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Closed 10 years ago.
I just made a browser using c# as one of my first projects of programming and it works pretty good but its pretty generic. I tried adding different tools on it but it still ends up pretty bare and I'm better off using Firefox. Is there a way to add useful apps and color on your browser. I want to make it more personal and add things that make it unique not necessarily better than all the others. I did it more for practice than anything but I want to add a little flare to it. If I'm not doing it for a job I might as well go for style points.
Implement HTML5 and CSS3. All of it. That would be worth using.
Now in the short run what I'd really like, would be a browser, that combines V8 JavaScript engine, WebKit as rendering engine with flexibility of XPCOM (but without its bloat). I mean basically cross-platform Google Chrome, accepting Firefox extensions.
I suspect you'll find most of the really useful ideas have already been implemented in the major browsers. If you think of something really neat which hasn't been done already, I think it would be a more useful contribution to the world if you'd implement it for/in the major browsers instead of in your own one.
I'm not trying to put a damper on your aim - it's just that quite a few people have already thought about browsers long and hard. It's great to do something as a route to learning, but it would be unrealistic to think you'll come up with a world-beating new idea at the same time.
Kittens, unicorns (mostly pink) and a sparkling logo would do it for me.
Most browsers these days have given up competing on features and now battle it out on the speed and stability front. Safari 4 (using their SquirrelFish / Nitro JavaScript engine) is the self proclaimed "fastest browser in the world", Chrome implemented their V8 JavaScript engine and also separated processes for each tab in their browser. Firefox 3.5 apparently has increased JavaScript performance to rival Safari 4.
There are umpteen Gecko and WebKit browsers out there trying to come up with the next big idea, but bar Chrome, no browser has made significant (any?) impact on the web in the past few years.
Related
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Closed 9 years ago.
I am an entry level programmer with only a few months of experience.
Yesterday I was discussing with a colleague how we can improve the performance of a project we are working on together.
The project is built with C# + Ext.NET + JS
The plan was to move as many things as possible to client-side JavaScript instead of interacting with the server all the time.
I thought this was a good idea, but couldn't help but wonder if there is a point where bringing everything to client-side starts making the web application slower. I understand that interacting with the server and reloading unnecessary data all the time is a waste of time in most cases, but I've also seen websites loaded with so much JS that the browser actually lags and the browsing the web application is just a pain.
Is there a golden point? Are there certain 'rules'? How do you achieve maximum performance? Take Google Cloud apps, such as Docs for example, they're pretty fast for what they do, and they're web applications. That is some very good performance.
JavaScript is incredibly fast on the client-side. I assume Ext.NET is like AJAX? If not, you can use AJAX to communicate with the server using JavaScript. It will be pretty fast configured like that. However, the style of coding will change drastically if you're currently using .NET controls on the DOM with click events.
My 2 cents: Use lazy loading of xtypes whenever possible on the client (ie. you can define an xtype but it is only instantiated when it is needed). Especially if those xtypes make ajax calls!
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Closed 10 years ago.
I work at a small startup as a Data Scientist, and I'm looking for ways to make my analysis a bit more visible/useful to the organization. I'd like to be able to put up a simple web service which allows internal users to run my scripts remotely. They should be able to input a few parameters via a very simple UI, and they should have the option to have the results appear in the browser window (after a possibly long wait), or have them emailed. Results may be a few pdf figures, and they may be Excel spreadsheets (maybe more exotic in the future, but this is it for now).
The scripts are going to be all in Python, which will handle the analysis.
So, I'd like to know what the pros and cons are of using C#/WCF vs. something like Django or Python. I have significant experience in C# working in the Client-side code base here, but I have much less experience with WCF. All of my analysis work is done in Python (and R, to a lesser extent). The main goal is to not take all of my time building a fancy web service/UI---the front end just has to be friendly enough to not intimidate the marketing people. I don't have to worry about encryption, the server will be behind our firewall. I'm pretty platform agnostic, but I think the servers are all Windows based, if this helps.
Thanks in advance.
For extra credit, how does your answer change if some of my scripts are in F#?
You might consider using the Django web framework. You could set up a small app with your python scripts as different views. https://www.djangoproject.com/
And if you don't want to put that much effort into creating a friendly UI you could use twitter bootstrap. http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/
Then just run the app internally to gather and display data either via HTTP GETs or via e-mail.
edit: I'm sorry I did not read carefully "pros and cons are of using C#/WCF vs. something like Django". I recently made a Django app and it was fairly straight forward.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I want to build a nice looking UI with Silverlight, something that keep moving in a delicate manner (like this intro)
I know of course this is possible through the Animation features of Silverlight, but they seem to me a bit too exhausting. I'm looking for some ready-to-use UI animation.
As I recall, jquery offers quite a few UI menus (etc.) that are really easy to use.
I've searched quite a bit for effects library, or tutorials, but I couldn't find anything helpful.
Is my only option is writing Storyboard and build my animations from scratch?
Is that considered OK or I'm just reinventing the wheel here for no reason?
