I gave a talk at LFNW '09; I started with the question "can you create a web application, development to deployment, all in the browser?" I already knew the answer; yes, because of my experience with Bungee Labs' BungeeConnect project, and Heroku's HerokuGarden project.
A variety of solutions exist for creating web content in your browser, but most of them are exceptionally limited, or niche products. These include Yahoo Pipes, Google's Gadget Editor, and AppPad. Unfortunately, none of them provide an complete, robust development environment, leaving... wait for it... BungeeConnect and HerokuGarden. :-)
What the heck is BungeeConnect?
Bungee Connect, from Bungee Labs, is Object-Oriented Programming for the web. No HTML/JS/CSS required. Familiarity design patterns, on the other hand, is. But don't worry too much about it - there's a complete learning curriculum ( videos, sample code, even tests!) to get you up to speed.
The best way I know to demonstrate a programming language, though, is to dig in. So, here's 19-minute video showing the complete process of developing and deploying an app, from 0 to a published app.
Download native resolution video as OGG/Theora or AVI/h.264 (download link at the bottom).
You have what kind of garden?
In a fit of asexual reproduction, Heroku recently split their solution in two: heroku.com is now a paid service for hosting Ruby on Rails in the cloud; herokugarden.com continues to provide the service of my primary interest - web based development of live-deployed Ruby on Rails application. This is straight-up Ruby on Rails, no monkey business. You need to either know or be learning RoR, or this system will be useless to you. Thankfully, RoR has a robust community, so tools, tutorials and samples are never far away.
Again, I think its better to show than to talk, so here's the video: building an RoR app on HerokuGarden, in 12 minutes!
Download native resolution video as OGG/Theora or AVI/h.264 (download link at the bottom).
Small Note: Please don't judge my coding abilities in either environment, as a result of the samples. I do produce solid, well documented, tested code on a regular basis. Just not in the under-20-minutes category ;-)
Thanks to Brad at BungeeLabs for some visuals that help explain the BungeeConnect environment, and everyone who attended my presentation at LFNW. See you next year!
