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

[Bryan Berry]

I really like this idea. Felipe, Wadeb what do you think?

On Mon, 2009-03-30 at 04:49 +0200, Lucian Branescu wrote:
> 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.
-- 
Bryan W. Berry
Technology Director
OLE Nepal, http://www.olenepal.org