Slashdot Mirror
Gate One 1.1 Released: Run Vim In Your Browser
Riskable writes "Version 1.1 of Gate One (HTML5 terminal emulator/SSH client) was just released (download). New features include security enhancements, major performance improvements, mobile browser support, improved terminal emulation, automatic syntax highlighting of syslog messages, PDFs can now be captured/displayed just like images, Python 3 support, Internet Explorer (10) support, and quite a lot more (full release notes). There's also a new demo where you can try out vim in your browser, play terminal games (nethack, vitetris, adventure, zangband, battlestar, greed, robotfindskitten, and hangman), surf the web in lynx, and a useful suite of IPv6-enabled network tools (ping, traceroute, nmap, dig, and a domain name checker)." Gate One is dual licensed (AGPLv3/Commercial Licensing); for individuals, it's pay-as-you-please.
If I can run a browser, I can run a SSH client. Bonus: The stand alone terminal emulator / SSH client doesn't come with the attack surface of a web browser, or security vulnerability baggage of JavaScript's JITs (marking data as code, then running it).
I really want to like this, I'm just not finding any use cases for it that something like PUTTY wouldn't be better for. (Well, I did, but they were really freakin' out there edge cases.)
I heard you liked browsing the web, so I put a browser in your browser so you can browse while you browse!
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
did you RTFS? Having a terminal emulator in your browser could be very useful in certain restricted environments you might come across.
Now lets see an X11 implementation :-)
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Well, I'm monitoring it in real-time. If the demo servers start getting overloaded I'll add more.
In fact, I just added two extra servers: http://gateone3.rs.liftoffsoftware.com/ and http://gateone4.rs.liftoffsoftware.com/ just to be safe.
The two, 1GB Rackspace instances that were up when this news hit the front page are still running fine at this moment.
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
Yeah, I read the summary, but it doesn't mention a raison d'etre.
Basically, it's supposed to be a method for violating your company's IT policies. Got it.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Good job! ;-)
I liked ATDT5551212 touch... Feeling nostalgic today, I'd guess...
Paul B.
Why would Gate One be Windows-only? It runs in a browser.
Don't think, "PuTTY replacement" or, "terminal replacement." Think, "I can use this from anywhere without having to install anything" or, "this could be embedded into an administration interface to provide a command line where previously there was none."
Though to be honest my end-goal with Gate One is to make it the best terminal emulator (and SSH client) ever. We've only begun to explore what's possible when you combine a terminal with capabilities of the browser (HTML5, specifically).
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
The slashdot effect is not what it once was. Also this place is full of MS and Apple folks these days. They would never know what to do with vim.
:q![return]
$ emacs[return]
--all the vi[m] you'll ever need to know.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
No, its not. It runs in a browser and is thus cross platform. The main point is that the ssh session runs on the server side, so you are essentially tunneling ssh through http. Very nice if you need ssh access in an environment that won't let you ssh out of the network.
I use a free competitor called ajaxterm to get around firewall insanity. So if the local restaurant blocks all SSH connectivity as a hacking tool (idiots), in fact only lets thru 80 and 443, this is perfect. Well, if the target machine didn't have a web server on it I could run SSH on 443 and connect to it, but if the whole point of the machine is web serving then I can't very well remove the SSL web server and stuck sshd on port 443.
This is not a daily thing, but more an OMG emergency back door when all else fails thing. My advice is put it under a mysterious URL, its too easy to scan "whatever.com/ajaxterm" on a guess, and don't link to it.
I've also used it in presentations, all I need on the client machine connected to the projector is a standard web browser. No admin rights to install stuff, etc. Just go to this page.. which doesn't work... then ask why the heck they are using MSIE 5.0 or whatever in 2012.. etc. But it does work great with a "modern" "real" browser.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
A couple comments:
1) I tried hangman but it wasn't working; Chrome 22.0.1229.94 on RHEL6. (It's slightly out of date -- see "RHEL6." :-))
2) I strongly dislike putting it into the browser (for a couple reasons, that just doesn't work with the way I use terminals); any plans for some stand-alone program (even if it's just a wrapper around a webkit widget or something)?
3) I like some of the recent efforts towards rethinking what it means to be a terminal emulator (embedded images and such), so kudos for that. You're not the only one, though you seem to have taken it further than most of the other projects I've seen.
