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Firefox as a universal desktop interface?

jesusphreakjesusphreak
edited November 2005 in Vanilla 1.0 Help
I've been thinking about this recently, despite my thread about not using Firefox any longer. :)

Anyway, with AJAX becoming more and more popular and so very useful, I was wondering why Firefox is not used for desktop applications?

Basically, the idea is this. You strip from Firefox everything except for the basic browser functions....basically it is nothing but a screen that can render HTML/JavaScript, etc. You could perhaps leave the extensions option as a way to add to your app.

Anyway, you code your program in PHP/Ruby on Rails, whatever you'd like, make the frontend AJAXY and you package it up with this stripped down Firefox browser.

Walla...instant GUI that is extremely editable and it makes it very easy for any web developer to make a desktop application that works across multiple OS's.

Why isn't this happening or is it already happening and I don't know about it?
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Comments

  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    Interesting, but not the best idea i've heard. FYI, you can make flash movies executable apps.
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    hmmm interesting.... i'm sure google must have something in the pipeline
  • NickENickE New
    A lot of applications of smaller 'businesses' do use such a technique. The HTMLBlock executable, for instance, is merely an IE frontend which automatically redirects you to their site. Often, though, it's easier, safer and more efficient to simply create an executable, especially because js is very limited in regard to interacting with the operating system. However, if one does insert an IE object into their application, they can do so with minimal difficulty, as the control is located within a loadable dynamic library in Windows. With Firefox, you'd have to completely include the browser with your application, in addition to hacking the source to do what you want with it, thus hugely bloating your code for something which could probably be many times smaller when created with an application programming language. For the amount of trouble you'd go through to get Firefox in such a state, it'd probably be simpler to just create an application.
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    Well, that's the thing. Of course if everyone had to hack Firefox everytime they were making an app, it would be a pain...it would be cool if a group could modify Firefox and more or less make and SDK so that a lot of the low-level stuff was handled for devs.

    Also, when dealing with Windows libraries, those are things that don't go cross-platform.
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    edited November 2005

    No one mention the "F" word!

  • Mr. FahrenheitMr. Fahrenheit
    Man that website is ugly.
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    You gotta give it to them, they took simple to a new edge.
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    blah. You want all the hype in the world rolled up into one application, you have Flock.
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    anyhows going back on topic...
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    lol, that would be a good idea.
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    edited November 2005

    man i just got told off AGAIN on wordpress support forums for posting a new post about something I'd commented on in another thread!!!!

    "Starting a new thread because you didn't get the answer you wanted in another thread with the same request is poor etiquette."

    at least here it's a bit more relaxed :-)

  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    a decent online photo editing tool would be a nice app... i've seen one but it nevers seems to work properly
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    Yeah, I've always thought that as well 3stripe. Even a program that would simply resize/crop photos and export them in different formats would be good enough for me. Anyone know of such a program?
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    searching through me favourites... hang on...
  • lechlech ✭
    Heh, if you got an answer the first time around, you wouldn't have to start up a new thread. Over here, that's fine and dandy as long as someone else comes along to point the person to the right thread and helps to clarify. As for the topic at hand, I could see it possible, but what would it add to the already relevant desktop? It sounds just like active desktop in windows with FF instead of IE (which for the most part would be better) but I don't know anyone who uses active desktop and frankly I find it the most annoying feature on the whole. If windows was made more open to allowing these kinds of features, I'm sure I'd be more open to trying it, but it can't be easily accomplished without some serious hacking at the cost of system instability. :/
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    yeah that's what i thought.... i get more replies telling me about my poor etiquette than i do answering my questions... i think that's bloody poor etiquette!!!!!
  • 3stripe3stripe ✭✭
    edited November 2005
    "Photos made easy" - http://www.pxn8.com/ Doesn't seem to be loading though so not sure if this is the app i had in mind... Actually, nope, it's there, and with Flickr integration, interesting...
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    edited November 2005
    lech, the point would be for it to make it easier for beginning devs to make apps using nothing but CSS, HTML, and their favorite scripting language.
  • MinisweeperMinisweeper New
    ahh, hold on, up till now i dont think i'd quite grasped what the intention behind this app was. I was figuring more as using stripped down ff as a container for a 'program' which was written in a web language.
  • jesusphreakjesusphreak
    I think that is the same thing I said in the post above you.
This discussion has been closed.