Ask HN: Which abandoned proprietary software would you resurrect?

Post by avar » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 8:10 PM UTC

userbinator wrote: post #420

lucideer wrote: post #211

The 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…

The Presto source code was leaked not too long ago, so legal issues notwithstanding, you might actually see this one happen. Some Russians and Chinese have already managed to build and patch it with new features.

Post by octorian » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 8:15 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #386

bhauer wrote: post #156

* 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…

> High-performance lightweight desktop email clients. Interesting, haven't had performance problems with email in about well, never. Been using Thurderbird for a decade. Not perfect, but slowness isn't a problem.

Post by jakelazaroff » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 8:19 PM UTC

80386 wrote: post #519

Flash. The transition to JS + canvas wasn't too bad for games, although JS games can't be distributed as single files, but for animation I don't think there's anything like it anymore. And we forget how much of early internet culture was driven by 4chan's Flash board, which you can only have with things like .swf files - relatively small single files that can contain an entire game/animation.

Post by jakelazaroff » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 8:22 PM UTC

twic wrote: post #229

Acta, an "outliner", which means a hierarchical text editor: http://a-sharp.com/acta/ I ended up writing most of my school essays in it. You could start with a high-level outline and recursively flesh it out until you had a complete document. The tree structure made it really easy to reorder sections at any scale. There is a successor called Opal - the last version of Acta was in 1993, and the last version of Opal wa…

Post by simion314 » Sat, Dec 08, 2018, 8:24 PM UTC

80386 wrote: post #519

Flash. The transition to JS + canvas wasn't too bad for games, although JS games can't be distributed as single files, but for animation I don't think there's anything like it anymore. And we forget how much of early internet culture was driven by 4chan's Flash board, which you can only have with things like .swf files - relatively small single files that can contain an entire game/animation.