Can't manage to get it to execute shell stuff, trying to make vm :read !:(){ :|:; }
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oh seriously fuck off.
nano is by far the best, simplest, easiest choice there is for command line(curses) editing text files. Plus modern versions of nano do syntax highlighting for scripts and code.
emacs is hidelously over-complicated. emacs is also terribly overfeatured and violates the UNIX philosphy of "do one thing, do it well". Also 1975 called, they want vi back.
emacs X11 is also terrible and extremely awkward, clumbsy and unfeatured as a text editor. many modern heavy weight text editors like gnome's gedit are power powerful, as well as easier to use, and simply more intuitive.
How hard is it on a modern linux desktop to use gamin to read the shebang and auto highlight syntax??
Do I really need crypto, a calculator, a calender, or other text based anacronisms in my text editor when they've been replaced with really pretty, extremely functional X11+GTK/QT apps a very long time ago. (that all seems to inter-operate with eachother based on freedesktop.org open standards, accross all 4 desktop enviroments I have installed)
That's because the demo is inside of a chroot jail and the user it runs as only has read-only access to its home directory. Also, the version of vim running is actually rvim which doesn't let you execute shell commands (for good reason).
If you figure out a way to break out of the jail let me know so I can close that hole! ;)
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
So run Gate One locally: https://localhost/
I use it like that every day!
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
The editor wars came to a standstill in the 90's! Why did you have to break the ceasefire?
But if we're flaming anyway, I would like to remind you that Emacs Makes Any Computer Slow and that it is a very nice operating system; it just lacks a text editor (but it's still infinitely better than nano or pico or notepad).
And real men use ed!
AccountKiller
http://www.rutschle.net/tech/sslh.shtml
From wikipedia:
nano implements some features that Pico lacks, including colored text, regular expression search and replace, smooth scrolling, multiple buffers, rebindable key support, and (experimental) undoing and redoing of edit changes.
I poked around nano's website and it seems pretty capable.
It sounds like nano does everything you need, so there is no reason to learn about other editors.
I have fond memories of pine and pico; maybe I will look at nano one of these days.
fwiw, I find some powertools worth learning to use well even if they have a non-easy learning curve (sed comes to mind). This also applies to text editors; they're just tools.
As for "1975 wants vi back", I actually get a lot of mileage from vim which is a bit closer to nano's era.
nano: born 1999 as TIP, inspired by pico.
(btw, the last item on the nano news page is from 2009: "Now on Twitter and Facebook and Happy 10th Birthday nano". Is nano under active development these days?)
vim:born 1988, released 1991 (initially for amiga, much more widespread now), inspired by vi (note I do feel sorry for anyone stuck using "classic vi" in the same way I'd feel sorry for anyone stuck with edlin).
(side note: vi-style learning curve sucks. My first two weeks were Painful, but now that I have some skill (muscle memory) with the keys I find it very effective. Kind of like how touch-typing is harder to learn than "hunt & peck" but it is still well worthwhile to learn how to touch-type; it pays dividends. Most of vi-style power (for me) comes from the fast navigation+editing commands that are tied to a rather terse (and admittedly cryptic) "shorthand" language of key combinations... I remember actually being surprised at how clunky arrow key + mouse navigation felt when I first used conventional editors after driving vi-style for a while.)
One of the things I like about having learned Vim is it will be available pretty much wherever I might need to work: here are some of the targets from from wikipedia's vim page (* indicates ports I have used):
AmigaOS (the initial target platform), DOS, Microsoft Windows 95/*98/Me/*NT/*2000/*XP/*Server 2003/*Vista/*Server 2008/*7, IBM OS/2 and OS/390, OpenVMS, QNX, *Unix, *Linux, BSD, and Mac OS. Also, Vim is shipped with every copy of Apple Mac OS X. Independent ports of Vim are available both for Android and iOS.
(I've also found vim for aix; useful if one needs to spend time there.) Note that vim seems pretty consistently fully featured on the various platforms I've used it on (*'s above).
By comparison, nano seems pretty content to excel in linux distributions (redhat & debian).
And maybe, possibly, kind of sort of windows: from the nano faq, 3.9 How about in Win32
We're still working on documentation for enabling synax highlighting on Win32; please bear with us. Note that the nano.rc file must remain Unix formatted in order for nano to understand it. In other words, you should use probably only use nano to edit its config file. Other programs like Wordpad and Notepad will either convert the file to DOS format when saving, and the latter does not even properly read Unix-formatted files to begin with.
*shrug* I'm glad nano is working for you in the land of the modern linux desktop.
As for emacs: I sincerely believe that emacs users enjoy the capabilities they find; I may find a need for something emacs does well these days. I've never heard anyone say "Yeah,
I'd give you a round of applause, but since my fingers are so gnarled from years of emacs use, I am incapable of doing so.
Monstar L