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1 | Web browsers are a fact of life, both in and outside of the virtual | ||
2 | world. Inside the world, SL people love to play youtube videos on their | ||
3 | virtual big screen TVs to show their friends. Business people want to | ||
4 | gather around a web browser at meetings. MOAP is a thing. Other social | ||
5 | media is a thing, most of it web based, and people might want to share a | ||
6 | tweet by showing their virtual laptop to their virtual friends in the | ||
7 | same virtual room. Outside of the world, SL and OS based grids have | ||
8 | always used a web page for their front screen in viewers. Some of the | ||
9 | tools are web based. | ||
10 | |||
11 | So we need a web browser that can run on meshes and prims, as well as in | ||
12 | windows (separate or internal windows). The problems are (legion) ... | ||
13 | |||
14 | |||
15 | Web rant | ||
16 | -------- | ||
17 | |||
18 | Damn the web sucks. | ||
19 | |||
20 | This bit will be filled in next time I feel like ranting about the web, | ||
21 | but damn it sucks really badly. | ||
22 | |||
23 | Bloated, slow, horrid, inconsistent, over complicated, ... , it sucks. | ||
24 | |||
25 | |||
26 | Less of a web rant | ||
27 | ------------------ | ||
28 | |||
29 | OK, so in typical SL based viewers, the web browser component makes up | ||
30 | about one third of the entire viewer package. At first, when Java in | ||
31 | the web browser was more of a thing, matrix-RAD tried to work with the | ||
32 | web browser. Now we are (hopefully) designing the next big thing to | ||
33 | replace the web, so we get to do things differently. So now we can | ||
34 | (hopefully) treat the web as a second class citizen that we begrudgingly | ||
35 | support as a legacy thing. Note that we are proudly using HTTP as the | ||
36 | bulk transport agent, it's the web content standards that suck. | ||
37 | |||
38 | If matrix-RAD was any indication, I can replace everything that a fully | ||
39 | bloated web browser can do, in something the size of a typical web page | ||
40 | of today, and STILL be better! lol | ||
41 | |||
42 | |||
43 | Actual plans | ||
44 | ------------ | ||
45 | |||
46 | So I think we could use multi flavours of web browser. | ||
47 | |||
48 | First of all, try to use and encourage the matrix-RAD style stuff as the | ||
49 | UI of choice for in world stuff. It should work across the network | ||
50 | transparently as matrix-RAD does. This was my HTML replacement that | ||
51 | worked within web pages. Now we can dispense with the web pages all | ||
52 | together. The original matrix-RAD included a plan for a translation | ||
53 | layer, any web browser that didn't like Java could get a "legacy" simple | ||
54 | web page version. We could do something similar, or go up a step and | ||
55 | translate Lua into ECMAScript. | ||
56 | |||
57 | Include something small like Dillo or NetSurf as the built in web | ||
58 | browser. It should be able to spread itself across in world objects, | ||
59 | meshes and prims, as well as run in internal or external windows. | ||
60 | |||
61 | As the next step up, an optional module could replace Dillo / NetSurf | ||
62 | with a bigger browser component, based on one of the main ones, uzbl for | ||
63 | instance. Hopefully it can be spread across an in world object somehow. | ||
64 | |||
65 | Finally, the user can always decide to show any given URL, or already | ||
66 | displayed web page, on an external web browser of their choice, with | ||
67 | their default browser being the top choice. Which naturally should be | ||
68 | able to use the in world matrix-RAD type stuff via the translation layer | ||
69 | (uzbl should be able to as well, NetSurf maybe, if I remember they where | ||
70 | adding a ECMAScript engine, or had already? Dillo I don't think does | ||
71 | ECMAScript at all). | ||
72 | |||
73 | |||
74 | |||