Google Inbox. It's really a task management/reminder tool that just happens to pull in and bundle your new emails, too. Not sure where I'm going when the axe falls next year.
Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
491–500 of 837 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
I often wonder why/how xulrunner has descended into obscurity while electron has blossomed. Anyone have input on that?
JS had nowhere the popularity it had today. At the time, creating a desktop app in Javascript was not regarded as serious. The reason electron became popular is because so many people from other fields (designers, integraters, students...) learn programming through copy / pasting JS and wanted JS for everything. Hence node. And now electron.
uh, I wouldn't say electron got popular because of copy-pasting newbies.
webapp development is a lot of work and SPAs are actually even harder... and so is server development with node. I love javascript, yet I don't think it's suitable for everything.
electron got popular, because companies could reuse code and tooling, only for the cost of cpu & memory
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#493The Opera 12 browser, for umpteen reasons: - UX-wise, it solved many issues browsers today are still struggling with. Vivaldi is working in a similar direction, but they've basically started from scratch again so aren't close to the point of development Opera had achieved by version 12. - These HN posts from today's frontpage [0] [1] give some idea of why we really need Presto today. Not only would it just be good to…
Just FYI, you can select link text in Firefox and, I think, Chrome if you hold Alt. Learned that rather recently even though I'm practically living on the web.
And if that doesn't work for you, for Firefox there's https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/drag-select-l... which is awesome. It is one of the first add-ons I always add.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#494MSN Messenger
With Messenger Plus
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#495* usable, flash-like animation editing tools for the web. (could work great with the material design guidelines)
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#496* Windows Phone. We need a third viable option in the mobile space. This week we are concerned about the loss of a browser engine, recognizing this is unhealthy for the market. Windows Phone was terrific in many ways and recent concepts by fans such as @boxnwhisker (Harry Dohyun Kim) [1] show how beautiful the Metro design could be today. * Microsoft Image Composer. A little known sprite-oriented graphic arts program…
JavaScript isn’t that slow and bloated, the browser rendering engine is a memory hog and cause of most pain. Electron is the big offender because it’s a copy of a new browser everytime. We have TypedArrays, WebAssembly, very smart JITs. With Typescript, JavaScript is a very productive and sane language to work with. I 100% agree with you that the current state of desktop apps are extremely bloated.
> With Typescript, JavaScript is a very productive and sane language to work with.
Mostly agree with your comment on the broader point that front-end (coding) is a lot saner than it used to be. This sentence however sounds to me like "With C, assembler is a very productive and sane language to work with." (FTR: I used to enjoy assembler.)
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#497PalmOS (the original one)
Ha ha, good one. I had a Palm V and a Palm Zire. Both were very good devices. One of the best features was the instant-on and you're back in the app you were last using, after power-on. No booting period of even a few seconds. And of course, the Graffiti handwriting system (with the stylus) was great too. I even tried using Pippy, a port of Python to the Palm. Would have been great for writing small snippets of code…
I still use Palm Graffiti as shorthand when playing Boggle.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#498MacDraw and Freehand.
I know there are modern vector/bezier-drawing alternatives, like OmniGraffle and Sketch and Affinity Designer. But both MacDraw and Freehand balanced functionality and simplicity and directness so well. In MacDraw, I could make technical drawings really quickly. In Freehand, I could do everything I could do in Illustrator, but with much better grid-snapping and typography. And I loved its 'morphing' tool (it wasn't called that), where you could take two objects (even type) and it would interpolate them and make these beautiful shapes.
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#499Newton's soup data structure implementation [1], inside a phone OS, with Pimlico's DateBk from PalmOS [2] taking advantage of that soup data structure. DateBk isn't abandoned yet even though PalmOS effectively is. That is, DateBk is still actively sold for an essentially abandoned OS, which gives you an idea of how incredibly effective that app is.
DateBk has a linking feature that would be ideal for soups interoperating with other applications on the device, without explicit coordination between different app developers. DateBk is the result of a responsive developer listening to lots of users [3], and the kind of PIM that I've yet to find in modern phone OS's. The massive 130-page user manual [4] covers a UI that is relatively discoverable for new users and highly customizable for expert users. Some teams have tried to reproduce the functionality on iOS, but no one has yet to come even faintly close to the smooth workflow I experienced on it. It seems PIMs in general are still stuck in some innovation black hole; there is still so much left unimplemented.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup_(Apple)
[2] http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/datebk6.htm
Re: Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?
#500Visual Basic 6. Fantastically easy to learn and let you make extremely useful GUI apps quickly. And the edit and continue debugger is still a dream compared to some of today’s debugging setups.
Wow.
To this day. I can only find IDE's that do 1/2 of the features VB6 had. But yeah. After .NET hit, all the VB6 devs I know, bailed.