Browsers should support bittorrent-URLs right out of the box, there's really no excuse for not doing this. It would make hosting (large-ish) static content so much easier.
but somehow trying to backspace an error in a form did the old back browse and I lost everything.
This happens when the input forms temporarily lose focus because the browser loads something (switches to bee / hourglass icon), then apparently "backspace" gets sent to the browser window and interpreted as "back" instead of just being applied to the text field of the form.
After posting rants about crappy interpreted languages, incompatible HTML/CSS/JS implementations, ridiculous W3C "standards" (that their own browser never supported properly), I'm glad that someone finally did this (as suggested here a few days ago).
Security isn't a problem when even safe (in theory) content like PDF is plagued by exploits regularly. People need to learn to a) switch on such features only on trusted web sites (use Noscript e.g.) and b) distinguish trusted from untrusted web sites (i.e. avoid phishing). If they fail at these, they shouldn't be using the web. We had the same security implications with ActiveX when MSIE was much more dominant and unsafe and the world didn't end because of it.
Now let's see some hosted apps with decent performance and good UIs and let's make sure that hitting backspace doesn't destroy all our work.
All I can say is "security nightmare." ActiveX had the same problem.
Not worse than having JS apps interact with your local environment...
it has been years and I don't see adoption. Why not? When you can answer that you will either believe me or will be able to convince me of the merits of doing things the way you describe.
Because it's an unusual way to distribute an application, because it's faster to develop a pure web app., because companies are looking at the "rent" model instead of giving users some way to keep their data (and apps) on their local disks...
Question: Why isn't flash the network-centric app platform of choice?
Because Flash is full of bugs, proprietary, limited and not even suported on the iPhone...
Go ahead, suggest Java. I dare you. (...) There are a few zillion issues to work out, but I'd endorse this approach. The problem is that this hasn't happened and, if history has taught me anything, it wont happen
OK, I'll do it and suggest Java as a good proof of concept. Right now, you can load and run a signed wrapper applet that loads a native.dll or.so (depending on what system you're on). You can provide a user with a web page that contains icons with native applications (using Applets) configured for his system (web-based configuration). Sure, you will need to provide DLLs, various Linux.so's and libs for OSX (depending on what you want to support), but you have the freedom and performance of C/C++/whatever and the comfortable way of delivering/accessing/configuring/updating your applications over the web with a choice of keeping data on an external server or locally. Something like this has been done before: SANE, JNI and Java all in an applet. The Windows-centric alternative is already very popular (and notorious): ActiveX is being used for web-hosted native applications like virus scanners (and viruses).
Now all we need is to replace the JRE with a simple cross-platform browser plugin that provides rudimentary functions to download and execute native code, but in the mean time, going through JRE/JNI is feasible (with a web-hosted.exe being a crappy alternative for various reasons). People just need to wake up and stop building stuff that runs at a felt 1/100th native speed. I have my hopes that the current popularity of Netbooks will get some developers to take a closer look at application performance again - because Firefox is extremely slow on an Atom CPU and it destroys the "netbook with web apps" concept.
The sad truth is that whether the court agrees with tne notion that it's a breach or rights or not, even if authorities will be prohibited from using the existing database officially, everyone knows that some authorities (MI5, MI6) will keep on using and sharing it... It exists, so the damage is already done.
Package management wasn't invented yesterday, RPMs/DEBs are as effortless as ever to install and so are the countless common ways of installing stuff on Windows. Why do you think so many people use Firefox already despite it being so terribly hard to install, code for (cross-plattform) and even though MSIE is already preinstalled on all Windows systems? It's not too hard, look at all the spyware crap people can install all by themselves on Windows.
gmail...
Gmail is a fine Web application, yes. But it's not an example that can be generalized. Why isn't Winamp a web application? How about Irfanview or other image viewers? Heck, even Google Picasa is an.exe... Gmail only exists because it's hosted where you *want your data to be kept*. It's a straightforward, unsafe way of managing your email that gets away with it because people don't really care. Ideally, we'd want to have our data in a safe place, accessible from anywhere with a proper UI (why did Google add IMAP to gmail?).
The web, as a delivery mechanism and operating paradigm, along with the web browser as the engine for interaction, is the immediate future. If you think this sucks, get busy replacing it now! In a couple of years it may be too late to replace it soon.
