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Linux 'Weblications' with SashXB

Posted by michael on from the programming-for-dummiez dept.

Ches2000Pro writes "Via Wired News, IBM has announced a new Linux scripting environment called SashXB. From their description: SashXB is an open source application environment that exposes native functionality to JavaScript. It's ideal for web developers with HTML and JS skills who want to write full-featured native applications, as well as experienced programmers who'd appreciate the convenience of rapid application development. SashXB is being released under the LGPL license." It's not exactly new, but seems to be quite usable now. Has anyone used this?

3 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Tried this before... by lkaos · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Many, many, moons ago when NS first released the Mozilla code (and the source for the JS API) for a research project I added a bunch of low-level classes to JS in order to allow it to be used for more advanced applications (independent of a browser).

    This was long before MSJScript, but anyway, while it worked out pretty cool for the most part, it was horribly painful to add classes and especially painful to map APIs (I was using Win32 at the time) to JS objects.

    My second problem was that as a language, JS is just to forgiving. Optional use of semi colons and other things such as that make it a little confusing to distribute and debug.

    I always have liked JS though and I'm glad someone wrote a good backend to it. I'll have to check it out...

    --
    int func(int a);
    func((b += 3, b));
  2. See also: XWT by adam_megacz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is quite similar to XWT. XWT is often described as "A 'lite' version of Mozilla's XUL, packaged as an ActiveX/JavaApplet, using XML-RPC instead of XPCOM.

    From the xwt.org front page:

    XWT is the XML Windowing Toolkit. It lets you write remote applications -- applications that run on a server, yet can "project" their user interface onto any computer, anywhere on the Internet....

    Unlike all other remote-display technologies, XWT applications are usable and responsive regardless of network congestion, delays, and even complete network failures.

    The XWT Engine is packaged as both an ActiveX control and a Java applet, so you can access XWT applications from all major platforms (Win95/98/ME/NT/2k/XP, Linux, Solaris, MacOS X) without installing any additional software. It is distributed under an open source license (LGPL and GPL), so it can easily be ported to new platforms.

    There's a tutorial to walk you through creating a tic-tac-toe application and a comprehensive reference spelling out all the nitty gritty details about how the engine works.

  3. Been thinking about this by pubjames · · Score: 4, Interesting


    This actually fits in quite nicely something I've been thinking about.

    One of the nice things about web pages is that you can just look at the source. Wouldn't it be great if you could look at the source for any widget in an application in the same way? Even make changes just by editing the source directly, if you wanted to. So, for instance, if I'm using a Word processor and there's a function I never use I can just delete it from the source script.