July 10, 2011
"Is Silverlight dead?” I replied: “No, but it has seen better days."

—

From Silverlight is Dead, Long Live XAML.

I’m surprised, because I never had the perception of Silverling taking off; although that it has seen better days it’s quite relative.

I’ve never used Silverlight, and I have a quite decent online life (that’s harder to say without Flash, for example), but the big news behind this is that Microsoft wants HTML5 and Javascript to be the main application platform in Windows 8. That sounds like screw you .NET developers!

I couldn’t care less about the next Windows version, but it’s true that Microsoft embracing a standard it’s been dangerous in the past. You know that embrace and extend motto.

I hope it doesn’t mean that we’re going to see standard HTML5/Javascript applications that work in Microsoft systems only.

by jjm on 11:23am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPorZy6y7SRt
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(Notes: 7)
  
Filed under: HTML5 Javascript Silverlight Microsoft Windows 8 Standard 
May 3, 2011
"Because JavaScript is pretty free-form, consistent coding style and unit tests are critical to give it some structure and keep it readable.

We propose that all GNOME usage of JavaScript conform to the style guide in doc/Style_Guide.txt to help keep things sane."

—

From README of GNOME Spidermonkey Javascript binding.

I think this README file sums up my opinion about Javascript in Gnome 3: I can’t understand why Javascript is used in the shell and not a more suitable language (such as Python). It was a very good opportunity to open the desktop to new developers, but… Javascript?

by jjm on 9:40pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPorZy4q4Wsi
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(Notes: 1)
  
Filed under: GNOME Gnome 3 Gnome Shell Javascript Desktop Python 
December 11, 2010
Playing With Gnome 3.0

A couple of weeks ago I started to read documentation about Gnome Shell, that will be the new UI of Gnome 3.0.

The Shell will be an important change in the Gnome desktop, and although it’s said that changes are good, it may not be easy. So I kind of followed the steps to getting involved, and I build and run periodically the development version of the Shell (it builds most of the time!).

The idea behind this is not only getting used to the new environment, but try to find a way to contribute and, at least, do my part to fix the things that I think might be wrong (please notice that’s different of the things I don’t like).

I’m back into web development at work, so I got a copy of JavaScript: The Good Parts, because it won’t hurt me to improve my JavaScript kung-fu, and may be I’ll be able to make an extension for the Shell (yep, it uses JavaScript; no comments).

OK, may be I won’t be able to do anything, because of lack of time or lack of knowledge, but I really think that waiting for the Shell and then complain because is not what we expected (although I really don’t know what to expect) it’s not fair. Let’s see how far I can go.

Building the Shell in Fedora 14 is quite straightforward (and I upgraded my personal laptop to a Intel Core i3, so I have some spare CPU cycles for jhbuild).

First I need to figure out how the shell extensions work, and then I guess I’ll try to do something related to my weather applet.

And you? Are you going to do your part in the Shell?

by jjm on 11:19am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPorZy21ZFI5
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Filed under: Gnome Shell 3.0 development javascript fedora fedora 14 jhbuild open source 
November 30, 2009
JSAN: JavaScript Archive Network

JavaScript Archive Network is a comprehensive resource for Open Source JavaScript libraries and software.

Interesting.

by jjm on 10:24pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPorZyFku5N
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Filed under: Javascript Archive JSAN 
January 18, 2009
Parchment, a web-based Z-machine interpreter powered by the Gnusto engine

I think they should look for a better tagline for their program.

Parchment is a web-based engine to play games interactive fiction games, text based, and written in z-code.

It works great and only needs a browser and Javascript enabled, and as an example you can try Curses (the famous adventure created by Graham Nelson in 1993). I didn’t know about this game, but if it deserves its own wikipedia page, may be it’s relevant.

by jjm on 9:55am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPorZy4Fzwk
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Filed under: zork z-machine parchment web javascript text adventure