I believe bonjour .local domains and DNS work on Windows by default, right?
If so, that's a great way of sharing files from iOS to Windows on a local network
Edit: just downloaded and tested, it works on Debian Linux out of the box, zero conf stuff is installed by default, I guess. This is very cool. The app is stupendous in every way. Major kudos.
In the past .local didn't work on windows. Apparently it conflicted with some discovery system that they had. It also don't work on Android, apparently for the smae reason as Windows).
I have it set up on my Linux box and it is very convenient. But the lack of Android support is very annoying.
I wonder what it would take to get live-reloading into this without anything special added by the user.
I think you'd be able to add a JS snippet that listens for server pushes (you'd push when the file system changed, I guess), then reload using window.location? Not ideal though, you'd need to inject that into the page or do something weird like output everything in an iframe.
People love their live reloads though, and a lot of people who benefit from it aren't really sure how to implement it. It would be cool to have an opt-in, no-code solution.
Vite will add live reloading to HTML it serves: https://vitejs.dev/ It even goes further with some supported frameworks and will do hot module replacement which is like live reloading but doesn't reload the full page and just injects the changed components (faster more instant updates). It'll live reload CSS, images, etc. too.
If vite seems a little too complex browsersync will do nice life reloading for all HTML it serves too: https://browsersync.io/
Interesting. I wonder how difficult it would be to bundle these features to work across devices like WorldWideWeb.app. If people were okay with a fairly opinionated workflow, you could offer some cool features.
You’d run into the same issues as Create React App for more able users, but you might not encounter that as much with the type of people who would want this.
Edit: also have to say I love vite. Such awesome work being done by those devs
For folks using Windows, there is very similar project miniWeb [1], which is also a single binary, serves a directory with one click and provides dur listings.
Very useful for LAN parties or sharing over home network, when windows network discovery just wont work.
I've been looking for this exact thing for years! I just wanted to an easy way to spin up a web server for hosting a simple HTML page on a home intranet, and didn't want to mess around with configuring Apache or something needlessly complicated.
That's from the Xcode developer tools, not macOS itself. When you try to run that command after a fresh macOS installation, it tells you to install the Xcode dev tools.
Wow that sucks if true. Python is such a great introduction to programming and is a great tool to have installed by default on Linux and Mac.... is there any logical reason why it's being removed?
I don't like it either, but my guess is they consider it irelevant. Their software doesn't depend on it, vast majority of their users won't use it and those who want to can easily install it themselves.
I remember times when each mac came with not just Python, but also Java and Adobe Flash Player pre-installed. Of course I'm not saying they should do that again, but there was something wonderfull about powering it on and being able to e.g. play YouTube videos right away instead of having to set everything up like on a PC.
> is there any logical reason why it's being removed?
Yes. The versions they shipped with macOS were typically outdated, and shipping them with macOS would basically mean that they only get updated with macOS, so a lot of people were/are running old and vulnerable versions of those tools, and they decided to scrap them altogether.
Very cool project, but it's worth mentioning that you can simply run 'python –m SimpleHTTPServer' in any directory on mac to spin up a HTTP server with that directory as root
As the second link in the article[0] points out, this app exists precisely because they're removing that, i.e. Macs don't ship with python installed anymore.
[edit] More specifically, they've already stopped shipping with Python 2, and stated their intention to stop including any scripting language runtimes at all, including Python, Ruby, and Perl.[1]
I see where the GP is coming from. The old system installations of Perl, Python, and Ruby could be thought of as the 2000s equivalent of the ROM BASIC on early microcomputers -- an easy way for anyone with access to such a computer, even a child, to start dabbling with programming. But I suppose today's equivalent is the browser dev tools, or maybe Swift Playgrounds on current Apple computers.
The difference is that the barrier to entry is so much lower now. If I were trying to help someone just starting out, I would point them at something like repl.it instead of whatever is preinstalled on their machine.
The system Python and Ruby installs on macOS at this point are more of a hindrance to newbies than a help. You have to explain the differences between versions and hope they don't have to deal with any conflicts.
Yes, once you were up and running and knew what you were doing and what you needed, but the default install meant there was very little friction to first time programmers dipping their toes in the water.
Depends on the tutorial I guess. I learned python back in 08/09 so maybe the landscape has changed but I had already written full pieces of software before I ever worried about installing 3rd party libs via pip etc
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that there's friction involved in finding what you need, finding it, waiting for a download and then going through an install process which might require admin privileges.
No one said anything about it being difficult or hard to figure out, just that some curious minds who might have started playing around in the REPL will might now pass on the opportunity and miss out on the fun, and that's a pity for them.
> No one said anything about it being difficult or hard to figure out, just that some curious minds who might have started playing around in the REPL will might now pass on the opportunity and miss out on the fun, and that's a pity for them.
This is a valid point. The difference though these days is finding the REPL would likely trigger a google search anyway since the internet is so ubiquitous. Developing nations would of course be an exception to this though I guess.
My first introduction to programming was typing code from the C64 manual into my C64. It's a shame they don't include a self contained learn to program environment into modern operating systems.
What if you don't have access to the internet? it's not exactly trivial to download stuff if you're for example from a developing country or simply poor.
As a kid, I got a lot of mileage of whatever our computers came pre-installed with and I don't think it's a bad idea to bundle a scripting language with the machine, simply to have something to tinker and play with without the need to download anything.
On macOS, the installers provided by python.org aren’t the best way to get Python either. (pyenv or homebrew would be better; python.org installers do weird things and have no uninstaller)
Honestly I couldn't disagree more. Reducing friction is always good for newcomers. I got started writing code on systems that already had compilers installed because they were already installed. When I used Windows I was slower to start because the tools were not already available. 20 years later, I'm now a software developer.
