FAQ - Table of Contents
General
The only "common" operating systems SAWS does not run on are
MacOS7, MacOS8 and MacOS9. SAWS works just fine on MacOSX.
ASP is Windows-only, ancient technology, so ASP is not supported by SAWS.
There are a lot of Perl frameworks for building dynamic web sites that are
much more flexible than ASP.
Yes, PHP pages are fully supported. Even ones encoded with
IonCube PHP Encoder and
Zend Encoder for
PHP are supported.
It is Perl code, but it's protected from analysis and illegal reuse
using our perl obfuscation tool -
Stunnix Perl-Obfus.
We greatly recommend all professional Perl programmers to use it for their
projects in order to protect their intellectual property.
1.5 We have a site and wish it to be adapted to be run from CDROM using SAWS.
Do you offer such services?
Yes, we do provide such services. Please contact us at
sales.com for more information.
1.6 We've developed a site for use with SAWS. Can we somehow "hide" our Perl
code and JavaScript/VBScript scripts from curious people, so they won't
steal our ideas and code?
You can use our Stunnix Perl-Obfus -
tool for making Perl code unreadable for Perl, and use our
JavaScript Obfuscator and
VBScript Obfuscator for JavaScript and
VBScript.
User experience of using SAWS
No, Perl needs not to be installed to run SAWS if Perl interpreter is
included with SAWS. Just try our sample
CDROM image.
2.2 If Perl interpreter is included with SAWS, what will be the installation
process of Perl interpreter from user's point of view?
If Perl interpreter is included with SAWS, it will just run from the location
it's put to (and in case of CDROM with SAWS - from CDROM); user won't have to
install it at all. Just try our sample
CDROM image to see it yourself.
The SAWS for this CDROM will be started without any noticable effects
(except that mouse cursor will turn into hourglass a couple of times for
a fraction of a second), and the browser window will be opened with
start page of the site.
SAWS will stay running in background, in order next time CDROM is inserted
or browser-based application is run, the browser page will appear
immediately. The SAWS processes will be terminated on the user's logoff.
But it's greatly recommended to put some kind of "release CDROM" button on link to your site, otherwise users of operating systems other than Windows will be unable to eject CDROM with SAWS on it. There is a special support for stopping and releasing media in SAWS.
2.5 You say that SAWS runs on a user's computer listening for network connections
- will anybody from other computer be able to also access site on CDROM
(or browser-based application)? Will any virus or hacker be able to try to
break into computer through SAWS?
No, SAWS by default is configured not to listen on any network interfaces
except a special "loopback" interface accessible only from the same
computer; programs from other computers will even be unable to know that
SAWS is running and will be unable to communicate with it in any way, so
it's safe to run SAWS even on computer directly connected to the Internet.
It can be configured to accept connections from
other computers though.
Advanced questions
Yes, of course. Even different CDROMs (or browser-based apps) can be run on
the same computer - each of them will get their own instance of SAWS.
Developing for SAWS
The only change that is greatly recommended is addition of a link or button
to stop SAWS and release media - otherwise users
on operating systems other than Windows will be unable to eject CDROM.
If your site was developed for Windows web servers, you may also will have to ensure that case of filenames in filesystem matches case of filenames that are used to refer to them in the site, otherwise your site won't work on OSes other than Windows. So if you have file named ProductInfo.html, then links to it using name productINFO.html or productinfo.Html or even ProductInfo.HTML will not work; you will have to link to it only using name ProductInfo.html. If this is a great limitation for you, please contact us and we will probably develop a solution.
4.2 Why evaluation versions of Stunnix Obfuscation tools for Windows
are not in a form of a site packed into executable, but have usual installer?
Do you recommend us to follow this approach and produce "usual" installers
for Windows rather than packing entire site into executable?
When developing browser-based applications (but not CDROMs!) with SAWS
we recommend you to follow the approach we choose; using an installer
for application allows you to permamently install application AND perl
interpreter runtime to the user's hard disk (thus eliminating the time
need to extract perl interpreter and your site to some temporary directory);
it also allows you to show some License Agreement to the user
and to create some menu items for Programs menu. We recommend you to
use free NSIS installer framework, it's
sufficiently advanced and powerfull for most uses.
