[Opensource] Swing client

[Turgay Zengin]

Hello all,

A strange(?) idea occured to me yesterday. Being tired of dealing with the 
ugliness of jsp(for me at least), being a very bad web page designer, I 
thought of getting rid of the browser altogether, and build a swing client. 
Will work like this:

1) In the swing app, construct an object holding everything you want to send 
to the Expresso Controller (this may be an ArrayList of Strings?)
2) Call the controller, don't forget to send the object
3) The controller will get the object, do its processing, and will construct 
its own object holding what it needs to send back to the client
4) The client receives the resulting object, and updates its interface.

Did anyone try this? What is your opinion?

My reasons are:
-I am building apps for the intranet only, so I have control over the 
clients, absence of the browser will not be bad.
-I'll be able to make nice GUI's (with the help of a GUI designer - did a 
say I was bad at GUI design?)
-jsp, tag libraries will be history for me

disadvantages:
-I'll need to install the app to every client machine (use Java Web Start?)
-I'll have to change the behaviour of Expresso Controllers. I'll need to 
de-serialize the object from the client, do the processing, serialize and 
send an object containing the reults. All other functionality need not be 
changed however.
-Do you see any more disadvantages? I can't think of anything else. As I 
said, all my apps will be for internal use, I'll not need access from 
internet. If needed, I can still build web interfaces, since Expresso will 
be there.

I already did some tests using basic servlets, and this approach works. 
Right now I am trying to login from swing (LoginController.processLogin). If 
successful, I'll continue.

Will be happy to hear your comments.

-Turgay Zengin

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