newly ancient

Forget about Ruby on Rails. Screw PHP. Toss aside Google Mashup Editor. Fall in love with Deluge and its beautiful sister, Zoho Creator. Zoho Creator is a wonderful online database application which is as powerful as it is simple.

The concept is simple - allow Joe Average to make a database of anything he choses. Even better, make it drop dead simple for him to do so. Throw in a couple of templates and you get Zoho Creator. Let’s say Mr. Average wants to make a simple contact form for old high school friends to get back in touch with him. Thing is, Joe doesn’t know anything about web development - he doesn’t even own a website.

However, Mr. Average logs into Zoho Creator and clicks create a new application. Amazingly, there is already a template available for a contact form, so he uses it. Up comes an incredibly simple configuration GUI where Joe can reorder and edit the form. (Everything is run with lots of great JavaScript goodness) Well, Joe figures old high school friends might not want to share their contact address, so he simply removes it from the form with two clicks. However, he thinks it would be cool for alumni to be able to list their favorite teacher: so he drags in a single line text form. When he is done, he just accesses the application and sees a wonderful list view of everything that has been submitted. Back in edit mode, he can share the application with alumni: or just share parts of it. Joe has now created a simple contact form with a display ability: without touching a single line of code.

Mr. Tux Linus is stuck in the computer equivalent of a desert island-a school. Tux knows lots about programming, but has no tools besides a web browser available to him. He also has to make an application to allow voting in the upcoming student council elections - or he will fail his history class. (Evil teacher) Since Tux knows his way around web 2.0 so he has heard of Zoho. To make a longish story short, he can create a form with multiple drop down fields as well as a box for students to input their student ID. By using some simple scripting, he can have the form check the database and make sure nobody uses the same id twice. Expected time to build: under 30 minutes. Expected time to build with PHP: over 1 hour. Tools required: web browser.

Alright, so we’ve figured out how to add data very easily. But how do we view it? Using views of course… data can be presented in a list, a spreadsheet, or even a variety of charts. It can also be downloaded in standard spreadsheet formats. In short, visualization using Zoho Creator is extremely simple.

Enough of my talk. Just go try it yourself; and since Zoho Creator is completely free you have no excuse not to.

There are tons more features, including external site embedding which I have not even begun to explain - just see them for yourself.