Salesforce Rolls Out Big Summer ‘08 Update
Monday, June 16th, 2008
Salesforce.com today introduced the summer upgrade to its on-demand CRM software, called Salesforce Summer ‘08, featuring enhancements on both the client and server-sides of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.
Force.com, the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that allows developers to build their own applications to run along side the ones provided by Salesforce, has been expanded out to allow for developing any kind of application the users want with Apex, Salesforce’s Java-like programming language.
Also, Visualforce is now live in every edition of Salesforce, enabling developers to create their own custom interfaces based on Web 2.0 UI items that will work on any device. So it’s possible to make your Force.com applications run on a PC, laptop, BlackBerry or iPhone.
“Visualforce really completed the whole stack for how developers can use Force.com to create applications,” Al Falcion, senior director of product marketing for Salesforce, told InternetNews.com.
“Any client with a browser is covered. There’s definitely a need for different UIs, even if they use the same app.” As such, Visualforce lets developers create an application that presents data one way on a desktop, and in a different way on a notebook or smartphone.
One of the knocks on Web 2.0 is the performance of Ajax, which requires a lot of JavaScript to run on the client. “The key is having the right frequency of refreshes so they don’t drag the client down,” said Falcione.
