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Mozilla's Webian Shell interface will cloak your OS in a browser (video)

31 points by taylorbuley 15y ago

maxogden 15y ago
-10 points to Engadget for inaccuracy. This is a side project of a guy who uses Mozilla stuff, and not an official Mozilla project. It is, however, based on Mozilla Chromeless. "The Webian project is a not-for-profit venture founded by Ben Francis. Ben is a full time software engineer at a startup in Cambridge (England)." "...when Mozilla Chromeless came along it was suddenly possible to rapidly develop a working prototype using standard web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. As a member of the wider Mozilla community this was an opportunity I couldn’t resist..."
BoppreH 15y ago
I'm still a few years away from using "web apps" as first class programs. Google's home page takes 3 seconds to load here (Opera, 3 Mb/s, Brazil) and it's the fastest website I use. To me, they are simply unusable as a first class program.
nxn 15y ago
Well, a whole web based OS I understand, and maybe I even get using html5/js to do a few things in an OS interface -- though I'd personally not go that route myself. This though is completely confusing to me. Perhaps the article and video provide a poor explanation, but it seems like I can already achieve the main advantages of this experiment by just pressing F11? I get Chrome OS because it's different and gives a certain set of people what might actually be of some use to them (ie, all data online, you're always in sync, etc). I get enhancing desktop UIs with the things that worked well on the web -- but to start throwing out almost everything that evolved on the desktop just to get a webby feel? Not sure what problem that tries to solve. The most interesting thing though is that after years of hearing that the future of the desktop will be web based, the idea finally seems to have picked up.
d0m 15y ago
I already use tmux and vim for all my development needs. So, once I'll be able to use a "temrinal" in a browser, I'll easily be able to switch to a desktop-less PC.
silon 15y ago
This needs a framework to write distributed / sync based offline applications.

31 points by taylorbuley 15y ago

-10 points to Engadget for inaccuracy. This is a side project of a guy who uses Mozilla stuff, and not an official Mozilla project. It is, however, based on Mozilla Chromeless. "The Webian project is a not-for-profit venture founded by Ben Francis. Ben is a full time software engineer at a startup in Cambridge (England)." "...when Mozilla Chromeless came along it was suddenly possible to rapidly develop a working prototype using standard web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript. As a member of the wider Mozilla community this was an opportunity I couldn’t resist..."

BoppreH 15y ago

I'm still a few years away from using "web apps" as first class programs. Google's home page takes 3 seconds to load here (Opera, 3 Mb/s, Brazil) and it's the fastest website I use. To me, they are simply unusable as a first class program.

nxn 15y ago

Well, a whole web based OS I understand, and maybe I even get using html5/js to do a few things in an OS interface -- though I'd personally not go that route myself. This though is completely confusing to me. Perhaps the article and video provide a poor explanation, but it seems like I can already achieve the main advantages of this experiment by just pressing F11? I get Chrome OS because it's different and gives a certain set of people what might actually be of some use to them (ie, all data online, you're always in sync, etc). I get enhancing desktop UIs with the things that worked well on the web -- but to start throwing out almost everything that evolved on the desktop just to get a webby feel? Not sure what problem that tries to solve. The most interesting thing though is that after years of hearing that the future of the desktop will be web based, the idea finally seems to have picked up.

d0m 15y ago

I already use tmux and vim for all my development needs. So, once I'll be able to use a "temrinal" in a browser, I'll easily be able to switch to a desktop-less PC.

silon 15y ago

This needs a framework to write distributed / sync based offline applications.