[HN Gopher] WinBox: Window manager in a web browser
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WinBox: Window manager in a web browser
Author : khangnd
Score : 227 points
Date : 2021-05-07 03:48 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| vbsteven wrote:
| This looks fun. I wonder what kind of applications could benefit
| from a UI paradigm like this (virtual movable windows inside a
| browser tab). The only ones I have seen in the wild are demos
| (the one with winamp and the prank winXP one) and some limited
| compose/chat windows in Gmail and Linkedin.
|
| This could work for things like Email clients or UI's like
| Owncloud/Nextcloud. Any app that wants to allow the user to
| juggle multiple actions at once.
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| It'd be lovely if Jitsi or other video conferencing systems let
| me move and resize other people's screens and cameras. I find a
| lot of the current layouts extremely suboptimal, expecially if
| a couple of people in the group don't have video or if you
| don't want to see yourself with the same prominence as everyone
| else.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| @gwern's site[0] has tooltip popups, basically _Wikipedia-like
| page previews on the rocks_ , that employ this paradigm. If you
| check some of their articles, they're very dense in content and
| sources/links meaning that having a quick way to check them
| works good.
|
| [0]: https://www.gwern.net/About
| danielbarla wrote:
| This kind of came up for me in a recent discussion, as my team
| is converting a trusty desktop application to a web-based
| system. The existing app is fairly complex, and is aimed at
| expert users who spend a significant amount of time in this app
| as their primary workplace. They enjoy the kind of flexibility
| that resizing, rearranging panels can bring. Additionally, they
| love the current ability to grab a panel, tear it loose from
| the app window into a new window, which they can move to their
| 2nd monitor.
|
| So basically, think of how an IDE tends to allow you to
| customise its UI to suit whatever task you're thinking of.
| Clearly, we can and will ensure that the main use cases have a
| compelling equivalent in the web version, but it's fairly
| intimidating to think that there's no easy way to offer these
| kind of expected features on the web.
| chestervonwinch wrote:
| Have you considered the WASM build of Qt?
|
| https://www.qt.io/qt-examples-for-webassembly
| danielbarla wrote:
| That's an interesting direction, and I'll keep an eye on
| it. Unfortunately in this case though, it's probably too
| far off the company's beaten track to use, as we have to
| integrate with plenty of other teams' work, which would be
| vanilla web+js stuff. While I'm sure it's surmountable, I'm
| not sure a hybrid is worth it.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Try searching for "docking layout" with a dash of "Visual
| Studio" (the drop target hints presented by the original,
| non-Code version are quite good at letting the user figure
| out exactly where the dragged window will attach).
|
| One example is https://github.com/node-projects/dock-spawn-ts
| , but there are many more. Maybe you can also tease out the
| layout logic from VS Code or Theia (or even better, someone
| else might have done the work).
| danielbarla wrote:
| Cool, thanks! It makes sense that VS Code would have this
| down already.
| jcuenod wrote:
| I'm on the hunt for a good package like this for react. I
| have been experimenting with https://github.com/ticlo/rc-
| dock/ and it's pretty awesome. I think the vanilla js version
| is probably nicer to use, though.
| Ayesh wrote:
| Stock trading apps use UIs like this. I work with a couple
| these days, and they are surpringly well built, with movable
| windows, fast updates (every five seconds or so), alerts,
| charts, etc.
| string wrote:
| Another example in the retro style: https://based.gg
| ta988 wrote:
| Thats surprisingly easier to use than most clothing shops
| websites.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone mention
| https://poolside.fm/
| rerx wrote:
| When instant messengers like AIM, ICQ, Jabber, or MSN were in
| heavy use, there was a very popular web based client for those
| services. It used the same type of UI quite effectively. Here's
| a screenshot from 15 years ago:
| http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/06/meebo-all-in-one-on...
