Drag & drop (was: HTML and PDF Reports)

[Buck <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx>]

Joe Pluta wrote:

> You don't have to do any of that with EGL.  Creating web pages is drag 
> and drop, data is automatically bound to the page, styles are set with 
> point and click.  AJAX is added with a properties page; you bind a 
> button on a page to a function in the EGL with drag-and-drop.

I've made more than one web based app, all for internal use / proof of 
concept.  Mix of technologies including 'Google & go' :-), WebFacing, 
Lansa, Obsydian, CGIDEV2 and home-grown RPG-CGI before CGIDEV2 was 
popular.  I'm not proficient in any of them.  I tried the Yahoo and 
Google toolkits.  My apps always look bad and are never 'webby' enough 
until a GUI guy gets in there and does it right.  Even my mashups look 
bad.

The RDSC page looks pretty nice.

What are the chances that a 30 year green screen RPG programmer (me) 
with a proven record of ugly web apps is going to use a drag & drop IDE 
to create a web app that looks and behaves like the RDSC page using a 
plain vanilla, factory-fresh RDi-SOA install?  Remember, you told me 
over and over that I don't need to know Java or Javascript.  I want to 
make a web page like that with just drag & drop -- no tweaking 
Javascript or Ajax or any of that.

I'm not a complete idiot (several important parts are still missing) - I 
can use the Gimp to make clothes for Second Life.  They are (of course) 
ugly :-)  I'm not very graphical I guess, and what I think is 'webby' 
tends not to be viewed that way by others.

I'm trying to ask this in the most light hearted way I can.
  --buck