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Home > Overview > Developer Benefits
Erbix built a development environment that aims to move on the web the creation of web applications. It also offers easy application deployment and on-demand scalable hosting.
We launched this project in order to address the following issues:
Code Availability
Web-apps store user data in data centers as opposed to the local hard-drive. If your computer crashes or you switch machines, you don't have to worry about data migration.
Why not use this idea for code as well? If you're using a source code version control mechanism, you still have to download the version control tool on every computer where you want to program, and then download your code on each machine you're working on, together with the development tools needed.
What if you had it all on the web, and all you had to do is start the browser?
Device Independence
We believe you should have access to a programming environment everywhere, without any setup effort. If you go to an Internet Cafe, or you visit your parents' house without your laptop, you should be able to access your code, apps and development tools as simple as you open a webpage.
Mobility comes today in smaller sizes: iPad, tablets or even mobile phones with an Internet connection can be used with Erbix to check out your development panel while being in vacation, at the beach or in a restaurant. Since it all happens in the browser, you have universal access to the same user-interface independent from the device that you're using.
Tools Configuration
You find everything in your browser: your editor, your domains configuration panel and your SQL console. We manage the configuration, hosting and deployment so you can focus on application development.
And because they are in the browser, they will be configured identically each time you access them, no matter where you happen to be at that time.
Programming Mobility
Imagine being able to show your code or teach others how to code on any computer by simply opening a browser. You can give live presentations and demos in which you change the code and show the results live to your audience. And the presentation laptop doesn't need to have anything installed on it besides a regular browser.
Because we've moved the development tools inside the browser, the entry-threshold for developing apps becomes smaller: just get an Erbix account and start hacking. By making it possible to ignore the hassle of configuration, development tools and hosting issues, we're lowering the bar in programming just like Javascript did when it appeared as a client-side scripting solution for web authoring. Potentially, people turned off until now by configuration and setup issues will start instead to program in the browser and see their results immediately on the web.
Vendor Lock-in
When you're developing an application you shouldn't depend on an operating system, a proprietary language or a dependency controlled by a commercial entity, because if it disappears, your development will need to be ported on other platforms before it can be used again.
Our Javascript support implements server-side extensions that make it possible to write modules (modular code), handle HTTP requests and write SQL statements. These extensions are following, where available, specifications of the CommonJS standard. In cases where standards were not available yet, we've implemented specifications that follow RingoJS, a freely-available open-source Javascript server-side engine. Therefore you can download your code developed in Erbix and host it yourself if you choose to.
Innovation often goes against standardization since it must happen before, and often early adopters need to test different new ideas and select the one which appeals most (and then standardize it). We're trying hard to do both and our solutions have a CommonJS or RingoJS correspondent (or we explicitly document in the Reference Javascript chapter below the few exceptions where that's not yet true).
On-demand Hosting
Our virtualization and separation technology allows us to host several accounts on the same dedicated server while keeping full account isolation between individual accounts. This allows us to offer hosting for your web-apps with no configuration or installation problems.
Our hosting is scalable on-demand. As your app grows, your account can occupy a single dedicated server on its own. In the future if you'll need more than one server we can deploy your app on multiple servers in our fleet transparently. We'll take care of your hosting needs so you can focus on app development.
