Made my personal site into a desktop environment | Hacker News Reader

Made my personal site into a desktop environment

dustinbrett.com

149 pointsazhenley43 comments

I like how this website works really well with mobile (dragging / switching windows just works). Even the emulator runs on Android.

This makes me wonder would it be commercially successful to emulate or deliver OS in the browser over the internet something like Oracle's diskless Network Computer [1] or Desktop as a Service solutions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer

I have to imagine Microsoft is thinking similarly.

A decade ago we had EyeOS[0], but it didn’t got traction...I think.

Maybe the world is readier now for something like it.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EyeOS

I built DeskPortal about 15 years ago but I had no business mind and had no way of letting it out the door.

https://deskportal.com/

I'd like to have some feedback though. Funny the mobile wasn't really there and it doesn't really support it but I liked how it can create various apps based on its framework.

Unrelated question - is there any way to have such a background in windows? It's shocking to me that phones have had great animated background for years, but on Windows there doesn't seem to be any way to do it, the last attempt I can think of was the feature in Windows Vista Ultimate, where you could set an .mp4 file as background.

You should be able to do that with Wallpaper Engine[0], though it is paid, and from what I remember, it used to be fairly resource intensive. Hopefully that has changed now.

[0] https://www.wallpaperengine.io/

> though it is paid

It costs $4

Well, Windows used to have “Active Desktop” in what, Win95? You could pin animations and such to your desktop but that never really survived past that version. It wasn’t part of OS but an add-on that was somehow part of IE 4.0. Plenty to third-party programs that do similar I think.

Yeah, but I mean specifically like the background on that website - a gpu-accelerated wave animation of polygons. I could do that on my Android phone for years, but it looks like most windows apps for animated background simply play an mp4 file, which is not ideal.

You can do that with Rainmeter

Wow, that is completely wild. I can't say I've ever been browsing someone's personal site before and suddenly found myself playing Commander Keen then Doom.

Too bad it's so hard to actually play those games on Mac without triggering shortcuts like switching Spaces etc.

I just saw Winamp after more than a decade! Nostalgia.

You think you had some nostalgia when you saw it... I used to work with the guy who wrote winamp.js. Good dude, now working at Facebook, I believe.

I am indeed! Thanks for the kind words Paul!

If anyone is interested Webamp is open source and can be found here: https://github.com/captbaritone/webamp

Lol, Jordan, it's almost like all anybody has to do to summon you is say "winamp.js".

_poof!_ did someone say “Winamp”?

I recently put together a museum of ~68k Winamp skins if you want to feel that nostalgia a bit more: https://skins.webamp.org/

There is even a custom skin in skins directory when you open Explorer.

Why a mix of Mac and Microsoft UX?

I'm an active user of both. To me it's fascinating how this combination is actually more relatable than either of the actual UIs.

Windows start menu bar seems like the simplest conceptual model to understand vs the logical complexity of some apps being pinned and some living on the right side of the dock, in macos.

Same with menus - though menu bars of MacOS are smarter in being always available and more consistent than the chaotic inconsistency of Windows app world, that menu still takes up permanent real estate from my desktop. Which sort of feels like it's permanently taking up my mental space too.

OTOH, macos window decorations also feel like the simplest thing. Relaxing in their almost comic, colorful nature.

you can autohide them. you can also free up the cognitive burden by using the menu search hotkey.

I agree 100%. One other thing I dislike about OSX is the behavior of the green button in the title bar. It just never seems to do what I want. :/

You gotta Option+Click that green button!

As a fellow dual user, I agree with Windows Bar is better than MacOS doc, and vice versa for the menu bars. I wonder if a Macified bar would make it look more consistent.

I'd suggest uBar, which brings the windows bar to MacOS

https://brawersoftware.com/products/ubar

I love these kinds of things, this is lit

I'm impressed with how quickly it loads.

I actually thought that it wasn't so quick, but figuring HN crowd is bashing on it, seems okay :)

But commander keen is there, there goes the rest of my Sunday lol

thanks!

One of my favourites of these are https://opensource.glassanimals.com/

One of my favourite bands of this year, and have really cool websites.

Very nice!! Btw on my 1080x2340 display w/ chrome on android, part of your resume falls of the screen making it not so easy to read

Nice, and surprisingly runs smoothly on my phone!

How did you make it. What technology you used to build this. I am amazed. Any github repo to have a look at the codebase. Thanks

I think this is the GitHub repo: https://github.com/DustinBrett/x

There's a framework that does that, yeah it's pretty old but not obsolete. I saw it when I there used to exist Delphi for PHP.

Check out the Qooxdoo framework, it allows you to create desktop-like websites, just like you would with Qt. Check out the Window demos and playground.

Wow. The implementation of the windows to look like native MacOS is really good. My hats off to you. It could have fooled me.

Reminds me of http://chiptune.com

I remember something similar to this back in the late 90s/early 2000s, cool modern version!

Can’t actually read the blog on iOS. I suppose it must use web workers.

Huh, works fine for me on iOS 14.2.

It almost burned my notebook from 60° to 95°, great site <3

Ah commander keen :) brings back good memories.

Wow! This is super cool... nice job !

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