The web delivers compiled C applications just fine. It also handles configuration just fine (like e.g. your MUA - nothing is keeping your ISP from offering you a self-installing and -configuring MUA package that takes less effort to setup than Gmail [you don't have to enter another email address]).
tl;dr the web sucks but it's here, now and it's evolving to suck less
tl;dr answer: people gave up on writing portable apps because big players made sure the UIs weren't portable, now they are working on the next effort that big players will sabotage. Might as well go back to the older, more efficient path and build a portable C/C++/Pascal/other high performance language framework (like Lazarus if you can find people who still know Pascal) and use the web to deliver and configure apps.
... I'd like to know how to determine by measuring something that a result is "random", in a mathematically correct way. "it keeps changing, it must be random" is probably as reliable as "it's been running for 2 hours now, so it won't terminate". %-P
It's a nice simple UI/API, but still way behind the capabilities of current native desktop systems/UIs (e.g. 3D) and much slower.
We were so close to being reasonably cross-platform-capable at very high performance with gcc, POSIX, OpenGL and UI toolkits like Qt. Then AJAX happened, *sigh*... Now everyone is betting on clunky interpreted languages (= more bugs visible only at runtime and 10-50x slowdown) in- or outside browsers and whatever stripped-down UI libraries are available for them.
The tragicomical highlight is the fact that FF itself works rather fine and is reasonably fast on all platforms (plugin bugs like Adobe's notwithstanding) and still people apparently don't see it as a good example for cross-platform coding.
I don't know anymore what drives this industry. Can it really be the fact that with whatever-on-rails you can code the 1000th blog or social networking site in 15 minutes? Instant gratification and zero accomplishment being the new trend in programming?
is that I can sit down at basically any computer anywhere in the world, open up a browser, and have basically the same experience with any application I open.
That is not even true with basic HTML/CSS nowdays. Let alone "applications". Not even identical keyboard shortcuts are possible across browsers.
It's a common misconception that people are trying to sAlso, as a longtime C++ programmer, I can say that C++ is no more a "real" language than Python or Ruby - talk about a juvenile understanding of software development. People use what gets the job done quickly and hopefully with fewer bugs, and when the dust settles certain languages and technologies are shown to work, and others not. But you never know unless you try.
If you are a longtime C++ programmer, you should also know that C++ and other statically typed / compiled languages are much easier to debug - not only are there more and better tools (e.g. source-level down to machine code debuggers) available, the compiler warnings and errors are *much* more informative compared to all common interpreted languages. This saves you a lot of time and headaches on the long run and is probably a result of the many more man-years of professional development done in these languages (compared to less than 10 years of mostly small/hobbyist work in all the "web languages" - yes, with exceptions) and of course also due to the fact that statically typed and compiled languages are easier to analyze than dynamically typed and interpreted ones.
I'll meet you half way, I agree C++ is far faster than anything I've been paid to code in. Now you come the other half of the way and maybe we'll have a discussion here where useful information is exchanged.
It won't be long till some of you "young'uns" writes a C++ to bytecode compiler together with a corresponding browser plugin/VM... The problem isn't the language, it's the fact that a browser is a terrible *OS* for anything else than small, short-lived "applications" and I really hope it doesn't go half way to being a decent one.
As for the "browsers are so architecture neutral", it's not true and you know it. Nowdays it's easier to compile and run good C++ code on a large number of platforms than it is to get even a tiny Flash or JS app (or even HTML/CSS) to behave identically on all major browsers on 3 platforms (just today I encountered this persistent bug, a major PITA). All you get is a rudimentary cross-platform UI that is terrible for serious work (you know, when every mouse click gives you network latency and hitting backspace on the wrong spot ruins your work).
Give me a cross-platform language with stable UI and native code compilation and without the design issues of C/C++ (allowing me to write all over the stack/code/memory) over "Web 2.0" any day.;-)
there were a lot of early efforts trying to implement realtime rayracing engines for games (e.g. at Intel recently), let's port that stuff and have some fun.
That - and it adds a whole layer of instability on top of your OS (browsers/JS need to be stable too).
All those lemmings who advocate running applications inside a browser (completely ignoring the fact that networking is available outside browsers too and you don't even need to hand over all your data to a 3rd party for groupware applications) should go apologize to Microsoft, who took a lot of flak for considering the browser part of the OS...
I have a german iMac 24" and alt+56789 outputs "[]|{}" which is not what I'm used to from a PC keyboard (and a bit silly). Language is set to German or Austrian (does the same thing).
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Browsers should support bittorrent-URLs right out of the box, there's really no excuse for not doing this. It would make hosting (large-ish) static content so much easier.
Seriously, this is even worse than saving Hitler's brain by putting into the body of a great white shark armed with lasers.
Gee, I wonder if any of the corporations aiming at world domination would not do this if they could...
