Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

This and other sites of mine will experience a few outages this weekend as the servers move to a new temporary data center.

Update: Server is snug in it’s new home. Will be moving again in several weeks to a permanent new data center.

One of the greatest things about Parallels is Coherence. The integration between the virtual machine and the host OS makes virtualized applications feel almost native. It’s a major win for users who don’t want to be locked into a mini-desktop.

I wonder if this concept could be brought to the web in a secure, but convenient method. There are many applications that could benefit. You could pull widgets off a page and onto your desktop as an application. For example you could take Meebo, an online IM service. In a matter of seconds it would feel as if you downloaded a new application, but your still using your browser. People love web applications, and hate downloads. This has been known for a while. Meebo is extremely popular because it feels somewhat like a desktop application, but it’s web based. Think of this as Apple’s Dashboard taken to a whole new level.

Take for example this psudocode (it’s just to make a point, not an API):

<div id="frame">
    <p>This is a window that can be brought to the desktop</p>
    <p id="test"></p>
</div>

var widget = document.getElementById('frame');

// This would test if it's currently coherent
if(!widget.coherence){
    // This would prompt the user to allow coherence on the page.  Typical extension-like install warning.
    widget.allowCoherence();
}

// When you first enter coherence mode
widget.coherence.oncoherence = function(){
    document.getElementById('test').innerHTML = 'I\'m in your OohS, integratin your web pagez';
};

// When you focus (bring a window to the front)
widget.coherence.onfocus = function(){
    document.getElementById('test').innerHTML = 'Your in focus';
};

// When you first enter coherence mode
widget.coherence.onminimize= function(){
     document.getElementById('test').innerHTML = 'I\'m idle right now.';
};

The first time your browser would hit allowCoherence() you would be prompted to allow coherence for that domain. Other than the integrated look/feel it would adhere 100% to typical web sandboxing. This isn’t like building an XULRunner app where JS can write to the filesystem. It would just be a way to make web applications more usable for people. and breakout of the web browser feel.

There are other things that can be done as well. For example CSS theming could give the app a more native look/feel dependent on the host. Perhaps just an attribute in the <HTML/> would trigger the browser to render things to look like a native app by default (pinstripe background for page by default, etc). Another great thing to use with it would be offline support. A little more cleverness would allow you to create bookmarks that essentially “open the application”.

Ultimately this would still be about web applications, but making them live outside of the browser window. The user wouldn’t need to install anything more than a web browser. The applications would be as safe to use as browsing to a website.

So there’s my giant idea. Implementing this in something like Firefox would be a rather large task, and to be useful the API would need to be standardized across browsers, but much of the underlying stuff is there. Anyone interested in taking web applications to the next level?

John Dvorak touched a Mac. Strike that, he actually used one, and get this: somewhat liked it. He says he won’t be switching, but would recommend it.

I can see why the Mac is gaining market share, because the rationale for using one is simple. Do you want to deal with the agony of antivirus, firewall, antispyware, and other touchy software subsystems, many of which do not work well? Or do you want to boot Microsoft Word and write a document and be done with it?

This coming from a guy who spend the past 20 years bashing them. He then concludes with:

Yes, it’s a sad day for the Mac bashers.

Apple Third Quarter Results:

Apple shipped 1,764,000 Macintosh® computers, representing 33 percent growth over the year-ago quarter and exceeding the previous company record for quarterly Mac® shipments by over 150,000. The Company also sold 9,815,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 21 percent growth over the year-ago quarter.

Now who is saying the Mac is dead ?

Mitchell today announced that the Mozilla Foundation is now looking for a new home for Thunderbird since it doesn’t directly meet the mission of the foundation, which is putting most of it’s efforts into Firefox. Three options have been initially proposed (though there seems to be room for more options).

(more…)

Several months ago I mentioned the Nokia N800. Recently a Mozilla based browser was released. This got me extra interested. Apparently flash support is improved, and you could run a better browser. Also can run Skype, and openSSH. What more could you want?

Well there is a killer thing missing: offline support. It’s a WiFi only device (which IMHO is fine), meaning no data connection if your not in range of a hotspot unless you use bluetooth and your cellphone, but that’s expensive. I’d love to see offline support. I’m surprised Google hasn’t stepped up to the plate and released a version of Google Gears the N800. Seems like it would be the perfect application.

Very interesting product.

According to TechCrunch Parakey was acquired by Facebook. For those who haven’t been following. Parakey was Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt’s new venture. Their priors include a certain CVS branch that spawned a certain web browser and a certain developer extension for the browser called Firebug (released through Parakey according to the footer). I’m guessing this isn’t part of a plan for a “WebOS” but to strengthen the Facebook Platform.

For the record Facebook is a pretty decent open source contributor as well as a consumer. Hopefully this means that Blake’s intention to open source most of Parakey will still hold true. Some more work on Firebug would also be awesome.

Congrats to Blake and Joe!