5 ms·

I love Dillo. It reminds me of when I was ~14 back in the mid-to-late 90s and learning C++ with a copy of Visual Studio 97 my dad "got me from work". Back then

I love Dillo. It reminds me of when I was ~14 back in the mid-to-late 90s and learning C++ with a copy of Visual Studio 97 my dad "got me from work". Back then things were very different and teenage me wrote a pretty nice browser from scratch with the exception of some networking code. Back then a browser was just another application on your computer, almost like a calculator something. It was just a tool. Now the web browser is probably the most complex bit of software on your computer. Crazy how far things have come in the past 20 years. Also it is great to see FLTK in use, it is a nice little toolkit albeit not the prettiest :)

dijit 11y ago
Personally I dislike this trend, it pushes the onus of application development into the domain of web developers, and they have shoddy tools (javascript?) and have to program for multiple platforms (chrome/firefox/IE) and- at the end of the day, nobody is signing your code (not like native programs). At least we finally have a system that is multiplatform- but my web browser is seriously hungry, added to that most websites dictate how they will display their information to me- I seem to get less choice year on year. (and yes, I know I can plug my browser full of add-ons which give me back some control, but if JS doesn't run for instance, I don't even see the page in many cases, and this serves to increase how hungry the browser is)
- untog 11y ago
  added to that most websites dictate how they will display their information to me Yet you say you miss native apps, which absolutely dictate everything about how they work?
  - the_real_nfm 11y ago
    A lot of native "apps" have either very flexible configuration, or some sort of scripting/plugin framework. Maybe not iTunes, but things like foobar2000 or conky.
    - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
      A few do. But most do not offer the incredible user presentation freedom the web does.
      - astine 11y ago
        In choosing between presentation freedom and a sane GUI programming model, I'd choose the later, especially given that the 'presentation freedom' is problematic when I want my desktop to have a common UI theme. Take into account that modern GUI toolkits actually provide presentation freedom similar to the web without having to do without native widgets, I don't see why anyone would prefer web GUIs from a programming perspective.
        TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        > modern GUI toolkits actually provide presentation freedom similar to the web They let you change colours, typefaces and shapes slightly. You could do that with Windows 1. That's not the same as what CSS allows (complete reconfiguration).
        astine 11y ago
        http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/api/javafx/scene/doc-files/cssref.html http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/api/javafx/scene/doc-files/c...
  - dijit 11y ago
    you're right! I live in the land of UNIX and commandline, I was not talking about GUI applications. But I see why you interpreted it that way, I apologise.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    For native apps: * CLI tools present in my terminal's specified fonts and colours. Near total control. The main exceptions are ANSI escapes, and even those I can limit to black-and-white -- usually normal, bold, and reverse-video. * Most desktop apps integrate into some desktop enviornment (or environment(s)) for font size(s), colours, etc. OSX is actually something of an exception, which I realised when trying to see how I might set that up for a visually disabled friend. * Even where desktop apps don't have systemwide configuration tools, you're generally seeing the same toolkit (or limited set of toolkits) in use. Most of the experience is highly uniform. * Straight-up text presentation is typically quite good. Far superior to Web tools.
- kozukumi 11y ago
  I love the web but I hate to work in the web. It is a shitty experience. Getting my data in and out can be a pain in the ass and slow. There is very little proper integration between services for obvious reasons. On the desktop I can pump data around in memory to other applications lightening fast and if I need to do something I can't do locally then I pump it into a cluster (cloud) service to crunch it. Sure there are some desktop apps which suck as much as their web alternatives (Outlook for email is a great example) but overall I would much rather work with a dozen desktop apps than a dozen web services. And then all of the other things you mentioned come into play such as code signing, no control over updates which might break my process, etc.
- dahart 11y ago
  You're right, the trend has it downsides. But there are some pretty big upsides too. Distributing a web app is such a liberating and lovely experience compared to trying to share native code. No crap for the recipient to install, no installers to write, no figuring out library and platform dependencies only to have everything break anyway. Sharing my C++ or python projects, even with small groups of friends, even with other developers, even on a single platform, has always been a complete nightmare, not to mention larger audiences on a variety of platforms. > and they have shoddy tools I don't intend to argue with you, but my personal experience is one of discovering recently that javascript is a decent language and the browser dev tools, especially Chrome, are bigger and better than most of the C++ dev tools I've ever used. And they come with the browser, no crazy developer packages to install, and you can always debug on anyone's machine anywhere. It is true that web developers usually have to make browser specific adjustments, but its fairly minor these days, an occasional polyfill you can find online, and I don't think this even compares, not even a little, to the issues you have to deal with when writing native cross-platform code (mac/win/linux).
  - astine 11y ago
    If I could have my ideal setup, rather than web applications we'd have a sandbox installed on our computers that would run applications that could be downloaded on the fly. Something similar to Java Webstart but without proprietary nonsense that plagued Webstart. That way, the web could stay the web and distributed applications could stay distributed applications and we wouldn't have to deal with the complexity or the compromises needed in using a document language to define application GUIs.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    I'm happy for web-apps, they're clearly a good idea. I'm less happy that everyone treats their webpage as an app, and thus crams it full of huge amounts of code, when really they're mostly serving text and images, with only little bits of javascript needed.

