Many times I have wondered when the day will come when all home inspectors will just be using their Internet browser to do their inspections and be completely device independent. No software to purchase and install but just use their browser to gather their data. I wondered about it 15 years ago and thought it was a ways in the future yet. With all these newer devices coming out each month it makes you wonder if it is closer now then before as to wanting to be device independent. I am looking for any feedback of inspectors that have actually tried the solutions out there that are based on using a web browser and what their reaction was to their ease of use…especially on any mobile type device.
My opinion is that it is a long ways away yet and that you lose too much of the resident interface features of the device by making the solution browser based instead. Thoughts ?
I think the biggest problem with pure browser software is photos. You have to transfer a lot of data to the net if you’re not going to even resize them on the local machine. Imagine uploading 100 15MP photos. You’d be sitting there forever. What about the guys that take 200 or 300 pics?
I agree with the photo issues…but I am not even considering that since inspectors could create their inspection documents from the data gathered later at their home office computers… pulling it from the data off the web that was gathered earlier and then integrate the photos there on their local machines…this would make it possible to gather the inspection data on any device in the field and eliminate hardware dependence.
You are if you are talking just gathering the data (no photos) are you not ? But then I also know that if you want to support Flash then you won’t be…and I feel just because you are browser based does not mean that every browser is going to act the same way…so you are adding code to act in different ways based on the browser and then you are going back to not being device independent again.
No one on here has tried doing inspections using a browser ? Isn’t ReportHost and Horizon just browser based ?
Do not know of anyone doing it but could you not just set up your own website as an inspector and upload to it then download at home from any device?
I imagine a coded url would work for that and thought about it years ago yet as far as I know nobody has bothered.
Not much different than uploading to Skydrive from One Note really or even evernote ,springpad,etc.Though only One note allows direct PDF full conversion to offline.
Yeh horizon does that pretty well, I would like to see it offered by other competitors. I imagine its hard to switch paths as a report software company though. Dominic would know more about this. Which is harder to produce? A web based application or writing something like HIP from scratch?
We are talking using mobile devices also…not just a Windows device. Running Horizon on a laptop or tablet really doesn’t tell us that it is user friendly to use on a smaller device. Did you try and use Horizon using an iPhone or an Android phone and what type of experience was that ? Lots of scrolling I am assuming.
I tried out the allinspections app (http://allinspections.com/) when it first came out and was in talks with them because they were the only ones who actually had the TREC template. They were still tweeking it. It was easy to use on the phone as well as in the browser. At the time, I had to pretty much do most of it in the browser because there wasn’t a way to upload narratives (i think it has changed since).
It did take a while with the uploading of photos (whether transferring from iPhone to browser, or from computer to browser).
I stopped trying it out because it just took too long due to no pre-written narratives and they changed their pricing method. I didn’t want to pay per report.
Other than that, the guys working there are really cool and want to develop a good product. They have been touring the US and talking to many many homies.
Yeah the browser experience is sorta sluggish, not too bad but slower for sure, with scrolling like Bob said. Ive used Horizon on my iPhone, my galaxy and android tab. Having a 4g or better and a powerful machine really makes a difference. Was my main reason for switching HIP on my laptop. Still have horizon report credits to burn, some days I love it, other times I hate it. Can’t seem to make up my mind on what to stick with. HIP is more advanced barebones dig your own grave style, so customizable. But Horizon is prettier but less forgiving. Reminds me of ios vs android really.
Another problem is the limits ISPs and companies like rogers and bell controlling the transmission speeds. The Federal government ordered them to stop but rumour says they are still controlling the speed and the volume you can transmit. My isp limits the size of my emails. Thus sending a report that has a lot of photos will not go through.