| Meebo was acquired by Google and killed off in 2012, when its
| utility was waning anyway.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Franz is still in this space, although it uses tabbed views
| for each service: https://meetfranz.com/
| dvdkon wrote:
| Not sure about floating windows (I don't like them much
| personally, so that might be why), but I've been toying with
| the idea of building a UI for a web-based database that would
| allow you to drag links onto the sides of "internal windows" or
| alt-click links to intelligently create a new window somewhere.
| Kind of like a tiling window manager, but just for one site.
| Since the devs would control all the UI code, they'd make sure
| it scales to very small sizes.
|
| The idea was to make the common action of "opening multiple
| links from a list in new tabs" better, where tabs are too large
| containers and OS windows are often unwieldy. If you wanted to
| look at one of the results further in a bigger window, you
| could then pop it out into a new tab (again, kind of like
| tiling WMs with desktops).
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Synology NAS's have a UI like this.
|
| https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/UZCuKtNMML225va5prEG...
| wongarsu wrote:
| Same with Qnap NAS.
|
| https://www.qnap.com/en/live-demo
| dugmartin wrote:
| MDIs (multiple document interfaces -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-document_interface) are
| great for some desktop apps but they don't translate very well
| to the web mainly because you can't deep link to a window set
| unless you use something like a persistent session id that
| keeps track of the window state on the server.
| ta988 wrote:
| One I can think of are scientific data searching tools. Where
| you need to compare things. Tabs make that somewhat complicated
| especially with JS heavy pages where links are just
| "javascript:..." so you can't open to a new page
| ugh123 wrote:
| Nice dialog box library
| amelius wrote:
| This is a bad idea.
|
| Window managers should not be nested. This was tried in Windows
| 3.1 and it wasn't a big success to say the least.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| In a kiosk or game this would be nice, though.
| fnord77 wrote:
| running movable and resizable windows inside a browser is neat
| but it feels like an antipattern. the top bar just seems like
| wasted space on a page, and it is distracting from the actual
| content.
|
| split panes are good enough.
| lurkerasdfh8 wrote:
| completely breaks text selection for me :(
| kevincox wrote:
| It would be nice to be able pop-out a window (and set pop-out to
| the default) so that I can use the proper window manager built
| into my OS.
|
| I don't think having an in-tab window manager is a bad idea.
| There are numerous sites that I like to keep contained in one
| tab, however for the heavy-interactive types of site where
| windows like this make the most sense I would generally rather
| use OS windows so that I get keyboard shortcuts, tiling, multi-
| monitor, snapping, always on top and all of the other features
| that exist in my OS.
| swiley wrote:
| Wasn't this how windows originally did tabs?
| noisem4ker wrote:
| Certain programs, yes. Notably earlier Opera versions and
| several image editors.
|
| It's called Multi-Document Interface (MDI).
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-document_interface
| girishso wrote:
| May not be as featureful but I like fos [1], because it provides
| web components, which I can use on frameworks like Elm
|
| [1] https://github.com/victorqribeiro/fos
| TekMol wrote:
| It is a nice tool and a nice codebase.
|
| I prefer to tinker with code without a compliation step. So I
| made the demo work with the code in src/ to run without a
| compilation step. The demo is almost pure html/js/css but not
| completely. It uses webpack for the styles (pipes them through
| less) and the js. The js is plain js but the index.html expects a
| version that is de-modularized by webpack.
|
| But changing a few lines index.html got me to run the demo with
| the default styles.
| cosmotic wrote:
| Why do you call it modern?
| pjmlp wrote:
| I fail to see what is "just like Windows".
|
| Specially when projects like Lively Kernel are already around for
| such long time.
|
| https://lively-kernel.org/
| [deleted]
| benboughton1 wrote:
| Very cool. I'd like to tile vertically/horizontal. Also snap to
| edge takes up half screen like on Windows OS.
| radicalriddler wrote:
| I don't know if OP is apart of the org, but it's frustrating that
| when I maximize a window, and then minimize it, and then re-open
| it (holy this language is inconsistent), then it sizes back to
| default. This doesn't occur when you resize the window manually.