dijit 11y ago

Personally I dislike this trend, it pushes the onus of application development into the domain of web developers, and they have shoddy tools (javascript?) and have to program for multiple platforms (chrome/firefox/IE) and- at the end of the day, nobody is signing your code (not like native programs). At least we finally have a system that is multiplatform- but my web browser is seriously hungry, added to that most websites dictate how they will display their information to me- I seem to get less choice year on year. (and yes, I know I can plug my browser full of add-ons which give me back some control, but if JS doesn't run for instance, I don't even see the page in many cases, and this serves to increase how hungry the browser is)

untog 11y ago
added to that most websites dictate how they will display their information to me Yet you say you miss native apps, which absolutely dictate everything about how they work?
- the_real_nfm 11y ago
  A lot of native "apps" have either very flexible configuration, or some sort of scripting/plugin framework. Maybe not iTunes, but things like foobar2000 or conky.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    A few do. But most do not offer the incredible user presentation freedom the web does.
    - astine 11y ago
      In choosing between presentation freedom and a sane GUI programming model, I'd choose the later, especially given that the 'presentation freedom' is problematic when I want my desktop to have a common UI theme. Take into account that modern GUI toolkits actually provide presentation freedom similar to the web without having to do without native widgets, I don't see why anyone would prefer web GUIs from a programming perspective.
      - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
        > modern GUI toolkits actually provide presentation freedom similar to the web They let you change colours, typefaces and shapes slightly. You could do that with Windows 1. That's not the same as what CSS allows (complete reconfiguration).
        astine 11y ago
        http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/api/javafx/scene/doc-files/cssref.html http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/api/javafx/scene/doc-files/c...
- dijit 11y ago
  you're right! I live in the land of UNIX and commandline, I was not talking about GUI applications. But I see why you interpreted it that way, I apologise.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  For native apps: * CLI tools present in my terminal's specified fonts and colours. Near total control. The main exceptions are ANSI escapes, and even those I can limit to black-and-white -- usually normal, bold, and reverse-video. * Most desktop apps integrate into some desktop enviornment (or environment(s)) for font size(s), colours, etc. OSX is actually something of an exception, which I realised when trying to see how I might set that up for a visually disabled friend. * Even where desktop apps don't have systemwide configuration tools, you're generally seeing the same toolkit (or limited set of toolkits) in use. Most of the experience is highly uniform. * Straight-up text presentation is typically quite good. Far superior to Web tools.
kozukumi 11y ago
I love the web but I hate to work in the web. It is a shitty experience. Getting my data in and out can be a pain in the ass and slow. There is very little proper integration between services for obvious reasons. On the desktop I can pump data around in memory to other applications lightening fast and if I need to do something I can't do locally then I pump it into a cluster (cloud) service to crunch it. Sure there are some desktop apps which suck as much as their web alternatives (Outlook for email is a great example) but overall I would much rather work with a dozen desktop apps than a dozen web services. And then all of the other things you mentioned come into play such as code signing, no control over updates which might break my process, etc.
dahart 11y ago
You're right, the trend has it downsides. But there are some pretty big upsides too. Distributing a web app is such a liberating and lovely experience compared to trying to share native code. No crap for the recipient to install, no installers to write, no figuring out library and platform dependencies only to have everything break anyway. Sharing my C++ or python projects, even with small groups of friends, even with other developers, even on a single platform, has always been a complete nightmare, not to mention larger audiences on a variety of platforms. > and they have shoddy tools I don't intend to argue with you, but my personal experience is one of discovering recently that javascript is a decent language and the browser dev tools, especially Chrome, are bigger and better than most of the C++ dev tools I've ever used. And they come with the browser, no crazy developer packages to install, and you can always debug on anyone's machine anywhere. It is true that web developers usually have to make browser specific adjustments, but its fairly minor these days, an occasional polyfill you can find online, and I don't think this even compares, not even a little, to the issues you have to deal with when writing native cross-platform code (mac/win/linux).
- astine 11y ago
  If I could have my ideal setup, rather than web applications we'd have a sandbox installed on our computers that would run applications that could be downloaded on the fly. Something similar to Java Webstart but without proprietary nonsense that plagued Webstart. That way, the web could stay the web and distributed applications could stay distributed applications and we wouldn't have to deal with the complexity or the compromises needed in using a document language to define application GUIs.
- DanBC 11y ago
  I'm happy for web-apps, they're clearly a good idea. I'm less happy that everyone treats their webpage as an app, and thus crams it full of huge amounts of code, when really they're mostly serving text and images, with only little bits of javascript needed.