I love MS's numbers showing Xax being faster on Linux than native code on XP ...
but somehow trying to backspace an error in a form did the old back browse and I lost everything.
This happens when the input forms temporarily lose focus because the browser loads something (switches to bee / hourglass icon), then apparently "backspace" gets sent to the browser window and interpreted as "back" instead of just being applied to the text field of the form.
Security isn't a problem when even safe (in theory) content like PDF is plagued by exploits regularly. People need to learn to a) switch on such features only on trusted web sites (use Noscript e.g.) and b) distinguish trusted from untrusted web sites (i.e. avoid phishing). If they fail at these, they shouldn't be using the web. We had the same security implications with ActiveX when MSIE was much more dominant and unsafe and the world didn't end because of it.
Now let's see some hosted apps with decent performance and good UIs and let's make sure that hitting backspace doesn't destroy all our work.
Damn those Google copycats: Native Client: A Technology for Running Native Code on the Web.
... so technically, the "New Yorker" isn't "running" it anymore ... ;-)
All I can say is "security nightmare." ActiveX had the same problem.
Not worse than having JS apps interact with your local environment...
it has been years and I don't see adoption. Why not? When you can answer that you will either believe me or will be able to convince me of the merits of doing things the way you describe.
Because it's an unusual way to distribute an application, because it's faster to develop a pure web app., because companies are looking at the "rent" model instead of giving users some way to keep their data (and apps) on their local disks ...
Question: Why isn't flash the network-centric app platform of choice?
Because Flash is full of bugs, proprietary, limited and not even suported on the iPhone ...
Go ahead, suggest Java. I dare you. (...) There are a few zillion issues to work out, but I'd endorse this approach. The problem is that this hasn't happened and, if history has taught me anything, it wont happen
OK, I'll do it and suggest Java as a good proof of concept. Right now, you can load and run a signed wrapper applet that loads a native .dll or .so (depending on what system you're on). You can provide a user with a web page that contains icons with native applications (using Applets) configured for his system (web-based configuration). Sure, you will need to provide DLLs, various Linux .so's and libs for OSX (depending on what you want to support), but you have the freedom and performance of C/C++/whatever and the comfortable way of delivering/accessing/configuring/updating your applications over the web with a choice of keeping data on an external server or locally. Something like this has been done before: SANE, JNI and Java all in an applet. The Windows-centric alternative is already very popular (and notorious): ActiveX is being used for web-hosted native applications like virus scanners (and viruses).
Now all we need is to replace the JRE with a simple cross-platform browser plugin that provides rudimentary functions to download and execute native code, but in the mean time, going through JRE/JNI is feasible (with a web-hosted .exe being a crappy alternative for various reasons). People just need to wake up and stop building stuff that runs at a felt 1/100th native speed. I have my hopes that the current popularity of Netbooks will get some developers to take a closer look at application performance again - because Firefox is extremely slow on an Atom CPU and it destroys the "netbook with web apps" concept.
The sad truth is that whether the court agrees with tne notion that it's a breach or rights or not, even if authorities will be prohibited from using the existing database officially, everyone knows that some authorities (MI5, MI6) will keep on using and sharing it ... It exists, so the damage is already done.
... effortless installation ...
Package management wasn't invented yesterday, RPMs/DEBs are as effortless as ever to install and so are the countless common ways of installing stuff on Windows. Why do you think so many people use Firefox already despite it being so terribly hard to install, code for (cross-plattform) and even though MSIE is already preinstalled on all Windows systems? It's not too hard, look at all the spyware crap people can install all by themselves on Windows.
gmail...
Gmail is a fine Web application, yes. But it's not an example that can be generalized. Why isn't Winamp a web application? How about Irfanview or other image viewers? Heck, even Google Picasa is an .exe ... Gmail only exists because it's hosted where you *want your data to be kept*. It's a straightforward, unsafe way of managing your email that gets away with it because people don't really care. Ideally, we'd want to have our data in a safe place, accessible from anywhere with a proper UI (why did Google add IMAP to gmail?).
The web, as a delivery mechanism and operating paradigm, along with the web browser as the engine for interaction, is the immediate future. If you think this sucks, get busy replacing it now! In a couple of years it may be too late to replace it soon.
