Nowadays, starting a web development poses a considerable challenge, since clients have got used to having powerful desktop-based interfaces at their disposal, which can also be delivered in record time. If we focus on Line of Business (LOB) applications, we find the additional challenge which is the fact that our apps have to be ready for massive changes, taking into account tight deadlines without sacrificing stability. All of us have suffered that "little last-minute change". Everybody has heard things like, "We got to change the way in which discounts for purchases are managed. This could be ready in just five minutes, couldn't it?"
To overcome such situations, web developers can make use of a combination of ASP.NET (webforms or MVC), HTML, JavaScript, AJAX, and the more advanced HTML 5 and jQuery.
Nevertheless, when we implement LOB applications we often find that:
We have to struggle in order to make our pages consistent in different browsers; even in different versions of the same browser.
Our developers have to learn a language to develop client side, and another one to develop the server side.
JavaScript is a polemic language—love it or hate it. For some developers it is not object-oriented (although it has OO capabilities) and is an interpreted language. One only has to forget to add a semicolon, or introduce a syntax error when typing a command, and our application may produce an execution time error.
HTML 5 only works in updated browsers. Could you imagine yourself telling your client something like, "Well, what you have to do is install the latest version of Chrome or IE on your 1,000 PCs. This is also applicable to your associate companies."
We have to mix business and presentation logic. We try to avoid going to the server, for instance, to make validations which do not require reading a database. That is to say, we mix the reading of an input or an HTML ComboBox with the realization of validations. For example, if the user chooses more than four high-end products and is a premium client, we can enable a special 10 percent discount. This causes serious trouble when changes are required in the page layout, even if they are insignificant.