming foundation and experience. Only recently have new tools become available that facilitate the creation of web applications with little programming experience. These include Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Microsoft Visual Studio.NET, and YesSoftware CodeCharge products. Of these, CodeCharge is perhaps the most useful because it automatically generates programming code in a variety of programming languages, and enables users to learn by examining and tweaking the code.

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