Web Application similar Native Client

Question

I am wanting to port my application to a web app.

The app should:

1. Be able to access the local hard drive
2. The data should be stored locally (in case of denial of service attacks to my web server).
3. Take advantage of the local CPU.
4. Run in any browser, in any OS
5. No plugins required.

Basically, I want an web app that will run in any browser and in any operating system. Requires no plugins to use. And not susceptible to denial of service attacks.

I have heard of Native Client from Google, but this is in its embryonic stage and it may only run with Chromium and or Chrome (not in IE, Firefox, Safari etc).

I don't want to use flash because it requires a plugin which can be blocked by users computers (security policy of company laptops). Also, I heard flash is dying.

Also, I've heard Jave/JSP/Applets are dead.

What development environment will allow me to achieve the above? Does .NET? Silverlight?

Thanks

Answer 1

Being able to access the users local hard drive directly without a plug-in would be a violation of security and just can't be done. Unless you are referring to users being able to upload files to the server to store! which can be done; but its all within the users control.

If the data you wish to save on the user-end is small the only option you would have is cookies without any plug-in at all and the amount of data you can store is very small indeed.

HTML5 introduces application storage but its support is very very low so i doubt this would suit you either as users can define how much room each application can use and it defaults to a smallish amount.

You can use as much CPU as you like i guess... however you must realise that a lot of people run multiple applications, services and websites at once and they all share CPU usage! so don't expect old mum's laptop to perform and keep up if you plan to use a lot of CPU intensive operations on the client end.... Server side CPU; it will be up to your hosting provider as to how much you can use, some cloud hosting providers make you pay CPU usage even.

If your site is under attack it wouldn't matter if it was flash, silverlight, a normal web page, a native client application or how much data you stored on the user-end... if a browser can't request the page, the page will not load and nothing will appear except a local error page, so none of these technologies will make you 'safe' from a DOS attack or any other kind of attack and users will find they simply can't load the site or page anyway.

Silverlight is similar to Flash, Java applets and the google 'native client' and everything else! in that its a plug-in users have to install and can optionally disable, so i gather none of these options are for you... without relying on a plug-in your options are only basic javascript and HTML and nothing else, and a lot of companies disable all plug-ins or allow only a very selected few e.g adobe reader only... some even disable javascript so can't do any kind of coding at all on the client :)

It all depends on what EXACTLY you need to do, why do you need access to a users hard drive... why do you specify you need take advantage of the CPU? and why is there a no-plug's rule yet you talk about using plug-ins anyway?

Answer 2

It sure is bad news to hear that so many things are suddenly dead or dying...

Anyway, if your requirement is "any browser on any OS" then you're talking about HTML, plain and simple. Drop some browsers from that requirement and you can include JavaScript.

Local CPU as opposed to what? Using server resources? Not with HTML/JavaScript. Local data storage will be odd, HTML5 isn't supported by everything yet but it might be something to look at for that.

And what's with the DoS attack vector? Why is that such a relevant concern?

You may have mutually exclusive requirements here, and potentially not a full grasp of web development as a platform or architecture. More to the point, this is a really vague question with almost no information and, from the perspective of others, nonsensical requirements. Please elaborate.