So, I've got a mandate to make our aged trillion lined Delphi app web based and it needs to make heavy use of the <canvas> element (HTML5 compatibility doesn't seem to be a big issue since we can just make our clients use a compatible browser the way we'd make them use a compatible version of Windows in the win32 environment).

The Delphi app in question is almost completely database driven and will still pretty much continue to be developed as the main product. What I am tasked with is pretty much recreating a scaled down version of the program that performs the major functions of the whole program.

I couldn't find any frameworks that simulate windows forms using the canvas element, I'm assuming this is probably by design since it is easier just to use HTML, well, be that as it may, I still think it would be cool to have a few of my cool controls on the web (TRichView and TVirtualTree, etc...)

So my question is, to anyone who has tried this before,

A.) What can we use for an IDE to code this web app (I just use emacs, but no one else in my company does)?

B.) Is it a good idea to mix PHP and Processing.JS? It seems like I'm using a lot of AJAX to get anything to happen. 3 calls just for one dialog box to pop up,

1. Loads the HTML for the dialog,
2. Loads the XML to populate the database info on the form
3. Loads the processing.js PJS file which draws the database info to the canvas.

Is three a lot, do people usually combine all their gets into one?