Comments on: Living in the Browser http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/ I will not fix your computer. Tue, 04 Aug 2020 22:34:33 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.26 By: Luke Maciak http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7390 Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:41:05 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7390

@STop – I saw the eyeOS some time ago. It is really a great showcase of what you can do with a little bit of AJAX.

@Dave – true, they do scan your email. Google probably knows more about me that I know myself. And yet, I continue to use their tools because they just work so well. Go figure…

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]]> By: Dave http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7388 Tue, 18 Dec 2007 03:45:45 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7388

I agree with all of you on the Gmail discussion, but I really just can’t use a browser that scans the contents of my email for advertising. Granted, all clients nowadays are probably storing and datamining all of our emails, but I feel like google just takes it too far.

That said, it is a free email client, and it really incorporates everything most people need in one screen, but I prefer to spread my emails across different accounts, however much of a pain-in-the-ass it may be.

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]]> By: STop http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7382 Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:09:46 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7382

Yeah, a trend for sure. Some people even go a bit further: check eyeOS for instance… They have a demo here. Crazy!

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]]> By: Jake http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7380 Sun, 16 Dec 2007 05:11:45 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7380

I think this is great. The more users begin to rely on the webbrowsers, the cheaper machines can be made. For instance, you can easily set up a very low spec computer (Celeron 300 with 64MB of RAM) to run Firefox at a decent speed. This computer would be suitable for many people’s needs while still using all current software.

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]]> By: Luke Maciak http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7379 Sun, 16 Dec 2007 03:01:56 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7379

Precisely, I love my Gmail for exactly that reason – I can access it from everywhere. I usually bounce between 2 or 3 different machines during the day so webmail is convenient.

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]]> By: Ian Clifton http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7375 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 19:15:28 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7375

Didn’t you get the memo? Starting next year, all desktops will be used for the Internet and phones will be used for messaging, taking pictures, recording video, playing music, organizing (e.g., calendaring), gaming, ……

A lot of users need very little from computers and most of that can be accomplished online. I had posed a question about a year and a half ago to a friend about how far the trend to “online programs” would go. It’s tough to say, but I see it continuing to progress. Most of the services are free (at least the successful ones) and they pass by word of mouth, so it’s likely to continue, especially with the speed of the average Internet connection constantly improving. Regular computer users don’t do anything that could not easily be done online with the possible exception of gaming (though it depends on their choice of gaming).

One advantage is accessibility from anywhere. For instance, I use my gmail account to access a few different email accounts, because I use so many different computers throughout the day. Sure, I can set up my personal computers and primary work computers with Thunderbird or similar, but then what about when I am in a lab or at a friend’s?

Heck, there are already Firefox addons to allow you to navigation with Vim-like controls, edit source in a Vim-like way, and even edit textareas :D

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]]> By: Matt` http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7374 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:01:05 +0000 http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2007/12/15/living-in-the-browser/#comment-7374

I see the trend too.. everything is on the internets now…

Personally though, I like to draw a line in the sand between what’s on my computer, and what’s on someone else’s computer. I’m not a fan of web apps – they always seem to be like toy versions of something I can load much faster from disk. I prefer to download over streaming because the quality of streams inevitably sucks.

Until I can get, for a one-time fee, a dedicated chunk of space on a server somewhere, that no-one else can look into or monitor in any way, that has 100% uptime, is guaranteed to be at least as secure as the contents of my hard drive, and broadband has advanced to the kind of speed you’d get from a physical device, that line stays in place.

What I would like is something that ties together everything I do online – it always bugs me slightly when I have to keep swapping between a handful of different programs to keep track of everything. Probably achievable through firefox extensions though… RSS in a browser tab is nailed, now if I could only get IM and uTorrent in there… (MSN web messenger might be worth a look). I’m kinda expecting the next reply to be “just download x, it does all that” to which I’ll think “but does it do the other things my Firefox setup does?” so I’m basically after new extensions I guess :lol:

This comment is much longer than I intended. I stop now.

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