Online apps

[thezone1]

Hi iv recently been thinking about setting up a site that hosts free online apps, problem is i dont know how i can get exe's to run over a internet.

is there a way i can have windows explorer show the files on the server ??

or an applet to show directories ??

would i be better using FTP

thanks for any help

[HomerJ]

That's not exactly how it works. If you have a file with a .exe extension, most likely it will be downloaded by the user. I suppose in theory a webserver could serve an .exe file, but I very highly doubt such a feature exists in any server.

What you will need to get an app created specifically as a web application. It will most likely be written in PHP and cost you money. Or you could create your own if you have some expertise.

[thezone1]

I take your point, and what if i used FTP to show directories could i run the exe or will it attempt to download

[HomerJ]

I take your point, and what if i used FTP to show directories could i run the exe or will it attempt to download

I'm not entirely sure (I think you could do both), but either way, you won't get the results you want. If you allow them to execute these applications, they will run on your server and not give any output to the user. If you don't, they will download it.

If you want to run an online application, like a mail client, you would download the software from somewhere. Then, you would extract and configure it somewhere in your server root. The user would then connect to your server, and the server would serve a file with an extension like .php or .asp, etc. The server would run the script on its own hardware, and send the output to the user.

[thezone1]

Sorry for my ignorance on this topic, but i understand that there are aplication servers could the likes of Office, and Dreamweaver run of on of these

Thanks

[HomerJ]

Sorry for my ignorance on this topic, but i understand that there are aplication servers could the likes of Office, and Dreamweaver run of on of these

Thanks

I'm not an expert on application servers, but I'm fairly certain that the software has to be specially developed for them. Something like Java uses an application server. It would probably be possible to do this with .NET applications, but I don't think something like Office or Dreamweaver could. Besides that, it would be incredibly illegal unless you had permission from the intellectual property owner.

There are a few C++ application servers, but, as always, the software has to be developed specifically for the application server.

[mattura]

No, you can't do what you want - either the users will have to download the exe, or you will have to re-write it (eg in php) to work from a web server.
Unless of course you have root access to your server, and know enough about programming (probably java etc) to set up the necessary communications (sockets etc), basically a whole heap of effot for something most people already have on their computer...

[charlies]

I guess you could do something that takes a screenshot and sends it to the user as an imagemap which sends the click coordinates back to the server, but as mattura said, that would require Administrator access and would be a huge security concern as well as likely being buggy.

If you want to host actual Web Apps, consider something like EyeOS