3 ms·

I imagine Blender could be ported straight into NaCl, for one.

by chipsy 16y ago

malkia 16y ago
It can but what's the point? Some of these applications are dealing with lots of temp files, huge textures, models, etc. What would putting it under web page do for it? People might get confused that they can switch machines and continue working with their files, while in fact this is not possible. HTML5 is cool, but for some (powerful) users plain-old shrink-wrapped software is better, especially if that software is dealing with data close to gigabytes (CAD, Image processing, etc.), or if that data is shared adhoc (there are special versions of Maya where instead of saving/loading to the file system, everything goes through a specialized file I/O - this might come a custom solution from Autodesk, or some other way). I work in game company, and the only web applications that we use are the ones that make sense to be used from there: - Bugtracking - DevTrack or Bugzilla - Some custom statistics server - Intranet pages - vacation forms, etc. Everything else is native Win32, or Win64 apps - MFC, wxWidgets, Qt, .NET, Direct3D, whatever there is. I doubt we'll switch this way, as moving some of these apps to the web is simply "NEW" to us, and we still don't trust it enough. Every app you move from shrink-wrap version to the web - you need a server - every server in an organization needs someone to take care of it - what happens when it needs to be rebooted? what happens if it goes down? It's way safer for certain apps, to be as they are. For example I can't wrap my head of using P4 (Perforce) over the web interface - yes it's there - but I prefer (the obsolete now) P4Win32.exe
- Detrus 16y ago
  Production apps will ultimately be ported to the web if things like NaCl take off. Porting current apps to the web as they are with the goal of having them in browser, have them run inside Chrome OS won't change much of course. But that's an unimaginative take on the possibilities. The real point of porting to the web is to make these apps accessible to more people. To apply web workflows to their development, like change their UI after monitoring analytics, ship often, etc.. Large production apps like Photoshop can be split off into thousands of modules, which will be loaded only when the user is using a particular feature. That's a very different development process, currently Photoshop is developed for CDs, one big ship date, one big upgrade, all features in, want them or not. The way apps are paid for could also change. If you're not using certain features, you shouldn't be paying for them, shouldn't be investing in their development while features you do use are neglected. It's not really the technology of the web that will bring about such changes. NaCl mainly enables you to run normal binaries, as you already do on the desktop. The real change will come from people rethinking how they make and deploy apps.

I imagine Blender could be ported straight into NaCl, for one.

by chipsy 16y ago

I imagine Blender could be ported straight into NaCl, for one.

It can but what's the point? Some of these applications are dealing with lots of temp files, huge textures, models, etc. What would putting it under web page do for it? People might get confused that they can switch machines and continue working with their files, while in fact this is not possible. HTML5 is cool, but for some (powerful) users plain-old shrink-wrapped software is better, especially if that software is dealing with data close to gigabytes (CAD, Image processing, etc.), or if that data is shared adhoc (there are special versions of Maya where instead of saving/loading to the file system, everything goes through a specialized file I/O - this might come a custom solution from Autodesk, or some other way). I work in game company, and the only web applications that we use are the ones that make sense to be used from there: - Bugtracking - DevTrack or Bugzilla - Some custom statistics server - Intranet pages - vacation forms, etc. Everything else is native Win32, or Win64 apps - MFC, wxWidgets, Qt, .NET, Direct3D, whatever there is. I doubt we'll switch this way, as moving some of these apps to the web is simply "NEW" to us, and we still don't trust it enough. Every app you move from shrink-wrap version to the web - you need a server - every server in an organization needs someone to take care of it - what happens when it needs to be rebooted? what happens if it goes down? It's way safer for certain apps, to be as they are. For example I can't wrap my head of using P4 (Perforce) over the web interface - yes it's there - but I prefer (the obsolete now) P4Win32.exe

Detrus 16y ago
Production apps will ultimately be ported to the web if things like NaCl take off. Porting current apps to the web as they are with the goal of having them in browser, have them run inside Chrome OS won't change much of course. But that's an unimaginative take on the possibilities. The real point of porting to the web is to make these apps accessible to more people. To apply web workflows to their development, like change their UI after monitoring analytics, ship often, etc.. Large production apps like Photoshop can be split off into thousands of modules, which will be loaded only when the user is using a particular feature. That's a very different development process, currently Photoshop is developed for CDs, one big ship date, one big upgrade, all features in, want them or not. The way apps are paid for could also change. If you're not using certain features, you shouldn't be paying for them, shouldn't be investing in their development while features you do use are neglected. It's not really the technology of the web that will bring about such changes. NaCl mainly enables you to run normal binaries, as you already do on the desktop. The real change will come from people rethinking how they make and deploy apps.