Does it make jquery a better choice for fancy UI web applications? (I've never used it , just read about it)
Storyboards and animations aren't that bad to learn. They are daunting at first (because they can be verbose), but if you just take some time to understand them, they are fairly straight forward. You can try some third party control suites like Telerik which have some animation/transition functions but I'd suggest diving in and understanding how they work.
The best way to try to learn the animations is to think of what you want to do first (something simple) and then just research/figure it out. Googles great for this! Do somethign easy at first of course.
View the sample Silverlight animation browser at microsoft to get started... Sample Animations
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Closed 11 years ago.
I found out that windows 8 is going to be heavily dependent on C++, HTML5 and CSS based apps(WPF ?). I spend a lot of time working on applications like matlab, scipy and C# as programming language at my workplace. Considering this, is there going to be any big change for desktop app developers ? are these apps going to be re-written under new code and C# has any future for desktop apps?
A lot of hearsay at the moment until September it seems there is nothing definite.
There is wide speculation on whether Jupiter will be the unifying
user-interface model for Windows, Web and mobile. Burela believes
Jupiter may a “next generation” XAML-based framework, perhaps a
“mashup between WPF & Silverlight.”
There also appears to be equally strong support for three key
programming languages: C# to appease the .NET developers, C++ to
appease the Windows core developers, and HTML5/JavaScript to try to
lure developers from other platforms.
Of course the controversy has been Microsoft’s focus on JavaScript
while nearly ignoring Silverlight and .NET developers. Articles like
this one — though unofficial and speculative — should help calm some
nervous developers.
Source: http://www.isdotnetdead.com/windows-8-supports-all-programming-models/#
ZDnet try asking probing questions.
Here is another link about the future of C#
Okay, your question confuses some terms - based on the articles you cite.
Microsoft are quoted as saying that the application they demonstrated on Windows 8 was written using HTML and JavaScript. The article interprets this as saying that WPF and Silverlight are likely to be binned in favour of HTML and JavaScript.
Let's have a think about this.
As far as I'm aware, Microsoft have been really keen to run applications in the Browser for a very long time. They have made ActiveX controls that run in a browser, they have written Silverlight to run in a browser. They are one of the leaders in the whole "browser based applications" concept. People may criticise their methods of achieving this in the past, but at least they were trying.
When you consider that Microsoft currently have a desktop package called Office and also a web-based package called Office365, you can understand why they might want to just have one package to maintain that works on the desktop and in a browser.
My final note - the ARS Technica article describes HTML tooling as inferior, but seeing as you can use the same tools to write a WPF application or an HTML application I don't agree with this point.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Appart from projects funded/pushed by MS itself, are there any real-world examples of projects that opted for Silverlight?
What were your experiences? Learning curve? Advantages? Resources? Pitfalls? Sacrifices?
--EDIT--
I'm most interested in the developing (team)'s story.
I was at a conference last week, and a number of non-MS people were telling their experiences of using Silverlight for line-of-business apps. Generally, it seemed positive. The advantage seemed that you could start with the Silverlight version, and then if you (later) needed more client control, mostly just copy the xaml and app code into WPF. mostly is important, as there are currently some glitches. But it is much harder to start with WPF and port to Silverlight ;-p
Sacrifices? Not as much power over the client. Limited framework, etc.
Pitfalls? Not-quite-compatible xaml. Different IO, etc.
I can't cite specific projects, as I simply didn't write them down ;-p Besides, they might be company-private. Knowing that they exist doesn't violate NDA ;-p
I've just reviewed the Silverlight showcase for the UK, an IT market I know pretty well, there are 31 apps featured and the break down looks like this
8 x Games = 26%,
6 x Experiments and fun = 19% - eg christmas cards and Xaml XEyes,
6 x Demos = 19% - eg a Deepzoom picture,
11 x Reasonable web sites = 36%
Realistically 31 apps for the whole of the UK, of which only around a third are real, is a tiny amount of development. This could indicate a couple of things,
1) Serious Silverlight development isn't happening in the UK, but maybe is elsewhere
2) Companies doing serious silverlight dev don't want to use Microsoft's showcase
3) There isn't much serious Silverlight development happening yet
My gut feel is that Silverlight is taking a while to become mainstream, it's a brilliant technology, but users don't buy technology or features, they buy benefits .... We need a couple of killer Silverlight apps, then it will take off like Ajax did, once google (and others) showed the way
Check out the Microsoft Silverlight Showcase. There seem to be quite a few Silverlight apps in the wild.
Retouch Genie Ltd - Online photo retouching and restoration site uses Silverlight for its gallery and main client area. Its got quite an interesting photo display control which is quite nice. Here is the link to the before and after gallery that allows you to see the photos in their original state and again after image enhancement.
We are in the middle of developing a system in silverlight that does real time communications with customers. The problems we've had are due to the lack of real-world samples and the change from VB to C# as there is next to no documentation in VB. Apart from that it has been great to develop in. Everything works well and development time was very quick considering it is a brand new technology. We're looking forward to the next release and it's enhanced video handling.
Checkout silverlight case studies for developer story:
business app - http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000004876
I even developed an Android app with Silverlight and Java mixture. Without SL it would be really damn boring and probably impossible what I wanted to achieve, check it out: https://market.android.com/details?id=uk.co.aloneguid.todash&feature=search_result