ASP.Net vs other technologies

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Sam Carleton - 28 Nov 2006 13:53 GMT

By day I am a Microsoft Windows Application Developer currently using
.Net 2.0. Mind you, I did say Window Application vs Web Applications.
I run Solaris and OpenBSD at home and know Linux. I have dabbled in
web programming for personal use over the years. I have used things
like ASP.Net, PHP, CGI, etc, along with the classics HTML, JS.

By night I am an photographer. I would like to develop a web site to
sell event photos online. There are three requirements:

1: As secure at possible, I want to make it as hard as possible for
folks to steal the images
2: Cross platform, it must be equally secure on both Windows and Mac!
3: Easy to add images, fore events will be added daily

I don't think the third one is any big deal, simply a matter of a good
implementation. I am concerned about the first two. I am fully aware
that if the image is on the Internet, it CAN be stolen. I am also
aware of the fact that it is possible to make is a LOT harder for folks
to steal. On the scale of 1 to 10 (1 being easy and 10 be impossible
to steal) I am looking for around a 6 to 8, maybe even 5. Currently I
host some of my images at this site: http://photos.miltonstreet.com I
*THINK* they are using ColdFusion, not sure. They have the type of
security I am looking for, though.

Being a Windows Application Developer that already knows C#.Net, the
idea of using ASP.Net is very appealing, but... I am concerned about
the whole cross platform/security issue. I am thinking that using
ASP.Net's Web.Forms will allow me to develop a pretty secure site on
IE, but what about the cross platform issues? How hard will it be to
secure it for Firefox and for the Mac?

Considering the scope of this project, sell images online, would I
simply be better off looking at another technology like ColdFusion or
one of the other solutions out there?

Sam

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Norman Yuan - 28 Nov 2006 14:31 GMT

Since you are talking host yor app online (the Internet), if you want to go
with ASP.NET, it has little to do with corss platform, you can only host
your app with IIS (unless you can find a Linux host running Mono). The
security you are talking has very little to do with different client
browsers, which you have no control at all with your server side web app and
it is not cross platform issue.

Since you want to sell your image, you must show them to potential buyers
before they decide to buy. Once your image is shown on a browser, user can
save it (you cannot prevent it). So, the only way to "secure" your image,
IMO, is to only show low quality preview, or size-shrinked image. However,
if the preview's quality is too poor, you may not get users' attention at
all. So, it is your decision to let user preview a fairly good quarlity
image: good enough for they to shell out money to buy it, but not good
enough to save it without paying you.

I'd think most current web technologies are capable of doing this, and
ASP.NET certainly is. No matter what web app you choose, the security you
are talking has little to do with the browsers on client side, be it IE,
Firefox, or something else.

> By day I am a Microsoft Windows Application Developer currently using
> .Net 2.0. Mind you, I did say Window Application vs Web Applications.
[quoted text clipped - 32 lines]
>
> Sam

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Webmaster Forum / ColdFusion / Getting Started / November 2006

ASP.Net vs other technologies