| marzell wrote:
| I believe "restore" is the proper word for what you were trying
| to say.
| [deleted]
| srott wrote:
| Reminds me of an old project called netwindows (http://web.archiv
| e.org/web/20050701000610/http://www.netwind...).
|
| Looked almost as intuitive and easy as WinAPI, PDF documentation
| has 200 pages.
| bstar77 wrote:
| Kind of unrelated, but I find it interesting that I've only used
| 'let' a handful of times over the past 4-5 years and then I see
| projects like this where it's the rule, not the exception. Am I
| in a minority that thinks 'let' is a code smell?
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Let is syntactic sugar.
|
| To me, the code smell is the syntax from BASIC (and later C)
| that goes:
|
| <code> x = y </code>
|
| I've always disliked that notation; it looks like the statement
| "the value of x is the same as the value of y". So "let" turns
| the code into something that makes sense when read aloud.
|
| I don't think syntactic sugar is a code smell.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Syntactic sugar is syntax that makes it easier ("sweeter") to
| do something the language can already do. For example,
| async/await is syntactic sugar for promises.
|
| let isn't syntactic sugar -- it's the only way to declare a
| reassignable block-scoped variable (as opposed to const,
| which can't be reassigned, and var, which is function-scoped
| or globally-scoped).
| bstar77 wrote:
| The way to redefine a const is to define an object who's
| values are mutable. I strongly prefer that as I can couple
| the mutating behavior in a single object.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Thanks. I was thinking in BASIC, I guess.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| The core problem with the BASIC syntax isn't the lack of a
| keyword, it's that stupid = sign. Assignment almost kind of
| means equals, except it actually totally doesn't, which is
| the absolute worst kind of resemblance. Oh, and now you also
| have to invent some other construct like == for actual
| equality!
|
| I'm admittedly not sure what symbol should be used instead.
| I'd suggest <= except it reads as "less than or equal to".
| fouric wrote:
| No, quite the opposite - `let` should be used by default (due
| to better scoping rules (block rather than function) for most
| cases) and `var` only used when necessary.
| bstar77 wrote:
| IMO, `const` should be used by default, `let` in rare
| instances and `var` never.
| intergalplan wrote:
| Why would it be?
|
| A lot of JS in the wild favors putting everything in objects
| (maybe not explicitly, but they end up doing it a lot anyway)
| so gets away with a lot of "const" use that still lets them
| mutate the values of those objects. If you're dealing with
| primitives you're going to need "let" a lot more.
| bstar77 wrote:
| That is kind of my point, I don't often work with primitives
| that need to be redefined. I'd rather operate on an object
| where I can mutate its value rather than redefine the whole
| thing.
| bckr wrote:
| I'm impressed with this and plan to try it in my current project.
| Aissen wrote:
| Isn't it what Synology is or was doing with ExtJS ?
| roebk wrote:
| I've just tried to use this example and it appears that there's
| been zero consideration to any form of accessible features here.
|
| The show example "button" is a non-focusable div element
| <div class="button" onclick="window.examples['theme-
| modern']()">Show Example</div>
|
| Once the window is open, the minimise, maximise, full-screen and
| close "buttons" are spans containing no useful text.
| <span class="wb-min"></span> <span class="wb-max"></span>
| <span class="wb-full"></span> <span class="wb-
| close"></span>
|
| The list goes on...
|
| Sure, sometimes accessibility can be hard to get right but it's
| quite something for it to have been completely disregarded.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Feel free to contribute the required fixes
| golergka wrote:
| It's an open source project which has been developed only for
| 21 days.
| warp wrote:
| But why start with <div class="button">
|
| instead of just using an actual html button?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It calls itself a _professional_ window manager. So it
| shouldn't be surprised to be judged by that standard.
| wayneftw wrote:
| > It calls itself a professional window manager.
|
| ...that's in development. Professional things are not
| allowed to be in development?
