4 ms·

My guess is that it would take a really good understanding of what task the user is trying to accomplish. Working from that, you could then create the interface

My guess is that it would take a really good understanding of what task the user is trying to accomplish. Working from that, you could then create the interfaces. I frequently catch myself writing code more from the "I am able do this" rather than the "should I do this" point of view. In my experience, not having a clear goal that benefits a user makes it hard to get any idea adopted. What do you think an empowered user would want to do? All the pieces are probably there to make things work.

ssivark 4y ago
I think what’s needed is a robust bunch of primitives that users can easily combine to do many things. As with any organic system, I would expect the availability of capabilities to spur creativity, the Emacs ecosystem being a great case in point. But to try and give a more direct answer to your question: I often want to download/backup or otherwise programmatically process content that I routinely interact with online (this could be playlists, emails, messages, whatever). Another interesting example pertains to the “agents” available in “Huginn”: https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn It would be nice if more such capabilities were integrated into the browser (or other common operating tools).
- diskzero 4y ago
  Exposing this sort of capability is very interesting, especially coupled with agents is indeed interesting. Getting this type of functionality added to the core browser seems like a long and complex standardization process. Perhaps a plugin would be one means of doing it? The semantic web hasn't been adopted, so one challenge would be how to categorize and expose the content to any sort of API. Perhaps such a system already exists. The emacs ecosystem is a good example, but as you stated, it really requires expertise to utilize. I know of commercial service like IFTTT [1] but the thought of having this type of service be a utility available to any browser user is more interesting to me. [1] https://ifttt.com https://ifttt.com

ssivark 4y ago

I think what’s needed is a robust bunch of primitives that users can easily combine to do many things. As with any organic system, I would expect the availability of capabilities to spur creativity, the Emacs ecosystem being a great case in point. But to try and give a more direct answer to your question: I often want to download/backup or otherwise programmatically process content that I routinely interact with online (this could be playlists, emails, messages, whatever). Another interesting example pertains to the “agents” available in “Huginn”: https://github.com/huginn/huginn https://github.com/huginn/huginn It would be nice if more such capabilities were integrated into the browser (or other common operating tools).

diskzero 4y ago
Exposing this sort of capability is very interesting, especially coupled with agents is indeed interesting. Getting this type of functionality added to the core browser seems like a long and complex standardization process. Perhaps a plugin would be one means of doing it? The semantic web hasn't been adopted, so one challenge would be how to categorize and expose the content to any sort of API. Perhaps such a system already exists. The emacs ecosystem is a good example, but as you stated, it really requires expertise to utilize. I know of commercial service like IFTTT [1] but the thought of having this type of service be a utility available to any browser user is more interesting to me. [1] https://ifttt.com https://ifttt.com