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I am interested in creating a desktop application using HTML5+webkit, and I'd like to be able to build a stand-alone executables for various target platforms like a .exe file for Windows and a .dmg image for Mac OS. I have played around with node-webkit, which seems nice except for the packaging / distribution portion. I also stumbled on TideSDK, but that project seems to be inactive. For example, the latest release I saw was a beta from November of 2012. Yet, it seems the core developers have switched to developing TideKit instead.
Does anyone here know if TideKit is intended as a replacement for TideSDK? Is TideSDK going away? etc.
Well, TIDE is now officially a dead project. I just got this email about 15 minutes ago.
TideKit.com and TideKit have been discontinued.
TideKit was software for developing apps for all platforms
simultaneously with a single base of code written in JavaScript.
The scope and complexity of the product made it difficult to
assemble the platform all at once. This stemmed from a holistic
approach to app development for all platforms. While creating a
platform for JavaScript developers, much of the core engineering is in
a variety of lower level languages that affect the speed of
development. We considered delivering parts of our platform as we
reached milestones, but this was not suitable for the start of trials.
We were widely criticized for not revealing our technical innovation
in advance of our release. In a competitive environment, revealing
advantages as you go can also mean assimilation as you go. We had
already witnessed how quickly our technical advantages could be
assimilated by competitors to our open source TideSDK product.
Therefore, we held back with a view of delaying the duplication of
features by competitors, increasing our technical barriers and working
to protect our IP and business case until we felt we were ready.
In a startup, we talk about a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). In our
case, our minimum viable product was much larger and more difficult to
achieve. In total, approximately three years of research and
development was committed with multiple developers working greater
than full time hours. A factor that extended the development was an
expansion of scope that aimed to lower friction in the app development
process.
In Feb 2014, we created a system to queue developers with
reservation system for the earliest possible access to TideKit. Our
goal was to provide an early trial when it became available. Since the
development itself was complex, we could not provide a date when
ticket holders could start the trial process – but it would be
following our betas, then moving forward as we scaled the platform.
We were clear with our language on the site concerning reservations.
As a result, we expected little confusion about what was being
purchased, our expectations of timing to market, or the terms of
purchase for a reservation ticket. Purchasers were not paying for our
product at this point, but for their position in a queue for a trial
of our new technology. We also included a refund policy to ensure the
terms of purchase for your ticket were available. The wait has been
long, but not nearly as long as other difficult engineering challenges
including Myo that pre-sold their product and were also delayed before
successfully rolling out.
Throughout the development cycle we provided updates of our status
via posts roadmap page, email to our ticket holders and communications
on our social channels. We did our best as a team to open ourselves to
questions and maintain a social presence.
At the end of May 2015, we communicated our strategy to execute a
series of focused betas that would have seen the platform revealed
publicly and incrementally. We were at a stage that parts of the
platform needed developer feedback as we rolled these out
consecutively.
In the days preparing for our first public beta, we recognized the
extent to which our brand had been poisoned by our timing to market. A
campaign of negativity that had begun several months earlier with
followers and ticket holders had taken its toll on our team, brand,
and business.
We believed the beta releases would soon bring an end to the
negative talk. On July 8 and 9 we faced further eruptions on social
media that reached the tipping point. With the discussion no longer
about the product nor its future, this was far more serious.
We failed to bring the product quickly enough for you. As a result,
we came to the serious decision to discontinue TideKit and dissolve
our company.
We wish to thank everyone involved that worked on the product and with
our team. This includes businesses, entrepreneurs and supporters of
our vision for app development.
Your TideKit Team
you are right, TideSDK is aging and pretty inactive today. And you're also right, we as a core team completely focus on TideKit now. TideKit is the future!