|
| Do you go around your town criticizing people that are in
| the process of constructing office buildings, because they
| don't have the wheelchair ramp installed yet?
|
| Perhaps if you care so much, you can lend a helping hand...
| jaywalk wrote:
| This isn't a case of having a wheelchair ramp that hasn't
| been installed yet. This is more like there's no
| wheelchair ramp, and while there's room for one out
| front, they've already done the landscaping there.
| canadianfella wrote:
| What a terrible analogy.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Pffft. Right - because code is not completely mutable at
| any time during development.
|
| Have you considered that the analogy breaks after the
| obvious bit?
| ziml77 wrote:
| How does the analogy break? Do you think you can't tear
| up landscaping? To add a ramp you have to do work to undo
| the existing landscaping, install the ramp, and then redo
| the landscaping in a way that fits with the ramp.
| bakatubas wrote:
| And then pee on the floor and do jumping jacks, run in
| circles, then read a magazine, then install an upside-
| down lectern in the living room only to realize... you
| forgot the television.
|
| God save us all!
| wayneftw wrote:
| The analogy breaks because code is able to be changed at
| any time _almost as easily as writing new code_. There is
| no such thing as landscaping in code. It 's all easy to
| change.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Tearing out code that has already been written (which
| would be required here) is analogous to tearing out
| landscaping that has already been installed. You either
| don't understand accessibility, analogies, or both.
| wayneftw wrote:
| Sorry, but you quite obviously don't understand code.
|
| Writing new code can be just as difficult (or easy) as
| changing existing code.
|
| Changing code can also be easier than writing new code.
|
| In either case, whether the analogy works or if it
| doesn't - criticizing something that's under development
| for something like accessibility, which is commonly added
| to software as an afterthought in a later version, is
| getting into Karen territory. Enjoy that!
| jaywalk wrote:
| How hard do you think it is to dig up some flowers? This
| has become a pointless discussion, and you've obviously
| got an axe to grind for some inexplicable reason, so I'll
| leave you to it.
| wayneftw wrote:
| How hard is it to add some a11y attributes?
|
| This part of the discussion has definitely been pointless
| since the beginning, when people came here to complain
| about that on some guy's side project which they'd most
| likely never even use.
|
| If anyone's got an axe to grind it's quite obviously them
| and you.
| lucasmullens wrote:
| In any HN thread that has a metaphor, you can always
| scroll down to find the conversation degrading into a
| metaphor debate.
| ziml77 wrote:
| You seem to think that it's completely free of effort and
| cost to change code. That is absolutely not the case.
| Some things can be incredibly difficult to add in to a
| codebase that wasn't designed to expect that kind of
| change.
| wayneftw wrote:
| > Some things can be incredibly difficult to add in to a
| codebase that wasn't designed to expect that kind of
| change.
|
| In a 3 week old code base? Please... You can write the
| entire thing over again in a week and add what you want
| during that time.
|
| The commenters here should do that too! It would probably
| take less effort than _bitching about someone 's side
| project that they'll probably never even use_ here on HN.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| This would 100% keep me from using this. a11y is my number one
| reason for using third-party UI elements. Making things work
| with the mouse is usually easy enough, but for complicated
| widgets there's a long tail of subtle accessibility issues that
| are tricky to get right.
| atum47 wrote:
| I tried to address this same issue when I created my website. I
| don't really know how accessible it is, but you can navigate
| with the keyboard.
|
| https://victorribeiro.com/
| hulitu wrote:
| > I've just tried to use this example and it appears that
| there's been zero consideration to any form of accessible
| features here.
|
| That's why is for the web. Every developer knows that web users
| will accept everything.
|
| > The show example "button" is a non-focusable div element
|
| Why is this a problem ? Almost every website promotes
| discoverability. Want to find a button ? Move your mouse till
| the cursor changes and hope that is not a label.
|
| > <div class="button" onclick="window.examples['theme-
| modern']()">Show Example</div> Once the window is open, the
| minimise, maximise, full-screen and close "buttons" are spans
| containing no useful text.
