World: r3wp

plugins that offer hardware accelerated rendering are not that rare 
but there is none except shockwave (and now unity slowly) that have 
any worthwile base of users that have it already installed. This 
one would be great if it gets forward becuase it's the "google's" 
plugin, but for games it also needs sound, good input / fullscreen 
switching and to compete to ston3d and unity physics

I like O3D alot. It makes me nostalgic, a 3D simulator right out 
of 1995 with the single digit framerates and all. Every day, new 
and amazing ways to slow down your computer.

:)

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/see_wolfram_alpha_in_action_-_video_and_screenshots.php

3D layers for the web have been around for years... but it seems 
people don't really care en masse.  I wonder if its the technology 
or if its a culture thing.

Not sure if this has been discussed, but has anyone compared Adobe 
Air to REBOL/View or /SDK?

In terms of end result, that is - not necessarily of the languages 
involved.

Chris, we had some discussions recently in the Tretbase thread concerning 
them.

How far back?  (appears to be beyond my current threshold)

Was just a few days ago.

I may have my ALTME settings on a greater buffer than you but the 
conversation in there was quite brisk for a day or two.  What was 
it that you wanted to discuss on the topic?

I've really only come across it - it seems a shame that it is being 
used in ways View has not (but could have).  That said, it seems 
to solve problems that View has not (yet) in rich text, cross-platform 
use of native menus - generally good desktop/web hybrids.

You're stuck, of course, with web/ajax/flash, which I trust is as 
much a pain as traditional web development, yet is well documented.

(web being html/js/dom)

Deployment seems smooth (that is, I've had no issues installing applications 
mac/pc) and the site-specific applications I've tried offers much 
over vanilla browser versions.

Note that these are first impressions - I really don't know how much 
of a drag these apps are, or how much polish went into the particular 
apps I tried.

simple guy, simple motor - BS? http://freeenergytruth.blogspot.com/2009/05/ultimate-mylo-video-this-has-got-to-be.html

this was based on Howard Johnson's motor which was detailed in Science 
& Mechanics in around 1980 - http://www.newebmasters.com/freeenergy/sm.html

Yeah Chris, I took heat for making the observation that REBOL will 
never catch Flex.

It's just because it's hard to prove "never". On a structural basis 
Flash doesn't have near the potential of R3 or Silverlight, but of 
these three only Silverlight is heading towards that potential quickly. 
Only time will tell.

Brian SIlverlight is still behind Flex.  Next version of flex is 
about to be released.

You are talking about position. I am talking about momentum and the 
path they are following. Different issues.

We'll see Brian.

Buf it hat is true that you believe Silverlight will overtake Flex 
then I'm not sure how you have a problem with the word "never" when 
comparing the momentum behind Flex to that of REBOL.

It's just  that I can see the end of Flash/Flex's path - it's right 
there in the system architecture. There isn't much potential left 
there, just a lot of actual. Flash isn't going to lose much of its 
installed base, not while what's there still works, but it's reaching 
the end of its potential capabilities. One federally mandated accessibility 
law and it's obsolete.


Silverlight is still advancing rapidly, and Moonlight is part of 
why. Some of the Silverlight 3 beta features are already in the Moonlight 
2 preview. By the time S3 comes out, Moonlight may be caught up. 
And Silverlight is much faster for RIAs.

I'm not saying REBOL will never catch Flex, I'm just saying there's 
a lot to admire there.

Large portions of Silvelight are open source - more than R3 at least 
until the host code is released. I think Silverlight is the one to 
compare R3 to, not Flash. Flash is barely usable outside of multimedia 
players.

(and I'm talking Air, not Flex)

I believe that Air is currently lacks USB and Printer support.

To reiterate, from a user perspective, it was painless to install, 
painless to add further apps, the apps 'look and feel' well-designed 
(top to bottom design has never been easy with View) including native 
menus.  For each, it seems that the designer/developer has been able 
to realise their concept (that's subjective, I suppose, and app-dependent).

ah, native menus - poison some REBOL users are tempted by too :-)

Including yourself?

no, I was always against it. I do understand why ppl wanted it, but 
it is only because we are lacking our own widget. Becase - where 
do we stop? Some ppl wanted View linking to all native widgets ... 
and it is not View anymore then.

I'd stop at menus.  I don't see the slippery slope...

Menus appear to be the only standard UI feature of these Air applications, 
it seems to helo them fit (and I tried both Win and Mac versions)

On the Mac in particular, custom menus echo cheapness - note how 
alien an otherwise accomplished cross-platform app such  as Inkscape 
looks...

then such a menu, which is completly off the look of the rest of 
your app, should be more of a config menu, even better if it can 
hide/slide (but that depend on the system), but not be menu for my 
app.

Of course, even Cyphre's menu has bad metrics and looks "cheap". 
But is it really a problem to design it correctly?

How do they solve context menus? Native too? I don't understand this 
obsession to have menu native, while the rest of the app might look 
as a painted fairy tale.

But - our GUI is far from being usable, so native menu or not is 
still preliminary question for R3.

Take a look at the Air apps - you can see how it works - doesn't 
detract at all from the custom UIs.

http://www.ross-gill.com/images/GrabAir.jpg(I'm in orange, btw)

I hope such an app is 1-3 pages max in VID 3.4 :-)

Brian, the entire Flex SDK is open source.  I'm not sure where you 
get that it is coming to its end.  If anything Flex has been positions 
to expand and evolve.

Paul - what he means is probably the architecture of the language, 
which might be limiting here. Flex is open source? Doesn't it cost 
some money? Come on :-)

Well, maybe I mix two things - being an open-sourced product and 
product costing a money ...

Petr, functionally you can do the same with VID in a relatively small 
amount of code - even with R2 - but what good is that when the experience 
is second or third rate?

Deployment-Design-Integration

Pekr: The Flex SDK is free open source software. It's a command line 
compiler with a few command line tools. The FlexBuilder IDE is a 
pay for extension to Ecilpse.

Ah, ok, but we are surely talking IDE here, because that is the main 
reason why some ppl look elsewhere - because the lack of REBOL IDE 
environment ....