
Mozilla's Webian Shell interface will cloak your OS in a browser (video) - taylorbuley
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/06/mozillas-webian-shell-interface-will-cloak-your-os-in-a-browser/
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maxogden
-10 points to Engadget for inaccuracy. This is a side project of a guy who uses Mozilla stuff, and not an official Mozilla project. It is, however, based on Mozilla Chromeless.

"The Webian project is a not-for-profit venture founded by Ben Francis. Ben is
a full time software engineer at a startup in Cambridge (England)."

"...when Mozilla Chromeless came along it was suddenly possible to rapidly
develop a working prototype using standard web technologies like HTML, CSS and
JavaScript. As a member of the wider Mozilla community this was an opportunity
I couldn’t resist..."

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nxn
Well, a whole web based OS I understand, and maybe I even get using html5/js
to do a few things in an OS interface -- though I'd personally not go that
route myself. This though is completely confusing to me. Perhaps the article
and video provide a poor explanation, but it seems like I can already achieve
the main advantages of this experiment by just pressing F11?

I get Chrome OS because it's different and gives a certain set of people what
might actually be of some use to them (ie, all data online, you're always in
sync, etc). I get enhancing desktop UIs with the things that worked well on
the web -- but to start throwing out almost everything that evolved on the
desktop just to get a webby feel? Not sure what problem that tries to solve.

The most interesting thing though is that after years of hearing that the
future of the desktop will be web based, the idea finally seems to have picked
up.

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BoppreH
I'm still a few years away from using "web apps" as first class programs.
Google's home page takes 3 seconds to load here (Opera, 3 Mb/s, Brazil) and
it's the fastest website I use. To me, they are simply unusable as a first
class program.

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silon
This needs a framework to write distributed / sync based offline applications.

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d0m
I already use tmux and vim for all my development needs. So, once I'll be able
to use a "temrinal" in a browser, I'll easily be able to switch to a desktop-
less PC.