|
| There are two UI/UX schools. One which promotes big buttons and
| one which promotes no buttons.
|
| > Sure, sometimes accessibility can be hard to get right but
| it's quite something for it to have been completely
| disregarded.
|
| The idea is that the user has a unique experience visiting the
| site. So unique that he never comes back.
| terminalcommand wrote:
| I think the parent tried to make a point for accessibility.
| For example if you were a blind person browsing the web
| through audio, you'd wanna know which items are focusable.
| JoeQuery wrote:
| This snark is petty and unhelpful. I suggest making better
| use of your time here.
| ts-thomas wrote:
| That's true, the good thing about Open Source software is
| everyone is able to apply their improvements to it :)
| lucideer wrote:
| This is a fine and good statement for many things, but a11y
| is more of a fundamental architectural & design consideration
| for projects of this variety. In my experience, a lack of
| a11y consideration overall is more of an indicator of the
| overall suitability of the product design for your needs than
| simply a "missing feature you can add".
|
| Open Source software is great insofar as you _can_ contribute
| to it in many ways, but applying this logic to all situations
| is really dismissive. There are _many_ aspects of software
| projects that are largely or solely dictated by the creators
| /maintainers of that software, that may be impossible for
| idle contributors to significantly affect (and even forking
| can be a gargantuan/unviable option in some cases).
|
| TL;DR: Open-sourcing your software should not shield you from
| constructive criticism, NOR should it invalidate the advice
| of informed people recommending against using your software.
| [deleted]
| enumjorge wrote:
| I mean I get it, but accessibility is one of those things
| that can be very painful to add after the fact. If this
| project is meant to be used in actual applications, they've
| pushed a very tedious task unto outside contributors.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yeah, retrofitting a component for accessibility can lead
| to weird behaviors for consumers that have to be checked
| against.
| dusted wrote:
| Yo dawg. That said, if we need to accept the browser as the new
| OS, then this is actually cool, it seems pretty fast.
| chrismsimpson wrote:
| Very cool
| danellis wrote:
| What's modern about this? It doesn't seem any different to the
| windowed UIs people have been doing on the Web for the past 20
| years.
| bflesch wrote:
| This is amazing, well done! I'd suggest for the modal window you
| add that it closes (a) if you click outside the modal into the
| greyed-out area and (b) if you press ESC.
| smt88 wrote:
| Why would I want a window manager in my browser when I already
| have a window manager in my OS?
|
| Who would use this and why?
| DocTomoe wrote:
| I've seen this approach being implemented (a lot clunkier, less
| polished and slower) in 2010-era stock market websites like
| https://tradingdesk.finanzen.net - essentially in highly-
| configurable dashboards that a user changes often (think: every
| few minutes.)
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Indeed the website you linked to is laggy. But if it wasn't,
| do you think it's bad paradigm for such website? To me seems
| like it makes sense. How it compares to the more modern,
| polished, ones?
| progval wrote:
| This looks like it's targeted at webapp developers who want to
| use windows within their app. It does make sense for apps with
| a lot of modals, like an in-browser Gimp clone for example.
| smt88 wrote:
| I think that's assuming the Gimp UX is good, and I would
| disagree with that.
|
| IDEs (and a lot of web apps) work like tiling WMs, which is a
| far better UX.
|
| There's a good reason Gimp is one of very few apps with that
| frustrating, disjointed everything-is-a-window design.
| dspillett wrote:
| Why have multiple tabs when you can have several windows open
| and move between them?
|
| I can see this being useful for an application in which the
| user needs to interact with multiple things and they don't each
| need a full tab/window (would in some cases be pointless in its
| own window). A chat application, or a monitoring system,
| perhaps. Or just when porting over an old desktop system to run
| in-browser with minimal UI changes.
|
| It is like nested virtualisation. Why would I want to run a VM
| in a VM in a VM when the inner VM would be more efficient run
| directly on the metal? The answer is two-fold:
|
| 1. Generally, I wouldn't...