> If you can't figure out how to click next next next then you have no business trying to learn python yet.
This is rude IMO. Who are you to tell people if they have "no business" to learn something?! This is the kind of gatekeeping that keeps curious newcomers out of tech.
Yeah, that was worded somewhat aggressively. I guess what I really mean is you should learn and know how to click next before you learn actual code. If clicking next is an insurmountable obstacle you are going to have a very rough go at learning to code.
I don't get where you are getting the 'insurmountable obstacle' from. I learned about computers from exploring around, typing things, seeing what happened, etc. I loved to know what my computer could do already on its own, without external tools, when I was like 13.
Yes, I knew how to click 'next next next'. Everybody does. That just doesn't have anything to do with learning about computers though - going to a website and downloading a package is not and should not be a prerequisite for learning to code.
Why is going out and finding a python package, downloading it, and clicking 'next next next' a prerequisite for someone to learn coding? I could suggest as well that if you think you need to do that, then you're definitely not ready to learn to code! (Though I would never, because that's silly gatekeeping). Certainly these days you can use a browser to code anyway, without downloading packages at all!
So why is it such a requirement that someone click 'next next next' in order to learn? What if they don't want to? Why is that so offensive that you think they can't learn to code?
Imagine a world where the majority of people became reliant on food being delivered to their door, to the point that it became uncommon to store fresh ingredients at home.
Someone growing up in that environment would surely be less likely to experiment with cooking for themselves than someone living Ina home with ingredients already in the kitchen.
That's not to say that going to the store would be an "insurmountable obstacle" for them, simply that the idea is no longer normalised and the barriet to entry is now non zero compared to "just start and see."
In an alternate universe they could have done something about it, the same way a debian ships with a version, and if you don’t want it you change it.
Apple is no small startup that can’t maintain an update system (could have been just part of the xcode tools), so I kinda resent them for dropping the ball completely.
Well, I'm irritated at them for exposing a system Python at all, because I need Python to actually work, the way I need it to, so my point here is: Apple can't win.
Nah, it's just raising the barrier of entry slightly for newcomers.
For the real coffin nails, I look to the gradually-increasing difficulty of installing software that isn't signed by a developer registered with Apple. Fellow frogs, is it not warm in here?
It's simple for us but I think the ethos around this project is not even having to open a command line. Like old Mac OS X days, just click a button to start a web server
Yes, there are loads of people out there who would love to learn HTML, CSS, maybe some basic image editing, and never have to open a command line. It isn't intuitive to people who live in the command line (why wouldn't you want such an efficient tool?), but it's like convincing someone to like a healthy food they find repulsive.
Honest question, since my days with OSX are far behind: why would I want to do this in Applescript if the only thing this does is start the python http server? In other words, what advantage does it offer over just directly running the command?
If I remember correctly (been a while since I played with Applescript) I think you could save a script and set up the UI so that you can launch it in the macOS UI (instead of firing up a Terminal.app and entering the command by hand)
No; if you give a shell script the .command extension (and make it executable), then you can double-click it in the Finder to open and run it in the Terminal application.
Might be something a more current macOS user would have to answer. I just remember doing this using a little applescript menu icon on the topbar.
edit: now that I think about it, I did use "bitbar" for a while which is actually a little bit more powerful still. I can't find it any more but this looks similar - https://github.com/matryer/xbar#get-started
This would have been great for the intro class I taught on computers which included a lesson on how websites work. I used MAMP for this purpose but this looks better.
I would love this, I have an iPad Pro, unfortunately in trying the WorldWideWeb app in combination with the Runestone text editor app, I discovered that it is impossible to change a file’s extension on iOS. This is an iOS limitation. I made a home.txt file by mistake, and when I tried renaming it it became home.html.txt. I had no idea this was a thing until now and it’s really put a damper on my expectations for an iPad in its current state to become a portable dev environment.
On iOS can this listen on IPv6? Some cell providers allow incoming connections on IPv6.
This coupled with a dynamic DNS service could make for a cheap, always-on and portable server. Maybe put Cloudflare in front of it for IPv4 access and use their cache to smooth out TTL expiration between IP changes.
From the title I'd assumed this was referring to the original web browser (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldWideWeb), which of course would have been `WorldWideWeb.app` as well.
If the purpose is to test static html pages only, what's the problem with just opening them up in the browser with file:// paths? For everyone else who need PHP, python, ruby or node they can just use Homebrew to install the relevant packages. The only benefit I see is just sharing a URL with someone else on the same network.
In addition to the other comments people have made, relative URLs that start with a slash don't work the way you probably intend them to if you're browsing around with file:// paths. For example, a webpage located at /Users/example/Sites/example.com/index.html when loaded with file:// URLs will not find /Users/example/Sites/example.com/style.css if you use <link rel="stylesheet" href="/style.css">. (But you probably want to use "/style.css" rather than "./style.css" because then you don't have to keep track of arbitrary depths of ../ being added for files like /Users/example/Sites/example.com/foo/bar/baz/index.html.)
While from a professional IT and security perspective it makes sense not to pre-install what may be an arbitrary language in a dated version providing unnecessary extra attack surface, things are different from an educational perspective:
Installing a Web server AND a database AND a programming language may well be too much for the impatient & low-attention span generation before trying out a 4-line "hello, world!" Web page, so some folks may never try to get into programming (which today is typically Web dev), full stop.
(Putting on old grumpy man voice) These kids today couldn't enter 15 pages of machine code in hex from game magazines as we once did. (end ranting voice)
If so, that's a great way of sharing files from iOS to Windows on a local network
Edit: just downloaded and tested, it works on Debian Linux out of the box, zero conf stuff is installed by default, I guess. This is very cool. The app is stupendous in every way. Major kudos.