If you want to know the full story about why we stopped working on TideSDK and started TideKit, I recommend you to read our first Q&A. There you'll also find an answer about how we compete with node-webkit:
https://blog.tidekit.com/post/your-questions-our-answers-01
We've just reached the highest HTML5 score any app development platform ever achieved. If you want to know more about builds, like the ones you mentioned for Windows and OS X, you should read this
Desktop Builds
https://blog.tidekit.com/post/from-a-desktop-perspective-tidekit-for-tidesdk-developers
There is a new kid on the block for this sort of projects: atom-shell Based in nodejs and used to create the great Atom editor
Technical differences with node-webkit: https://github.com/atom/atom-shell/blob/master/docs/development/atom-shell-vs-node-webkit.md
Presentation at JSLA about "Native NodeJS Apps": http://vimeo.com/97881078
If you look at this blog post, they talk about how unsustainable the economical situation is
http://www.tidesdk.org/blog/2013/04/11/tidesdk-in-numbers/
and I can't find the tweet that was stating the reasons behind the transition from one project to another. But I guess that the blogpost speaks for itself.
Anyway, I'm delivering a project written in node-webkit ( because I starded on Tide but for the obvious reasons I had to switch ) and I'm using grunt for packaging and in the end is not that bad.
Electron (http://electron.atom.io/) is the new way to go.
I also had an app running on TideSDK (https://github.com/vinyll/worktimer.titanium) and I'll have to migrate it to Electron.
A few years back I have been using Titanium Desktop to make an app for Mac. Having been satisfied I came back recently to it for another project, but apparently Titanium Desktop is now TideSDK.
Looking at the reference it seems that a lot of stuff has disappeared, I was mostly expecting more elements in UI, like ScrollView, ImageView and such.
Did they simply vanish from this new release or is it just not fully documented ?
First of all I need to make clear that TideSDK is not Titanium Desktop. While it began on legacy code, more than 1 million lines changes of code have been committed and the SDK has been in existence for almost a year now. You will find a different namespace but API compatibility.
The code base is quite different and has been undergoing major restructuring and improvements. That said, for the end user, it is just as friendly to use. We don't like to go back to discuss the past since we have contributed a body of code that allows developers to run TideSDK on today's modern operating systems. This was only the result of substantial efforts and the continued development of TideSDK by its contributors. If you experience any issues, please file them with on our issue tracker on github.
Judging from the described features, the Alfresco Team and Alfresco Share products look very similar.
What are the technical differences?
Here are a few differences I have heard about, but a better list would be welcome:
Video preview
Preview for more Adobe products (Illustrator etc?)
Some kind of link with Google Apps maybe?
There is need for clarification to #Heiko Robert. His answer is not valid anymore. Team has been discontinued, and it didn't replace Alfresco Enterprise.
Team was not the latest Enterprise Edition, but a cheaper license with the restrictions that #Heiko has mentioned (and some more. For example, the number of users is also limited).
Team is being replaced by the Alfresco Cloud, as you can see if you click on the "Team Customizations" link posted by #Tahir Malik.
Alfresco Enterprise is well and very alive, and a new version 4 is available.
Regarding Share: Alfresco has two web user interfaces: one is the original, known as Alfresco Explorer, and the newest one is Alfresco Share. Alfresco Explorer is a faster UI, based on JSF, but it is more difficult to customize, and it is not being developed anymore. On the other hand, Share is the "second generation" UI, which is based on Surf, which is much easier to customize. At this point, Share is actively being developed, but, as far as I know, it is close to provide 100% of the functionality provided by Alfresco Explorer.
Alfresco Explorer will probably be around for several years to come, because a lot of people already developed applications on it, so that should give them time to migrate to share.
It's more or less a question of licensing. Team seems to be the latest Enterprise Edition but with major limitations in
Number of Documents
Customization: No Customizations in any way (no custom doc models, workflows, automation, actions)
Usage: restricted to the Share-Interface only (no Explorer, no webscripts, not integration with other systems)
I found this Blog helpful: Alfresco Team: First Thoughts and Limitations to Consider
Anyway - if you're looking for a out of the box tool to share documents in workgroups/teams this may the tool you should look into.
I don't think there are much technical differences, because both are build on the Surf Platform and are quite equal in functionality.
I think you should see this page of the Team Site: Team Customizations
The main difference is that you can't do whatever you like with Team and you can with Share (Enterprise/Community).