|
| 2. ... but for some niche use cases the facility can be very
| useful
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| > Why have multiple tabs when you can have several windows
| open and move between them?
|
| Then... just open a new native window, like a normal person.
| You can still do it with modern browsers without incurring
| megabytes of JavaScript and performance slowdowns.
| graderjs wrote:
| This is very cool. Performance tip that I noticed on low-powered
| low-spec mobile devices: you maybe could try locking the text or
| removing it during window resize to prevent reflow, as reflow
| seems to be slowing down performance and stuttering the window
| resize animation.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| Curious: Is there some reasonable way to guess if the device
| should be considered low spec?
| dspillett wrote:
| Not with any reliability, as it is a subjective matter
| (different users will want to make the utility/performance
| compromises in different places) and even if you manage to
| smooth the subjectivity out of the equation there are other
| variables over time (if you test performance now and decide
| to use the full-fat function as the current device seems
| fast, heat or battery concerns might cause the device to slow
| right down in a few minutes time). Same for network related
| limits - your application could start while the device is on
| a wireless AP connected to a decent fibre link so have
| significant bandwidth and relatively low latency, then the
| user immediately walks next door out of range of that AP and
| the device resorts to whatever 4G (or worse) link is
| available in the area.
|
| A better approach might be to simply let the user choose. At
| the start either default to one version (full fat or basic),
| or give the user a choice up-front, and make it easy to
| switch later. Perhaps do a quick test and warn the user if
| they pick the setup intended for high performance on a device
| upon which it might be slow, or recommend switching down if
| things get problematical later.
| [deleted]
| graderjs wrote:
| I'm not sure whether you meant guess from JS or just guess.
|
| In the second case, reasonable, and "should be" and
| "considered" are all value judgment words that you will
| decide yourself if there's a fit for you. So if you meant how
| can someone judge a phone, you'll have to decide for
| yourself, because that's the only way you'll feel satisfied
| with your particular definitions of reasonableness, consider,
| and should. If you insist on discussing it with other people
| I think it would be an easy way if you wanted to spend a bit
| of time arguing about those definitions and which one you
| personally feel is right, or getting even more meta you could
| probably try to start a long-winded argument with people by
| suggesting that these words have no subjective judgment
| definition but are in fact truly objective. But I think all
| that's kind of pointless so of course I wouldn't waste my
| time arguing any of that. ;) ;P xx
|
| If you meant, case 1, guess from JS, you can get the memory
| and the number of cores from the deviceMemory and
| hardwareConcurrency properties of the navigator global
| object. While i think that's probably not sufficient I think
| it's a start and you could always research more for yourself
| if you were genuinely curious about this.
|
| If it's case two you don't need to be afraid to make a
| choice, just look at it and make a judgment about whether you
| think it's low spec or not.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| The title of the link says "just like Windows". It's not an
| operating system API like Win32, and it's not a faithful clone of
| Windows's window management behavior, like your title implies.
|
| I can't drag a window so it lies partly off-screen, instead the
| window stops moving when I keep moving the mouse, allowing the
| mouse to change position relative to the title bar.. I can't aero
| snap, nor "snap window to full height". Only minimized windows
| are visible at the bottom of the screen, not a taskbar of all
| open windows.
|
| There's some additions not present on Windows, that threw me off.
| There's an full-screen button in the title bars, which confused
| me at first (but could be useful). And each minimized window has
| a maximize button, which isn't present on Windows and confused
| me. It seems that whether a minimized window gets restored or
| maximized depends on whether you press the button or not, rather
| than being remembered like Windows does.
| parhamn wrote:
| Or, you know, it's little cool window panes for the web and not
| a clone of Windows' window system...
|
| Does this person owe you something?
| unicornporn wrote:
| Are you suggesting that only positive critique should be
| allowed? If I was the developer I'd love to hear that user's
| honest take on my creation rather than the "oh, cool!" type
| of input.
