Wildcat! 7.0 Development Starts this Week!

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After a lengthy research effort, this week we begin the new Wildcat! 7.0 (WC7) development efforts. WC7 will be a long time coming of a re-awaken and modern Wildcat! system with all the current technology and preparing it for the future.

From my research, I found that Wildcat! is still a very strong and powerful framework with ideas and concept that many in the similar industry are just now beginning to recognize and deal with. The basic strategy is to strengthen and enhance the Wildcat! Client/Server framework. This will lay the groundwork for years to come. Our problem has been one of marketing and becoming stagnant with the current strength of the current system, ignoring or not focusing on new trends such as WEB 2.0, RSS, XML I/O, etc.

Well, all that is about to change starting this week. There will more to come with plans and announcements, but one of the first things we already done is to enhance the Developer's Corner at the Santronics Online Support Web Site.

The primarily highlights (subject to change) to look for in Wildcat! 7.0 are:

All Editions (Community, Business, Enterprise)

- XML I/O API support for Wildcat! SDK
- RSS feed support for Mail and File Areas
- BLOG support for Mail and File Areas
- SPRY, FLEX, GWT and APOLLO support
- Audio/Video Support
- New WcNavigator based on Web 2.0 methods
- Open Source WcBASIC (Maybe)

Business Edition and Enterprise Edition

- SQL support for User, Mail and File database
- Clustering Support
- I/O Control Port Support

New editions will be packaged:

- DE Developer Edition
- FE File Exchange Edition
- ME Modem-only Edition
- PE Personal Edition (Free)

and a DEMO version will be made available for download.

Hector Santos/CTO

Rebranding Wildcat! Navigator Clients as "Web 2.0 Widgets"

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The latest development fad today are "widgets". Google has them, Yahoo has them, Adobe has them, Microsoft has them. Each is doing it in their own ways with their own set of API toolchest:

o Microsoft - ActiveX, .NET and now SilverLight
o Google - A new comer Web Toolkit
o Yahoo - A new comer, Yahoo Widget API
o Adobe - Flash, Flex and now Apollo

For Wildcat! people, Wildcat! Navigator is a perfect example of "widgets" on your desktop. The above are all basically designed under the same idea as was done for over 10 years with your desktop Wildcat! Navigator (WCN) client or your html Wildcat! Web Clients:

• FILE CLIENT
• MAIL CLIENT
• WHO ONLINE CLIENT
• PERSONAL CLIENT
• CHAT CLIENT
• TELNET CLIENT

Each of these WCN client are design with a single source API/SDK system. When using the Web, you can also display the clients in separate pages, making them appear as "widgets."

Widgets, smidgets! Maybe we will start calling Wildcat! Client as Widgets! :-)

The beauty of WCN clients is that under Wildcat! communications framework, the WCN clients can work with any connectivity device; WEB, GUI and TEXT mode!

So for those who believe "Social Networking" and "Widgets" were just recently invented with the Web, think again. This stuff existed for at least 20 years in the BBS world. You should know that the popular ONE ISPCON trade show was once called ONE BBSCON before the Internet exploded.

If you are interested, click on one of the WCN client links to see Wildcat! Client "Widgets" in action.

If you have Wildcat! Navigator (WCNAV) installed, your browser will start the desktop client. If you don't have WCNAV installed, you will see the web client. The chat client under the web, will start a JAVA desktop client. For text, you have to login under Telnet mode or Dialup. (For people who don't have an account on our system, try using the GUEST account - userid: guest pwd: guest).

Anyway, I think we will explore using Apollo/Flex to "glorify" Wildcat! Navigator clients. A technical challenge for us would be to see how we will bridge the Wildcat! RPC (WCRPC) communications framework with the various AJAX stacks and APOLLO for Java-based clients. A XML/RPC bridge might work but I haven't decided which way would be the best. Here is a drawing that illustrates the Wildcat! RPC framework showing some of the current industry considerations for Google Web TookKit, SPRY, Flash, SilverLight on the web side, and Apollo/Flex on the java side of the desktop.

Finally, to help us decide which way we should focus, I took a small quick survey to see how people are connecting to a Wildcat! system or to read mail. It was a stupid question because people who connected via their favorite method indicated as such the device they were currently using - DUH! However, what I found very interesting is that the response was spread across the board - the market is there for all the device type of connection devices.