There are a few features in Alfresco Team that are new, and which aren't in Alfresco 3.4 (Enterprise or Community). Video Preview and a few more transformers are in that list. Those new features are available on HEAD though, so if you take a nightly build you'll get them. They'll all be in Swift (likely 4.0), which is due out later this year. See Jeff Pott's blog for some more info on Swift.
The Alfresco Team website has a lot of info on Team on it, which should help you decide if it's a good fit for you, or if you need the full Community/Enterprise version.
I am working on a commercial web application that has a separate mobile browser version intended for the more capable devices (BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, etc). I don't want to do simple User Agent contains style logic and was looking at the various detection libraries. It seems like WURFL and Mobile Device Browser File are my best options.
The Mobile Device Browser File (MDBF) project at CodePlex exposes information through the Request.Browser property. Also, it has a Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). Mobile Browser Detection in ASP.NET mentions "data for MDBF comes from WURFL" and Mix: Mobile Web Sites with ASP.NET MVC and the Mobile Browser Definition File confirms MBDF is "created from a database from many sources, including the popular WURFL mobile device capabilities database."
51degrees has a .NET Mobile API that uses the WURFL data files and also populates Request.Browser. It is licensed under the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1. and claims:
With the .NET Mobile API installed and
WURFL providing mobile device data,
these calls will return extremely
accurate data when compared to the
standard browser information provided
by Microsoft
Since the official WURLF .NET API is distributed with a GPL License, so it is a non-starter for my project.
WURFL ASP.NET Implementations compares ASP.NET implementations of WURFL, but this is over a year old (2009-01-16 - Article submitted) and doesn't mention the 51degrees API or MDBF.
Can I get any feedback on which library to use.
How often are these data files updated?
Is it better to use feature detection that user agent parsing?
Is an online service (e.g. Handset Detection) easier that update data files?
Any other useful input.
Regarding Mobile Device Browser File:
Quote: "Due to the organizational restructuring of the team that developed and supported the Mobile Device Browser file, we will no longer have the resources to support and update this CodePlex project. The team will be providing two more releases – one on the 27th July 2010 and the final release on the 24th August 2010."
So that I am not just the bearer of bad news...
We are planning on using:
Mobile Device Detection and Redirection
by 51 Degrees
Which has a really good example of:
How to Add the .NET Mobile API to an
Existing Web Site
Hope this helps.
The MDBF was updated fairly recently. If what you need is basic information it's probably better as it integrates nicely with your .NET framework.
Marg.Wurfl is definitely a good choice and integrates with .NET framework as well.
Both have an approach that is good for the old .NET style, not the MVC. In MVC you will have to do your own legwork.
You might also want to consider DeviceAtlas that has an API for .NET and has very good performance in .NET.
Specifically to your questions, WURFL is updated almost once a month, while AFAIK there are no planned updates for MDBF, they will release an update if and when they feel like it (yes, not very exciting).
You might use Javascript to detect features in modern browsers such as iPhone, Android and recent Nokias, but for all the rest, the User-Agent string is still the only real option, so I'd say it depends on your target market. You might want to create a super-simple version that works for all and an advanced version where you do feature detection.
I don't like the idea of online services, if you plan to have a high volume site. Once-a-month updates are OK, with commercial products like DeviceAtlas or Mobile Phone Wizards you can get more frequent updates.
DISCLAIMER: I used to work for dotMobi that created DeviceAtlas
The WURFL official .NET API has been released recently by ScientiaMobile--the WURFL people's newco. You can access it here: http://www.scientiamobile.com/site/page/view/downloads. However, it is subject to the AGPL license, which basically means you need to buy a commercial license to use the API in a commercial app, including a Web site. Raw data remains free.
A whitepaper showing how to integrate it with ASP.NET is: http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/dotNet.
I think WURFL has more capabilities and more active community, and it has more frecuently release than mdbf. But i have to say that microsoft is doing good work. You could look Marg.Wurfl, too.
And remember you can use GPL software in SaaS.
You can look Marg.Wurfl too,
As Dino mentioned, the WURFL API is distributed under AGPL, but also available under commercial licensing terms (this is called dual licensing, or also offering a GPL exception in FSF's parlance).