| parhamn wrote:
| Surely you're not going to make me spell out for you why
| comparing a little window widget in JavaScript with
| features of the Windows operating system, isn't helpful
| just because there was a soft analogy in the title. Surely,
| you could've seen more than that dichotomy you presented me
| with before you made me write this. But here we are.
|
| This sort of "critique" common on HN and it's a toxic
| culture. Not all critique is good critique. We should be
| against crappy critique like this because it's not helpful,
| it's mean spirited, and it's anti-maker.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| At the time I commented to the post, it was marked as
| "Show HN: WinBox - just like Windows, but for the web",
| implying the submitter was the project's author making
| sweeping claims about the software. The title has since
| had "Show HN" removed (had it been like that, I would not
| have written my original comment that way), and the
| inaccurate tagline removed as well.
|
| Arguably I tend to be not only perfectionist and detail-
| oriented (whether on important or unimportant details),
| but even pedantic, or quick to judge, at times.
| Nonetheless I do not appreciate being having my writing
| called "mean spirited" or a "toxic culture".
| matsemann wrote:
| It's more the way it's said. From the guidelines:
|
| > _Be kind. Don 't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
| don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. (...) Please
| don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's
| work._
| [deleted]
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Windows was a GUI shell on top of DOS, which this seems to be
| loosely alluding to. No Aero, no taskbar/superbar, no other
| features you're talking about.
| dang wrote:
| We've changed the title from "Show HN: WinBox - just like
| Windows, but for the web". The "just like Windows" thing was
| baity and provoked complaints.
|
| Also, "Show HN" implies that the project is your own personal
| work. If that's the case, let us know and we'll put it back. But
| if it's not the case, please read
| https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html and only put "Show HN"
| on your own projects.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| [Edit:] I'd try to make sure that, in the title, it's clear
| this is an in-browser library.
|
| I honestly thought this was a window manager, you know, the
| piece of software on a desktop OS that draws the windows. IE, I
| thought it was a window manager that made it easier to use web
| applications on a desktop computer.
|
| It took me awhile to realize that this allows desktop-style
| windows inside of a web browser. Not really a "window manager."
| dang wrote:
| Ok, I've changed it from "WinBox: Modern window manager for
| the web" to make that clearer. We usually take the word
| "modern" out of titles so I've done that too.
| Lammy wrote:
| Looks cool. Is the name a play on Blackbox/Fluxbox/Openbox? It's
| in a different problem domain so it's probably not a problem, but
| "Winbox" is also the name of Mikrotik's RouterOS configuration
| utility for Windows:
| https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Winbox
| jve wrote:
| Hehe, when reading title I thought: Is that a web based utility
| for configuring Mikrotik? But they do have Webfig that is quite
| similar to winbox: https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Webfig
| brylie wrote:
| IANAL but from a Trademark perspective, it might only matter
| that they are both software products. When we registered a
| trademark for our software in the EU, the application form only
| asked our industry (software development and consultancy).
| fleaaaa wrote:
| There are not many floating panel lib but this works pretty
| smooth and nice. Great work I'd say!
| ComodoHacker wrote:
| I'd love to see MDI implemented in productivity web apps. Like
| all "cool new tech" (read "well forgotten and reinvented basic
| ideas") it will inevitably come into fashion in a couple of
| years.
| hawski wrote:
| I was hoping it is like a remote desktop, but with web front-end
| so instead of pushing pixels it would push text, a bit of styling
| and media, maybe even some JS. Something like NeWS, but in a
| browser. Not necessarily WebX11, but that also seems fun.
| antattack wrote:
| Winbox is also a config utility for MikroTik RouterOS devices...
|
| https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Winbox
| ahmetak wrote:
| Hahaha same idea.
| Koiwai wrote:
| Glad I scrolled a bit before I was gonna post exactly this.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I remember there also being an fluxbox/blackbox DE for Windows
| with this name.
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