Lemmings in DHTML
Miscellaneous Forums/General Discussion/Lemmings in DHTML Cool! :O)
It's hard to catch them sometimes...
It's hard to catch them sometimes...
Javascript is the future. There's some great apps written in Javascript, such as the Dojo Toolkit, allowing you to write web apps that look and feel like desktop applications.
With XAML, Javascript can be used to control Flash like media too.
With XAML, Javascript can be used to control Flash like media too.
Personally, I think the sooner we escape this "web like the desktop" madness, the better.
Desktop applications with quick and seamless Internet-using features, running with powerful scripting languages like Python and communicating with other computers via a distributed networking model, are a much nicer future than this Javascript madness.
For the social networking stuff that has become all the rage, centralization sucks. There is one service hosting everything. And another service hosting everything. And a thousand more, all hosting the same kind of content in their own little ways, and they refuse to talk to each other. I can't make them talk to each other myself, because I hardly have any control over the data. All I have access to is an unnecessary abstraction of the data. (It would be nice if I could symlink Picasa's photo gallery, Flickr's photo gallery and Facebook's photo gallery, for example, but all I can do is look at the photos and upload photos - via the web browser, for some reason, even though the file explorer should be doing that job for me).
What if the current "web browser" thing was dropped, and the job of looking up web sites was left with a file manager where it belongs? It could be sent content by the server, and that content would be opened by the appropriate program - be it an HTML renderer (previously a web browser), Flash, video player, Python in a sandbox, etc. There are a lot of cross platform desktop tools that people can use, and they are not all web "standards".
No more unwanted abstraction, just seamless access to files over the Internet, on port 80, just like every other kind of file.
With a few APIs and file management standards, file managers are not any less friendly than web browsers. (some way to toss the client a file, like index.html, that it should open automatically after it requests a path - if that standard doesn't already exist).
That thing I am blabbering on about is just like the obsession with cramming garbage into web pages. I like the web as a medium to communicate information via attractive HTML documents, but not as a medium to create desktop applications. Desktop applications are just one step away, on the desktop, in a top-level window, saving to wherever the heck I want them to and looking right. The desktop takes care of accessibility quite well, for example, but it is Stupid when the web browser starts duplicating its efforts.
Heck, I'm even growing a dislike of tabs, since that feature could be handled by the desktop environment but is instead maybe or maybe not sort of done by each and every application on the desktop in its own little way. What if we went with the accepted standard that a window == a document, then had the ability to group windows into tabs? (It's possible already, for example with the windowing system on the gparted live CD).
That backwards thinking gives me vague recollections of project Looking Glass. An interpreted language intended for database applications running a desktop environment - just brilliant!.
Web standards are being misused because web browsers (html renderers) are the only way presented to easily gather this information over the Internet. Anything else requires a horribly unintuitive process of downloading and installing weird software because nobody can be bothered to create a decent end-user system to integrate Internet services with desktop applications. Nonetheless, they will happily work the other way, cloning desktop applications with Javascript, or rendering full web pages one step closer to the desktop, claiming them revelations in the web.
Funny script, though.
Desktop applications with quick and seamless Internet-using features, running with powerful scripting languages like Python and communicating with other computers via a distributed networking model, are a much nicer future than this Javascript madness.
For the social networking stuff that has become all the rage, centralization sucks. There is one service hosting everything. And another service hosting everything. And a thousand more, all hosting the same kind of content in their own little ways, and they refuse to talk to each other. I can't make them talk to each other myself, because I hardly have any control over the data. All I have access to is an unnecessary abstraction of the data. (It would be nice if I could symlink Picasa's photo gallery, Flickr's photo gallery and Facebook's photo gallery, for example, but all I can do is look at the photos and upload photos - via the web browser, for some reason, even though the file explorer should be doing that job for me).
What if the current "web browser" thing was dropped, and the job of looking up web sites was left with a file manager where it belongs? It could be sent content by the server, and that content would be opened by the appropriate program - be it an HTML renderer (previously a web browser), Flash, video player, Python in a sandbox, etc. There are a lot of cross platform desktop tools that people can use, and they are not all web "standards".
No more unwanted abstraction, just seamless access to files over the Internet, on port 80, just like every other kind of file.
With a few APIs and file management standards, file managers are not any less friendly than web browsers. (some way to toss the client a file, like index.html, that it should open automatically after it requests a path - if that standard doesn't already exist).
That thing I am blabbering on about is just like the obsession with cramming garbage into web pages. I like the web as a medium to communicate information via attractive HTML documents, but not as a medium to create desktop applications. Desktop applications are just one step away, on the desktop, in a top-level window, saving to wherever the heck I want them to and looking right. The desktop takes care of accessibility quite well, for example, but it is Stupid when the web browser starts duplicating its efforts.
Heck, I'm even growing a dislike of tabs, since that feature could be handled by the desktop environment but is instead maybe or maybe not sort of done by each and every application on the desktop in its own little way. What if we went with the accepted standard that a window == a document, then had the ability to group windows into tabs? (It's possible already, for example with the windowing system on the gparted live CD).
That backwards thinking gives me vague recollections of project Looking Glass. An interpreted language intended for database applications running a desktop environment - just brilliant!.
Web standards are being misused because web browsers (html renderers) are the only way presented to easily gather this information over the Internet. Anything else requires a horribly unintuitive process of downloading and installing weird software because nobody can be bothered to create a decent end-user system to integrate Internet services with desktop applications. Nonetheless, they will happily work the other way, cloning desktop applications with Javascript, or rendering full web pages one step closer to the desktop, claiming them revelations in the web.
Funny script, though.