The wurfl.xml file is not longer considered raw data, though. Because of the creative work of keeping the data organized and groups, ScientiaMobile claims the copyright on the wurfl.xml file starting with version 2.2 and distributes it under certain conditions (notably, that the wurfl.xml file can only be used in connection with one of the standard APIs):
http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/licence.php
Acquiring a commercial license also delivers certain extra rights on the wurfl.xml file itself.
Silverlight v2.0 is getting closer and closer to RTM but I have yet to hear any stats as to how many browsers are running Silverlight. If I ask Adobe (by googling "Flash install base") they're only too happy to tell me that 97.7% of browsers are running Flash player 9 or better.
Not that I believe everything I read, but where are these statistics from Microsoft or some other vendor about Silverlight? I'm going to be making a technology choice soon and a little bit of empirical evidence would be an asset at this point...
All you Silverlight developers out there, show me your stats!
Quick Answer: www.riastats.com
This site compares the different RIA plugins using graphical charts and graphs.
It gets its data from small snippets of javascripts running on sites accross the web (approx 400,000 last time I looked)
At the time of this post, Silverlight 2 was sitting at close to 11%.
I would not take this as the end-all, be-all in RIA stats, but it's the best site I've found so far.
If you are developing something for a general audience, I would highly recommend against Silverlight as you immediately cut out Linux users.
I went to watch videos for the Olympics (and I run exclusively Linux), and I couldn't watch the video on their site because they were in Silverlight. On top of that, they actively removed all videos from YouTube, so I had no alternative but to try and scrounge up a Windows boot. This only served to give me a very negative opinion of NBC, and consider them quite amateurish to pick such a restricting technology for something that should be available for everyone.
While Flash has it's problems, it works fine in Linux, so I would say (at this point), it is a much superior technology choice.
If you KNOW your audience is entirely on Windows (maybe Mac).... then you can consider Silverlight with knowing you won't be cutting out part of your audience.
if you're that concerned about locking out potential users, you should be building a low-bandwidth HTML only version of your site anyways...regardless of whether you use Flash or Silverlight.
I struggled with this for a while. Ultimately, I chose to develop my site using Silverlight for the major components. I did a good bit of research, and I reached the following bottom-line conclusion:
If Silverlight fails, it will not
be for lack of installed base. There
are simply too many levers for MS to
pull (windows update, embedding it in
IE8, or even paying highly trafficed
sites to use it.
I will add this from Alexa - microsoft.com has pretty impressive daily reach and it uses SL on the main page. I would also not be surprised at all if Outlook Web Access is moved to Silverlight - thereby turning every single office outlook user who wants to access email from home/other into a roaming SL installer.
Alexa Link comparing microsoft.com/ebay.com/amazon.com
I will add this from ScottGu's blog entry:
In addition to powering the Olympics
experience in the US, Silverlight was
also used in France (by FranceTV), the
Netherlands (by NOS), Russia (by
Sportbox.ru) and Italy (by RAI). In
addition to video quality, a big
reason behind these broadcasters
decision to use Silverlight was the
TCO and streaming cost difference
Silverlight provided. In the August
2008 edition of Web Designer Magazine
(a Dutch publication) a NOS
representative reported that they were
able to serve 100,000 concurrent users
using Silverlight and 40 Windows Media
Servers, whereas it would have
required 270 servers if they had used
Flash Media Servers.
Over the last month we've seen several
major new deployments of Silverlight
for media scenarios. For example: CBS
College Sports is now using
Silverlight to stream NCAA events from
its 170 partner colleges and
university. Blockbuster is replacing
Flash with Silverlight for its
MovieLink application. And Netflix two
weeks ago rolled out its new Instant
Watch service using Silverlight.
At the 2009 Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Scott Guthrie said that Silverlight was installed on "45% of the world's Internet-connected devices"
http://www.betanews.com/article/PDC-2009-Live-from-the-Day-2-keynote/1258561992 (quote taken from "9:28am PT") entry
This was the weekly poll over on CP a few weeks back. Out of the 1463 developers responding, aprox. 62% had Silverlight installed on at least one system.
