I went with the browser as my gui because back in 99 xwindows over a v.34 modem was a dog. I was 200 miles from the site. A browser form created the parms for the program, the browser instructed the server to start the program, and the browser monitored it via cgi. At the end of the process i could download a zip via the browser with any output files to my pc for looking at. As time progressed we had users across the world using this process to setup/run/monitor their programs. Each set of parms had its own page, where you could edit and start the run and thats where the custom link to the websee page and the last zip was. Many of the runs created html pages as output and they were linked on that page as well. I could disconnect and reconnect at will. I could start the program at home and watch it from the GF's house. I had a web tree that i could drill down to find the run i was interested in if i didnt bookmark the start page itself. If i created a new page for each combination of parms it presented a history tree of the runs as well.