tomcat

I need some computer programming help. I have written a neat program for predicting boat speed and selecting props. The output is a graph that shows the engine horsepower curve plotted on top of the hull horsepower curve. The intersection of these two curves is where top speed, maximum RPM and maximum realized prop HP occur. By entering different hull types, different engine dyno curves and playing with props, you can put bigger power in your own boat, build your dream boat or set the kilo record. More details are posted in the Technical Q&A forum if you're interested.

I would like to put this program on the OSO site for members to use free of charge. The problem is I wrote the program on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, and I don't know how to convert that into a user friendly web page. I have been told that displaying the graph is a problem, but I don't want to drop the graph; it's the best part.

Any advice from the computer literate members would be apreciated.

Tom

[ 01-23-2002: Message edited by: tomcat ]

Ron P

I'm pretty good with this stuff. Email me the file and let me take a look.

Ted Zoli

Hi,
To execute on a web page it is going to have to be written in a language that most people support with their browsers. Obviously HTML, but then there is Java, Active X etc. to the more obscure.

There are converters from Excel to Java, search for them you will find them, but these are not trivial to integrate...not hard but you have to launch the applet in say Java and the code has to be right.

Lastly, there is a growing trend to have less dynamic web content, i.e. waving flags, scrolls and all of the complicated Flash stuff. The reason is it gets old fast and slows downloads and grabs memory.

Why don't you have a link that simply downloads a .xls and let people access it that way. Then they can use it when they want.

Ted

Scott B

Excel has a fnction when saving to save it as html. Will that work?

That said, either as an xls file, or posted somewhere, I would love to see the project..

Scott b

newbie to these gates products

Ted Zoli

Scott, that is a good idea...never dawned on me. You must have a web site that is hosted on an ISP that supports Web Folders and MS Front Page server extensions...most do.

I didn't quite understand if tomcat had his own web site or not. If not, it could go on any site as described above. I'm sure there are volunteers here.

Ted

Milord

Tomcat and I have spoken at length about this. In the state the spreadsheet is in you really have to know how to use it. It's not user friendly and only he knows how to use it properly. Therefore he want to dummy it down and put it on the web with drop-downs, radio buttons, etc. We talked about making it into a desktop app first. I'm sure I could write it using VB but it has to spit out graphs. Does anyone know of a VB plug-in for graphing x and y co-ordinates?

Ted Zoli

Looks like http://www.codearchive.com/vbasic/
will help a lot.

Question is do you want to "feed" people .vbx's? They are firewalled on a lot of sites along with .exe's etc. It is an issue, how important is anyone's guess.

Ted

tomcat

Thanks for the info guys. Since I spoke to Milord I have cleaned up the spreadsheet as much as possible, so all the user has to do is input data into certain cells. These cells are unprotected, so they are the only ones that can be accessed. The rest of the sheet is protected. I also wrote a set of instructions. The most complicated thing the user has to do is click and drag to enter a table of dyno results for three example engines I included. But the user still needs to know a bit about Excel, and has to have Excel on their computer.

If I save the file as html. it can sit on a web page and be opened if the user has Excel? But to run on its own without the user having Excel, I would have to rewrite or convert to another language? Do I have this right?

I sure don't want to rewrite it from scratch in another language if that can be avoided. There's a lot of formulas on that spreadsheet. It took me hours just to clean it up.

puder

tomcat send the spreadsheet my way. I know of some thigns that could work. If i can check out teh origonal sxcel it woudl give me a good starting point to make a Cold Fusion web application to mkae it run.