Lab: Graphical and Web Applications
Now we are about to build one simple web application and one simple graphical application, in order to take a look at what we will be able to create when we progress with programming and software development. We are not going to look through the details about the used techniques and constructions fundamentally. Rather than that, we are just going to take a look at the arrangement and functionality of our creation. After we progress with our knowledge, we will be able to do bigger and more complex software applications and systems. We hope that the examples given below will straighten your interest, rather than make you give up.
Console, Graphical and Web Applications
With console applications, as you can figure out yourselves, all operations for reading input and printing output are done through the console. The input data is entered in the console, which is then read by the application, also in it, and the output data is printed on the console after or during the runtime of the program.
While a console application uses the text console, web applications use web-based user interface. To execute them, two things are needed – a web server and a web browser, as the browser plays the main role in the visualization of the data and the interaction with the user. Web applications are much more pleasant for the user, they visually look better, and a mouse and touch screen can be used (for tablets and smartphones), but programming stands behind all of that. And this is why we have to learn to program and we have already made our first very little steps towards that.
Graphical (GUI) applications have a visual user interface, directly into your computer or mobile device, without a web browser. Graphical applications (also known as desktop applications) contain one or more graphical windows, in which certain controllers are located (text fields, buttons, pictures, tables and others), serving for dialog with the user in a more intuitive way. Similar to them are the mobile applications in your telephone or your tablet: we use forms, text fields, buttons and other controls and we control them by programming code. This is why we are learning how to write code now: the code is everywhere in software development.
Exercises: GUI and Web Applications
In the next exercises we will create a GUI (Desktop) and a Web application: