If I were to guess this is a performance-oriented version of CEF with additional functionality exposed to the JavaScript engine, would I be anywhere in the right ballpark?
Nidium – A new browser engine
41–50 of 113 posts
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#42File I/O alone is a good enough reason for this kind of projects to exist. I've always wanted to be able to use the power of the browser for standalone, cross-platform desktop applications. I was shocked when I discovered I couldn't write a simple JS/HTML application and connect it to a local DB like SQLite without going through a server. Each browser has its own hackish way of doing something like that, but they're…
html5 local storage?
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#43I find it saddening that the primary response from a crowd normally considering themselves visionaries and pushers, seems to be ridiculing other peoples hard work. I cannot for the life in me understand how introducing a new browser engine deserves this kind of welcoming.
I don't ridicule the work that's gone into this - I just don't get what it is... A browser engine which doesn't use HTML/CSS and which isn't in competition with Chrome/Firefox/IE...? We would just like a better explaination :) (Edited to remove JS from the "doesn't use" list - my bad)
> A browser engine which doesn't use HTML/CSS/JS
It uses pure JS, without HTML and CSS. It's basically a LightTable creator's dream. I don't get what's there not to get.
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't ridicule the work that's gone into this - I just don't get what it is... A browser engine which doesn't use HTML/CSS and which isn't in competition with Chrome/Firefox/IE...? We would just like a better explaination :) (Edited to remove JS from the "doesn't use" list - my bad)
> A browser engine which doesn't use HTML/CSS/JS It uses pure JS, without HTML and CSS. It's basically a LightTable creator's dream. I don't get what's there not to get.
I stand corrected about JS - updated comment above. I still don't understand what this is, though.
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#45This does not look like a browser. It's a gui application framework, that happens to be using javascript as the preferred programming language. A lot like https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit
They claim no HTML in the video though, so I expect to be more like programming a GUI toolkit than a web application.
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#46So the only thing clear from the comments is that the folks behind this are going to have to work on their communication game. The video was obviously created to tease the product a bit, which is hard when nobody knows exactly what thye're looking at, but even when I went to sign up for updates I see: "We will send you a maximum amount of spam as soon as possible."
indeed - the video is flashy, but i only watched less than 1 minute of it, because after 1 minute, i still have no idea what they are going on about, and my time is more precious than that. Pressed stop.
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#47And once again our community snipes, takes cheap shots and shows a complete lack of appreciation for the effort in a project such as this. If you have nothing of value to add, just keep quiet. Otherwise you can come across as a bit of a dick. Thanks.
And once again our community snipes, takes cheap shot and shows complete lack of understanding for comments expressing confusion over a cryptic, unclear and fluff-filled page. If you have nothing of value to add, just keep quiet. Otherwise you can come across a bit of a dick. Thanks.
Very clever, the ol' switcheroo.
I'm not talking about the comments from genuinely confused people, I'm talking about the nastier snipes which seem to have conveniently disappeared after myself and others called them out on it. Here's one that's still floating around: "there's nothing in that horrible presentation that a modern browser can't do".
And you're calling me a dick for calling out comments like that? Come on, please. I realise that my original comment AND this comment aren't adding any value to the conversation either, I'm just saying we aren't doing much in creating an environment where people are confident in sharing their work without fear of hours of work being instantly dismissed by snarky commenters. I'm sure you wouldn't like it.
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does the File API give you full access to the file system? The File API gives you access to the files the user has selected for your access. No website-accessible API will ever give full access to anything for rather good reasons.
Who is talking about building "websites"? Argument I think is- it should be possible to have regular file system access from a browser-like engine. That would greatly simplify building desktop applications. Imagine you chose to build an IDE using Webkit and it lets you access everything via JS api that you could access using Cocoa or GTK+.
> Who is talking about building "websites"?
OP
> wanted to be able to use the power of the browser for standalone, cross-platform desktop applications.
considering the power of the browsers is to run web applications, it makes sense that the standard and cross-platform APIs they expose are web APIs.
> Imagine you chose to build an IDE using Webkit and it lets you access everything via JS api that you could access using Cocoa or GTK+.
You've got XUL, you've got webviews, you've got node bindings for Qt, wx or opengl. If you want to write desktop applications in javascript there's no dearth of ways to do it.
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#49I for one, like this. Now, the video & music are awful and definately do not support the overall presentation, but from what I understood, this seems to be pretty cool. Imagine being able to use Javascript for actual desktop application development, without having to resort to tons of html and css in the background. I do like this idea. Even better, it would allow to write applications in ClojureScript or some of the other compile-to-javascript frameworks). Of course, there're other frameworks that utilize javascript for scripting needs or for desktop development (http://www.tidesdk.org/) (https://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/) (https://github.com/appjs/appjs) (http://www.appcelerator.com/) and of course Adobe Air, but all of them just basically open a webview, give you some html that looks a bit like native controls, and let you write html / css / javascript in there with limited access to filesystem or, god forbid, the graphics card.
What I understood this project is, is that it allows me to use javascript to drive my native UI elements, access my full system resources, etc. Basically full native development, only Javascript instead of C++. Maybe a bit like Qt QML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QML) (and I'd like to see a comparison between these two). I'm really looking forward to this, though I have to admit that the website lacks details, and the video isn't particularly good. This looks a bit too much like demo scene hacking.
Re: Nidium – A new browser engine
#50What makes the web great is that anyone can author a page.
We pushed the problem of handling these authored pages to the browser, and as a result the web flourished as millions authored content.
Where will the content come from when the browser does not do HTML and CSS, and is instead a native client for OpenGL?
The only way I believe this will work is for the authoring tools to lower the barrier so far that anyone can create content for this.