Hi All, Thank you for all the great idea. I'm building a simple CMS in PHP and was thinking it would be cool to have a desktop application that could do everything that one does in the control panel. I think the desktop app might contain some features not available in the browser based control panel. Things that are related to the site but not the content. You guys have give a bunch of good ideas!! 1) I did not know MS now had a free version of Visual Studio. Interesting idea. I'd like to stay away from all things M$ though. 2) The Open office suggestion was an interesting one as well, however that may not be as robust as I would like it to be. 3) Use user-configurable access control lists (ACLs) for port 3306. 4) Java : "but there's definitely a learning curve if you're coming from a scripting language background." I'd say there is a learning curve no matter what your background. Java is not intuitive at all. 5) PHP+GTK - Interesting! 6) Us another port than 3306 and Using SSL for Secure Connections. 7) Eclipse and NetBeans. 8) SSH Tunnel. 9) MS Access - I've used MS Access to connect and modify MySql data. It is a very interesting concept. Being an old FoxPro guy, if I were to go to something like this I would write a full FoxPro application. 10) PHP/Ruby/JSP/Something. Lots of interesting feedback. Thank you all! ------------------------ Keith Smith --- On Mon, 11/8/10, Matt Graham <danceswithcrows@usa.net> wrote: From: Matt Graham <danceswithcrows@usa.net> Subject: Re: OT? : Open source development tools / programming language To: "Main PLUG discussion list" <plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us> Date: Monday, November 8, 2010, 9:23 AM > keith smith wrote: >> I need to create a simple menu, some forms, and the ability to >> interact with MySql to manage data remotely.  I would like to >> use an open source language, compiled to hide my work would be >> nice, Visual development environment would be good also. I'd do this in a web browser, with server-side PHP/Ruby/JSP/something. Cross-platform things become easy then.  But that's just me, and there are probably other things that you haven't mentioned that may make that less easy. From: Alex Dean <alex@crackpot.org> > I'd probably recommend Java.  It's pretty good for cross-platform > GUI apps (and plenty of other stuff) The main problem is that Java applications are usually bloated memory hogs with terrible performance, and minor differences in JREs can cause silly problems.  It'll work, but there are probably other things that'll work better. > Maybe also consider Python, which has a gui package (tkinter) > as part of its standard library.  I've never used it, so > maybe others can comment on it? While Tk works, all the Tk apps I've used look terrible.  This may not be a big deal for you though. > For MySQL, you need to configure the server to support SSL.  > I suggest doing that on some port other than 3306, since 3306 > is normally for unencrypted mysql traffic. Or do an ssh tunnel.  I think either one would be about the same amount of work.  There are many ways to do this sort of thing.  You just have to figure out how to balance "ease of initial development" with "ease of maintainability/scalability/adding new features" with "ease of moving the whole thing to something else". -- Matt G / Dances With Crows The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/ There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see '