[Sugar-devel] ideal flash activity to be remade as karma activity

[Lucian Branescu]

There has been some talk about the interaction between my project and Felipe's.

I've had an interesting chat with Bryan and Ben on #sugar. Here's the
whole chat http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/317039/bryan%26bemasc%20chat.txt

Here's the lastest idea:

I would be focusing on building something akin to http://fluidapp.com.
I keep giving it as an example because it's very minimalist, but
provides the essential features to turn web apps into 'native' apps:
- creates independent packages of web apps from given URLs
- has Gears, so websites can be taken offline
- (optional) has userstyles to customize the look of web apps
- (optional) can customize keyboard shortcuts
- has userscripts (GreaseMonkey) to customize the behaviour (and look)
of web apps
- provides some level of platform integration http://fluidapp.com/developer

I'm running GMail and Google Reader and Google Docs with it and they
have mostly replaced their native counterparts because they're better
in almost every way: they work offline and sync to servers online,
they look native because of native widgets in browser engines and a
few userstyles, they're fast because everybody is focused on browser
engine performance, they have sounds and native notifications because
of userscripts+fluid APIs.

Read my proposal for Sugar-specific details
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Webified



On the other hand, Felipe could focus on creating an educational
framework (Karma), built on standard HTML5, JavaScript and Gears. This
would handle animation (preferably through <canvas> stuff), i18n
(locales stored with Gears, chosen according to browser locale),
general persistence (Gears & cookies), sounds (<audio>) and other
things an educational framework should do.

Karma would only use technologies available in modern, HTML
5-supporting browsers (firefox 3/3.5, safari 3/4, opera 9/10) and
Gears, which is a widely used plugin for taking stuff offline. Not
only will it work with my web app sugarizer (note to self: maybe i
should rename webified to sugarizer), but also with other browsers on
regular computers. And Browse.

However, the framework could have optional extensions (probably
supported through a javascript-dbus bridge) that would improve
integration with Sugar. These extensions would work, for example, on
the runtime of my sugarizer. Web developers could improve the Sugar
integration of the stuff they made with Karma and package the results
as .xo bundles. Users would hardly be able to tell the difference.

To reduce the dependency Karma would have on my project, Browse could
also have a javascript-dbus bridge and Gears added to it. Security
would need to be sourted out so that only Karma web apps inside .xo
bundles can access dbus.


How does that sound?
PS: Sorry it was so long.