Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web • Hacker News Board

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#31

Post by jrajav » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #25

asfgiaosnio wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often claim that ChromeOS is versatile enough to replace a normal computer because it has these various compatibility layers. They often fail to mention that they work terribly . You wind up with the poor performance and annoying isolation that VMs give, but with an extra helping of instability and incompatibility. Running anything Google hasn't approved is gated behind "developer mode", and even for a develop…

Test of if an OS is ready for regular users: Does drag and drop work? Can I choose a random image/file somewhere in one tab/application and drop it into another. Just testing that now... * Drag HN logo to Whatsapp Web: Pass * Drag from Google Photos to Photopea: Pass * Drag a zip file from Google Drive to Dropbox: Fail. * Drag an attachment from an email from gmail into an online hex editor: Fail Conclusion: The web…

You could just as easily construct an arbitrary usability test over interop that the web platform excels at while current desktop apps do terribly. For instance:

* Send a link to a Google Drive document to another person on WeChat: Pass

* Send a link to a Microsoft Word document to another person on Slack: Fail

The web has different paradigms and some of them are an improvement, one being hyperlinks, another being instant delivery just for example (no install time).

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#32

Post by ahilss » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:16 PM UTC

Wavacity developer here. I released this a year ago under the name "wavvy" but needed to rename the project because of a trademark conflict.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32688646

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#33

Post by meepmorp » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:18 PM UTC

russellbeattie wrote: post #16

bigyikes wrote: post #3

Wow, this is incredible! I was not expecting it to work on mobile Safari of all things, but it does! The UI is even usable. Audacity is an indispensable utility. It’s great to see it and other “real” software on the web. I’m reminded of Photopea[1] which is a web clone of Photoshop. [1]: https://www.photopea.com/

If all the browsers, including mobile ones, would implement all of the the FileSystem Access APIs, these types of apps would be even more usable. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_System...

According to that link, all the browsers do implement the non-experimental parts of that API. The other features seem to be ones that Chrome has shipped unilaterally - the links to the standards docs seem to only have Google authors for those bits.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#34

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:21 PM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #29

pixelpoet wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On reddit at least it seems like everyone under a certain age doesn't use the term at all and just calls everything, including websites, an app.

I can see their point. Even a static website can be seen as a very (very) simple multi-page app.

[deleted]

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#35

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:21 PM UTC

TheRealPomax wrote: post #21

evrimoztamur wrote: post #2

Alright, it's at a kind of uncanny valley situation where we have Windows XP applications running real-time in our browsers. Is the end-game just a universal sandboxed VM that's cross-platform? What do we do next?

Fun fact: when you don't give a shit about whether your UI looks like what "the OS looks like" (no offense to Tantacrul, but audacity clearly doesn't), you can get a surprising amount of work done. This isn't a Windows XP application, it looked like this well before Windows XP existed.

Audacity is a cross-platform app that runs on (at least) Linux, macOS and windows (I suspect most other *nixes are supported to).

Also, note that most creative apps (music, video, art) do not follow the UI guidelines for any particular OS platform (partly because they tend to be cross-platform, partly because their needs are very different from office productivity and communications apps. This is true even when the apps are nominally made by Apple for Apple (see Logic Pro or FCP for examples).

Finally, Tantacrul has zero responsibility for the UI appearance of the Audacity that Wavacity is based on.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#36

Post by otikik » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:21 PM UTC

evrimoztamur wrote: post #2

Alright, it's at a kind of uncanny valley situation where we have Windows XP applications running real-time in our browsers. Is the end-game just a universal sandboxed VM that's cross-platform? What do we do next?

Run internet explorer inside our browsers, of course

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#37

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:24 PM UTC

pixelpoet wrote: post #10

1-6 wrote: post #7

We'll need to stop calling web browsers web browsers.

On reddit at least it seems like everyone under a certain age doesn't use the term at all and just calls everything, including websites, an app.

Back in the 80s, when 90% of software development consisted of using a database and the tooling provided by the database supplier, and creating a front end to enter/edit/view the database contents, the results were called "applications".

In the 2020s, when 90% of software development consists of using a database, tooling supplied by various open source projects and some choice of web front- and backends to create a front end to enter/edit/view the database contents, the results are called "apps".

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#38

Post by panzi » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:39 PM UTC

Now someone do the same with blender. XD

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#39

Post by ncr100 » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:52 PM UTC

ahilss wrote: post #32

Wavacity developer here. I released this a year ago under the name "wavvy" but needed to rename the project because of a trademark conflict. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32688646

I like this name too, it's even better.

Re: Wavacity – a FOSS port of Audacity to the web

#40

Post by Klonoar » Fri, Sep 01, 2023, 11:53 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #25

asfgiaosnio wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People often claim that ChromeOS is versatile enough to replace a normal computer because it has these various compatibility layers. They often fail to mention that they work terribly . You wind up with the poor performance and annoying isolation that VMs give, but with an extra helping of instability and incompatibility. Running anything Google hasn't approved is gated behind "developer mode", and even for a develop…

Test of if an OS is ready for regular users: Does drag and drop work? Can I choose a random image/file somewhere in one tab/application and drop it into another. Just testing that now... * Drag HN logo to Whatsapp Web: Pass * Drag from Google Photos to Photopea: Pass * Drag a zip file from Google Drive to Dropbox: Fail. * Drag an attachment from an email from gmail into an online hex editor: Fail Conclusion: The web…

I've known "regular users" who don't even realize you can drag and drop between desktop applications.

Conclusion: this is an incredibly arbitrary metric.