Of course, once all yer apps require the internet to work, when your modem breaks you are kind of screwed ;-)
Love the Lemmings game. Very clever. Play it once in a while when I get bored at work :-p
Love the Lemmings game. Very clever. Play it once in a while when I get bored at work :-p
Hey, thanks for taking the time to check my previous posts Pertubatio. Was going to look for them, but was too lazy.
The whole idea of having web based software is platform independence, which eliminates the dependence on a particular OS to run your software. Like it or not, the web is evolving into platform of its own and it's here to stay.
Not quite so - Google Gears allows web applications to run offline and then be synchronised next time there is a web connection.
Personally, I think the sooner we escape this "web like the desktop" madness, the better.
The whole idea of having web based software is platform independence, which eliminates the dependence on a particular OS to run your software. Like it or not, the web is evolving into platform of its own and it's here to stay.
Of course, once all yer apps require the internet to work, when your modem breaks you are kind of screwed ;-)
Not quite so - Google Gears allows web applications to run offline and then be synchronised next time there is a web connection.
Having web apps is great, it allows you to keep in touch with your information whether you're on a PC, Mac, phone (iPhone), Wii or whatever. It's simply more dynamic.
Uh, am i naive if i just play something if i enjoy it? :O)
Haha, I just needed to have my daily dose of complaining about the direction of the rest of the universe. I like web apps, too, but not web desktops which seem to be leaned towards by all the "revolutions" this side of paradise.
They are showcasing the problem, which is that no matter how hard developers try, web apps will never work as smoothly as desktop apps, so we may as well stay with the superior latter and just expect things like Wiis and iPhones to include the local resources necessary (beyond web browsers) to handle whatever they in particular need.
Look at the iPhone, for example; 3rd party expandability through Javascripting.
What?! Why are they taking a language whose role is primarily the client end of web sites, and encouraging people to create native applications with it? What is the point of tethering this to the web browser? Cross-platform? No, any scripting language can be as cross platform as its APIs and its interpreters, and the Javascript stuff they have tossed on here is anything but cross platform.
The problem of Internet Explorer springs to mind here. That same mistake is going to happen again and again, making the web even harder to develop for (and even less cross-platform friendly) the more that junk is encouraged.
Absurd, in my opinion.
Maybe I just need sleep.
(Oh, and I've been playing Lemmings all day. That probably has something to do with it...)
They are showcasing the problem, which is that no matter how hard developers try, web apps will never work as smoothly as desktop apps, so we may as well stay with the superior latter and just expect things like Wiis and iPhones to include the local resources necessary (beyond web browsers) to handle whatever they in particular need.
Look at the iPhone, for example; 3rd party expandability through Javascripting.
What?! Why are they taking a language whose role is primarily the client end of web sites, and encouraging people to create native applications with it? What is the point of tethering this to the web browser? Cross-platform? No, any scripting language can be as cross platform as its APIs and its interpreters, and the Javascript stuff they have tossed on here is anything but cross platform.
The problem of Internet Explorer springs to mind here. That same mistake is going to happen again and again, making the web even harder to develop for (and even less cross-platform friendly) the more that junk is encouraged.
Absurd, in my opinion.
Maybe I just need sleep.
(Oh, and I've been playing Lemmings all day. That probably has something to do with it...)
I agree with picklesworth, centralization sucks. I dont want anybody else in charge of my files. To me, it feels a bit like having my brain stashed in someone elses jar, connected by un-reliable wi-fi.
As for cross platform, it seems the only people that encourage 'single platform' is microsoft and their ilk.
Over 60-70% of the software i use has a version for almost any type of machine, it is on MY machine using MY hardware and I as in ME is in full control of it and I am responsible for MY data. Me myself and I Not Me, them, and everybody else (BAH HUMBUG! >:P )
PS Lemmings ROCKS :D
The whole idea of having web based software is platform independence, which eliminates the dependence on a particular OS to run your software. Like it or not, the web is evolving into platform of its own and it's here to stay.
Yeah and im sure facebook paint will rock :/ Also, what happens when you need to use it and cannot connect to the internet (or have UK access speeds!) 3D max etc. through some kind of citrix? no thanks!As for cross platform, it seems the only people that encourage 'single platform' is microsoft and their ilk.
Over 60-70% of the software i use has a version for almost any type of machine, it is on MY machine using MY hardware and I as in ME is in full control of it and I am responsible for MY data. Me myself and I Not Me, them, and everybody else (BAH HUMBUG! >:P )
PS Lemmings ROCKS :D
Also, what happens when you need to use it and cannot connect to the internet (or have UK access speeds!)
As I said, check Google Gears - you no longer need an internet connection to run web based applications.
As I said, check Google Gears - you no longer need an internet connection to run web based applications
LOL You do if there is to be any point in them at all :P (just poking, i know what you mean :)I can see the advantages of this for soc. networking, blogging, email, and mabe some simple games but theres no way at the moment it is evolved enough for hard core apps like 3d software & video processing yet. And as far as writing personal (sometimes political) letters, accounts, sourcecode etc. I want that to stay on MY harddisk & backups, no one elses.
I guess im into antisocial networking :)
I too am with pickles... Always have hated web apps.
I can see the advantages of this for soc. networking, blogging, email, and mabe some simple games but theres no way at the moment it is evolved enough for hard core apps like 3d software & video processing yet.
Well I can't say I'd have any intention of building a web based 3D modelling package anyway :-p
The main area for web applications is for applications that make use of onlline collaboration. The applications I develop are heavily based on information sharing across multiple devices, so the web is a perfect platform for this - plus I don't have to worry about writing separate code for different platforms because HTML is universal.
HTML is going to change a lot when HTML 5 comes out. HTML 5 will use real desktop GUI features and make real use of system hardware for graphics and 3D - so will be a real multimedia authoring language like Director. This is when we will see web applications becoming more like desktop applications.