So... if you're making a site targeted at Windows developers... and don't mind locking out a third of your potential market...
I haven't been able to get stats. I'd assume they might release some at PDC in late October. If you're building a site which needs to target a non-developer audience who won't want to install another plugin, you might want to wait for Silverlight.
I have done a good amount of testing with Moonlight on Linux, and it works well for sites which use either use Silverlight 1.0 functionality (pretty much 100% supported) or which happen to use the Silverlight 2.0 bits which Moonlight currently supports. The caveat is that some websites explicitly check the user agent and won't offer content if you're not on a "supported" platform. That's poor website coding, not a fault of the Silverlight plugin.
During the keynote # ReMIX UK when ScottGu gave the figure of 1.5 million installs/day I was sat next to Andrew Shorten, one of the Adobe platform evangelists (and also a good chum). He was telling me Adobe have independant evidence of an AVERAGE of 12 million installs a day, with over 40 million downloads.
It would appear 1.5 million is a tiny amount of what it could be.
Well 6 million watched the Olympics on NBC, which used a silverlight player. So at least 6 million. I've never seen exact stats, but you can be pretty certain that it is pretty small still.
Also, there is an implementation of silverlight for linux called moonlight.
I think an interesting stat comes from this site itself. Have a look at how many silverlight questions there are! And how many responses - it's not the most active topic!
I think you'll see a dramatic increase in the Silverlight install base after Silverlight 2.0 officially comes out. Right now it's still in beta. Silverlight 1.0 is out and runs quite well from what I've seen in Moonlight on Linux, but it's much harder to create full-scale applications for than version 2.0. According to Microsoft, Moonlight will be "100% compatible" at release time. See Scott Guthrie's blog (note: 2.0 was called 1.1 at the time).
Nick R, as for the fact that there isn't much Silverlight activity on these forums, I think the biggest reason for that is the very active community on the silverlight.net forums.
Scott Guthrie said (at Remix UK Sept 18 2008) that Silverlight is currently downloaded 1.5 million times per day. Over 115 million downloads since the version 1 release.
The Version 1 installed base will automatically update to version 2 when it is out of beta.
Wow! Scott said the same thing at Mix in February 08 about run rate - 1.5m. So it seems that a daily run rate of 1.5m per day for 6 months would add 270m installs to the installed base. So their numbers are not exactly clear in their meaning.
If one assumes the 115m installed base is correct, then it implies a run rate around 700k per day in the six months since SL2. Of course, many users are upgrading versions B1 to B2 as an example.
Either way, it is gaining some steady installs. It would be nice to see the run rate improve. By 2nd quarter of next year, it should be dramatically higher due to v2 shipment, application/web site adoption, pre-installation on various computers (like HP) and any unannounced distribution mechanisms.
While in general I support the idea of developing a site using silverlight and feel that that, depending on your audience, you should not have too much trouble getting users to download the plug in I would caution you against assuming that Microsoft will release the plugin built into IE or as a part of windows update.
I have had two separate Microsoft Technology Evangelists tell me that the company is reluctant to do that due to Anti-Trust reasons.
This was over a year ago and their strategy has probably evolved since then, but it enough to make me not count on that as an option for greater market penetration.
Don't forget that the Silverlight 2 install base will never include PPC Mac users. It doesn't look like the Moonlight people are targetting them at all, despite the heroic effort to add PIC streaming for Silverlight 1.0 users for the Obama inauguration.
The larger question is how many users will your site lose if implemented in Silverlight. And, it very much depends on your audience.
If you're running a site about the joys of Linux kernel hacking or the virtues of Internet security, you'll probably lose a significant chunk of your audience. If you're running a more mainstream site, my experience is that, sadly, people will download anything they're told to most of the time. That's why spyware and malware work. And, as the NBC/Olympics deal shows, Microsoft will aggressively push its partners to use Silverlight until it's fairly ubiquitous.
I won't be using Silverlight until it's more mature because I do cater to a fair number of Linux users, but I might for a less technically-oriented site.