Share versus Web Client

[howardjacobson]

I am new to Alfresco and am struggling to understand the difference between Share and the Alfresco Web Client.  Is there some clear explanation of the connection, if any, between the two?  I've explored the Wiki but cannot find anything to provide this explanation.  Share appears to be an application that mimics much of the functionality of the core Alfresco Application but that is built on Surf.  I am trying to decide whether to build workspaces for my project teams in Share or in the Web Client.

Thanks.  HAJ

[mrogers]

The Explorer "Web Client" is built in Java / JSF and provides full functionality to access Alfresco.    Its the interface that has been there since the start of Alfresco.   It is a powerful interface but requires experts to modify it. 

Share is a recent addition to Alfresco but is built with different technologies with the idea of being far easier to configure and customise.

The two interfaces overlap to some extent, you can do similar things in both interfaces, use the one you prefer.

[howardjacobson]

Thank you.  A fundamental question I have is whether I can access the same "space" from both the Web Client and Share, or are they entirely separate?  Is a space created with the web client accessible to Share, and is a Share Site accessible to the web client?

[mikeh]

The Share client only accesses spaces under the "Company Home / Sites" root space. Although these spaces are fully accessible from the Explorer client, we strongly recommended that you do not do so, as Share doesn't yet cover all functionality (as Mark said) and may encounter "unexpected" data.

Apart from the much shallower learning curve of Freemarker/JavaScript within Share, the other advantage of the new client is that it can be run on a completely separate Tomcat instance to the main Repository (to which the Explorer client is strongly tied). This means you can firewall-off access to the Repository for extra security.

Thanks,
Mike