The web delivers compiled C applications just fine. It also handles configuration just fine (like e.g. your MUA - nothing is keeping your ISP from offering you a self-installing and -configuring MUA package that takes less effort to setup than Gmail [you don't have to enter another email address]).
tl;dr the web sucks but it's here, now and it's evolving to suck less
tl;dr answer: people gave up on writing portable apps because big players made sure the UIs weren't portable, now they are working on the next effort that big players will sabotage. Might as well go back to the older, more efficient path and build a portable C/C++/Pascal/other high performance language framework (like Lazarus if you can find people who still know Pascal) and use the web to deliver and configure apps.
... I'd like to know how to determine by measuring something that a result is "random", in a mathematically correct way. "it keeps changing, it must be random" is probably as reliable as "it's been running for 2 hours now, so it won't terminate". %-P
We were so close to being reasonably cross-platform-capable at very high performance with gcc, POSIX, OpenGL and UI toolkits like Qt. Then AJAX happened, *sigh* ... Now everyone is betting on clunky interpreted languages (= more bugs visible only at runtime and 10-50x slowdown) in- or outside browsers and whatever stripped-down UI libraries are available for them.
The tragicomical highlight is the fact that FF itself works rather fine and is reasonably fast on all platforms (plugin bugs like Adobe's notwithstanding) and still people apparently don't see it as a good example for cross-platform coding.
I don't know anymore what drives this industry. Can it really be the fact that with whatever-on-rails you can code the 1000th blog or social networking site in 15 minutes? Instant gratification and zero accomplishment being the new trend in programming?
is that I can sit down at basically any computer anywhere in the world, open up a browser, and have basically the same experience with any application I open.
That is not even true with basic HTML/CSS nowdays. Let alone "applications". Not even identical keyboard shortcuts are possible across browsers.
It's a common misconception that people are trying to sAlso, as a longtime C++ programmer, I can say that C++ is no more a "real" language than Python or Ruby - talk about a juvenile understanding of software development. People use what gets the job done quickly and hopefully with fewer bugs, and when the dust settles certain languages and technologies are shown to work, and others not. But you never know unless you try.
If you are a longtime C++ programmer, you should also know that C++ and other statically typed / compiled languages are much easier to debug - not only are there more and better tools (e.g. source-level down to machine code debuggers) available, the compiler warnings and errors are *much* more informative compared to all common interpreted languages. This saves you a lot of time and headaches on the long run and is probably a result of the many more man-years of professional development done in these languages (compared to less than 10 years of mostly small/hobbyist work in all the "web languages" - yes, with exceptions) and of course also due to the fact that statically typed and compiled languages are easier to analyze than dynamically typed and interpreted ones.
I'll meet you half way, I agree C++ is far faster than anything I've been paid to code in. Now you come the other half of the way and maybe we'll have a discussion here where useful information is exchanged.
It won't be long till some of you "young'uns" writes a C++ to bytecode compiler together with a corresponding browser plugin/VM... The problem isn't the language, it's the fact that a browser is a terrible *OS* for anything else than small, short-lived "applications" and I really hope it doesn't go half way to being a decent one.
As for the "browsers are so architecture neutral", it's not true and you know it. Nowdays it's easier to compile and run good C++ code on a large number of platforms than it is to get even a tiny Flash or JS app (or even HTML/CSS) to behave identically on all major browsers on 3 platforms (just today I encountered this persistent bug, a major PITA). All you get is a rudimentary cross-platform UI that is terrible for serious work (you know, when every mouse click gives you network latency and hitting backspace on the wrong spot ruins your work).
Give me a cross-platform language with stable UI and native code compilation and without the design issues of C/C++ (allowing me to write all over the stack/code/memory) over "Web 2.0" any day. ;-)
there were a lot of early efforts trying to implement realtime rayracing engines for games (e.g. at Intel recently), let's port that stuff and have some fun.
Seriously, not having to remember things while you are sitting in front of your PC because you can always google for it is very bad for your memory ...
graphic guestbooks for the web are about 13 years old ... they actually work better for this type of "fun".
All those lemmings who advocate running applications inside a browser (completely ignoring the fact that networking is available outside browsers too and you don't even need to hand over all your data to a 3rd party for groupware applications) should go apologize to Microsoft, who took a lot of flak for considering the browser part of the OS ...
Using a spreadsheet as a graphics program is about as efficient as using a browser to run office applications ...
Have the company's growth fantasies involving the RMT purchase of virtual members been scrapped due to the financial crisis?
that's a PC keyboard you have there, are you sure it's Apple-made or came with your Apple?
Here's a picture of my keyboard ... (German iMac 24" from amazon.de).
I have a german iMac 24" and alt+56789 outputs "[]|{}" which is not what I'm used to from a PC keyboard (and a bit silly). Language is set to German or Austrian (does the same thing).