Browser Independence

The architecture overview showed that the communication of software based on the Naradana Platform is based on HTTP supporting clients, namely (x)HTML - i.e. web browsers - and SOAP - i.e. WebService clients. The chapter is about the browser support of Naradana Platform, the next one about WebServices.

While browsers should behave simliar, as all manufacturers claim to comply certain standards, the reality in web software development is: significant time must be invested to port running and well looking web solutions from one browser to the other. Even different browser versions of the same manufacturers behave differently. Also, the standards to not describe the browser behavior completely, and the space for interpretation is unfortunately widely used.

There are two main areas where browsers differ significantly:

• Interpretation of CSS (cascading style sheets, the layout description language) - so different style statements must be defined fro the browsers.
• Interpretation of DOM (domain object model) implementation - so different JavaScript code must be provided for the browsers.

The generative approach of the Naradana Solutions Framework is targeting these challenges:

• A systematic classification of browsers allows precise detection what browser is used by the user
• JavaScript is generated matching to the capabilities of the identified browser
• The CSS Knowledge database supports developers to provide browser specific style statements, stylesheets are generated specifically for the browser detected

Please check-out the BrowserWiki to learn how Naradana is using the management of structured knowledge combinied with intelligent code generation to beat the challenges browser manufactures give to all web developers.