3 ms·

I suppose it's fine if a lot of people like it, but if anything it shows how little desktop environments have advanced/bloomed, and how deeply cargo-culted that

by jrm4 4y ago

I suppose it's fine if a lot of people like it, but if anything it shows how little desktop environments have advanced/bloomed, and how deeply cargo-culted that whole space is. This should be trivially easy to implement without visiting the web.

Dylan16807 4y ago
> it shows how little desktop environments have advanced/bloomed Are you suggesting it should be built in to a desktop environment and not a separate program? Why? > how deeply cargo-culted that whole space is Desktop environments? I don't understand this point at all. > This should be trivially easy to implement without visiting the web. By "should" are you critiquing the author, or do you not think it's easy for some reason?
- wyclif 4y ago
  I very rarely see my desktop, since I almost always have a full-size terminal window with a split running, along with a browser window, Finder, VSCode, Preview, Pages, and other apps open. I think the use case this is designed for is people like that who are rotating between browser tabs a lot and not minimizing everything to see their desktop.
- jrm4 4y ago
  Not critiquing the author at all -- what I'm saying is: There is absolutely nothing about this that requires a connection to the internet or to store any of this with a 3rd party. That's a liability. This entire system could be done locally with a more "pliable" environment, but e.g. those of us who want something customizable would have to slog through bash scripts or emacs or something like that. Instead of e.g. something that worked like the famed/mythical "modern Hypercard."
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    A local piece of HTML works fine as a modern hypercard. Or various app platforms that give you a similar experience. As far as I can tell the pliability you want is already there.
    - jrm4 4y ago
      This is honestly the weirdest and most wrong thing I've ever seen anyone say on HN. The two are not remotely comparable. Like, you no, you can't drag and drop to create a calculator with HTML.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        I see. I thought you were saying that making this work offline should be trivial. I didn't realize you wanted to replace the entire dev process, to have the end user make their own version from scratch. So my reply was talking about the ease of installing a program that was developed like this but for offline use, not the ease of make-your-own. You're of course right that making your own has no easy solution here. But that's a separate problem from working offline, and the way you talked about both problems at the same time confused me.
      - RodgerTheGreat 4y ago
        You can, however, have a single html document containing an editing environment that can be used to "drag-and-drop" together a calculator: https://beyondloom.com/decker/ https://beyondloom.com/decker/
- maccam94 4y ago
  Back in my Windows XP days I had an app installed called Desktop Sidebar[1], which would be exactly the place I'd want all of this functionality today. Or in some kind of widget layer, like with MacOS. Hmm it's been a long time since I thought about desktop customization, maybe I should see if there is anything similar for GNOME these days. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20120527201322/http://desktopsidebar.com/screenshots.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120527201322/http://desktopsid...
chpatrick 4y ago
I think it's very convenient that you can get something useful without having to install anything, and it just works on every platform.

by jrm4 4y ago

Dylan16807 4y ago

> it shows how little desktop environments have advanced/bloomed Are you suggesting it should be built in to a desktop environment and not a separate program? Why? > how deeply cargo-culted that whole space is Desktop environments? I don't understand this point at all. > This should be trivially easy to implement without visiting the web. By "should" are you critiquing the author, or do you not think it's easy for some reason?

wyclif 4y ago
I very rarely see my desktop, since I almost always have a full-size terminal window with a split running, along with a browser window, Finder, VSCode, Preview, Pages, and other apps open. I think the use case this is designed for is people like that who are rotating between browser tabs a lot and not minimizing everything to see their desktop.
jrm4 4y ago
Not critiquing the author at all -- what I'm saying is: There is absolutely nothing about this that requires a connection to the internet or to store any of this with a 3rd party. That's a liability. This entire system could be done locally with a more "pliable" environment, but e.g. those of us who want something customizable would have to slog through bash scripts or emacs or something like that. Instead of e.g. something that worked like the famed/mythical "modern Hypercard."
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  A local piece of HTML works fine as a modern hypercard. Or various app platforms that give you a similar experience. As far as I can tell the pliability you want is already there.
  - jrm4 4y ago
    This is honestly the weirdest and most wrong thing I've ever seen anyone say on HN. The two are not remotely comparable. Like, you no, you can't drag and drop to create a calculator with HTML.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      I see. I thought you were saying that making this work offline should be trivial. I didn't realize you wanted to replace the entire dev process, to have the end user make their own version from scratch. So my reply was talking about the ease of installing a program that was developed like this but for offline use, not the ease of make-your-own. You're of course right that making your own has no easy solution here. But that's a separate problem from working offline, and the way you talked about both problems at the same time confused me.
    - RodgerTheGreat 4y ago
      You can, however, have a single html document containing an editing environment that can be used to "drag-and-drop" together a calculator: https://beyondloom.com/decker/ https://beyondloom.com/decker/
maccam94 4y ago
Back in my Windows XP days I had an app installed called Desktop Sidebar[1], which would be exactly the place I'd want all of this functionality today. Or in some kind of widget layer, like with MacOS. Hmm it's been a long time since I thought about desktop customization, maybe I should see if there is anything similar for GNOME these days. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20120527201322/http://desktopsidebar.com/screenshots.html https://web.archive.org/web/20120527201322/http://desktopsid...

chpatrick 4y ago

I think it's very convenient that you can get something useful without having to install anything, and it just works on every platform.