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Kinected Browser Lets You Flick Through Websites
mikejuk writes "The Kinect is well supported by a good and evolving SDK on the desktop, but until now using it in a browser wasn't easy. Now Microsoft Research has a free JavaScript API, Kinected Browser, that lets you integrate the Kinect with HTML. The bad news is that it only works on Windows 7 and 8 and in desktop mode only. In addition the browser has to be IE9 or IE 10. The good news is that more programmers know how to do HTML5 graphics than know how to work with DirectX or .NET. As a result this could lead to another burst of innovative Kinect applications."
I can flick through websites using the scroll wheel with minimal effort. I don't feel like waving my hands to do common tasks.
That is changing, though, and Microsoft is slowly getting their reputation as a credible browser vendor back. Also, many people who develop for the Windows 8 RT environment will choose the new option to write a native app in HTML+javascript, which basically means living in the IE rendering engine.
It's not changing for me. And I think "Many people who develop for Windows 8" is rather wishful thinking. If you're going to write an HTML/Javascript app, why not make it entirely cross platform?
which is totally what she said
How is the browser going to know when I need to switch hands, and use my other one for .... navigating.
And once again, porn gets even better.
You mean avoid the App Stores and just create a conventional web application? Sure, if that's what floats your boat. It all depends on what kind of end user experience you are aiming for. I like native apps myself. I do a lot of iOS App Store and Windows Phone stuff, and have plans to expand into the Windows 8 Store. There are ways to embed HTML5 based UIs in native cross platform apps, but I've never been too impressed by any of them. For ultimate polish and user experience, I think it's best to use each platform's native UI toolkit (just my $0.02).
Having it be a pure web app is one possibility yes, but it's possible to write HTML5 apps for iOS and Android. I'm not saying that it will necessarily be better than developing a native app for each platform, but it does cut down on development effort for simpler apps. Facebook obviously decided recently that they're better off doing native apps (though when you have the resources they do, I'm not sure why they went HTML5 in the first place).
which is totally what she said
The video in TFA looked like control was incredibly arduous, the only thing I would be interested in would be scrolling or zooming. But, considering I would like to be able to type at the same time (In order to search for words, for example) it would be more impractical than a keyboard/mouse combo.
Wasn't this the kind of crap MS tried to pull with IE6?
I'm sure their intention was to allow enterprises to develop applications for and using IE6, but it ended honorably for everyone and was the reason IE6 ended up hanging on for so long past it's expiry.
I bet It just scrolls up and down really fast on you porn
A company called Zigfu (Zigfu.com) with five employees, has a plugin that lets Any browser work with the Kinect (through Javascript). I wonder why Monstersoft can't accomplish the same level of performance.
What I don't understand is why anyone thinks that people want to trade control of a TV or computer by a simple twitch of a single finger for dancing around and wild gesticulations.
'Cause they grew up watching CSI and thought 'wow, that's really cool' without ever realising that CSI is a TV show.
They probably also say 'enhance, enhance' to their PC when they download a grainy pr0n picture.
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." - Ian Malcolm
I get why people do maybe-foolish things, when the envisioned result is something cool like dinosaurs. Why do people do things when the best-case scenario is something, which is orders of magnitude lamer than the status quo?
Guys, we already have MICE. WTF is the point of using a kinect for a job like this? Are you saying some day you'll get it perceiving precisely enough that it'll be able to detect me slightly moving my hand on a table, as though I were using a mouse?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I was really excited to see the Xbox was adding a browser: We're cutting cable and the only were were going to miss were some shows on channels like Discovery. Figured I would stick a network-connected, cheap HTPC to the TV so we could surf discovery.com, etc. for the episodes that they put online. Only thing is, didn't want to spend cash to build the thing. New patch adds a browser? Cool. No need to stick another device on the network. But it doesn't support Flash which means it doesn't let us stream most things. Too many sites still aren't at HTML5 and so rely on Flash for video. As they say: Sucks to be me.
Bark less. Wag more.
The website I was looking at kept scrolling up and down... and up and down... and up and down... oh wait, um... nevermind.
Back up there Tex. You have to specify the complexity of your application and what version of IE you're supporting before you claim it only takes an extra 15 minutes of work. I work on a large site and up until two months ago I was required to support IE 6, 7, 8 and 9. I found out two months ago as of February 2012 we're no longer supporting IE 6 and as of February 2013 we won't support IE 7, IE 8 support is slated to be phased out starting in the fall of 2013.
Web apps, epically those that require javascript, can be very complex and supporting IE 6, 7 is not trivial for larger applications. IE 8 is not so bad, but still requires effort. IE 9 is better, I'm hoping IE 10 will get it right and I won't be required to code for everything, then re-code for IE. Although I'll still have to make modifications for IE 8 and 9
I can develop an application in Firefox and with no additional effort it'll work in Opera, Chrome and Safari, but the same application without modification will not work in IE 6 or 7, sometimes not in IE 8 and on more rare occasions not in IE 9. No web developer will agree supporting IE only takes an extra 15 minutes, unless they only support IE and even then there can still significant effort involved in porting to the other versions of IE. I've had clients tell me not to worry about IE once I told them what effort would be involved in porting a large application. Of course we try to support as many users as we can, but sometimes the amount of effort to grab that extra 20% just isn't worth spending double or triple the effort in development and testing.
Feel free to tell me to get off your lawn.
When was it ever credible?
Perhaps you are a bit young to remember but in the early days of the browser Internet Explorer was like a breath of fresh air compared to the main opposition, Netscape Navigator. Netscape was a bloated mess that was getting worse with each new version. For every daft extension of the HTML language in IE (eg. MARQUEE), Netscape had its own (eg. Layers).
In those days, IE was indeed a credible browser. Where they really stuffed up was when they introduced ActiveX, and made it enabled by default (especially to download controls from untrusted sources). If I recall, they left it in that unsafe configuration for about three years before they actually put some thought into security.
....if the Javascript API is able to be implemented in future versions of other browsers. Otherwise it's really just a gimmick. Vendor lock-in doesn't really work in the browser world anymore, like it did with the older versions of IE.
Developers are going to want something that works in all major browsers, to get the biggest possible target audience....hence we have things like HTML & CSS standards and javascript frameworks (to handle the deficiencies / differences behind the scenes) that give a certain degree of "write once, run anywhere" in a browser, which ever one that may be.
Give Google, Mozilla and Opera access to the device so that they can implement the same Javascript API, then we'll be interested.
my wishes would be:
1.) make a really good and fast SLAM programm on windows I don't have to compile myself (like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5o3ABX7xYJU ) and extract a real 3d model (extract, convert and compress the point cloud to textured 3d).
2.) while beeing on this job it would be really nice to have a drag-and-drop photogrammetrie application without uploading all my pics to autodesks 123catch or microsofts photosynth.