Hi Folks,
I never used SuperCard but to think in embedding a runtime engine
inside a browser plugin is not a good idea in my opnion. People always
talk, let us get Revolution on the web!!!! and stuff like that, I think
Revolution is more than the web. See, if RunRev creates a plugin for
Rev to open inside a browser window, clients still will need to install
the plugin, so what is the difference between using Dreamcard Player
and a browser plugin? Both will need to be downloaded but the Dreamcard
player is much more than a browser. I can't see a single advantage
using the browser plugin approach. There's no way for RunRev to create
a magical way that loading http://myserver/myVoodooStack.rev will
sundenlly pop ups an application, also, that would be too risky. In
win32 land they could create strange auto installable ActiveX wrappers,
but that would break the whole cross platform thing we come to trust
and love.
Also about exporting to flash, I think we're missing the thing, I don't
think flash can do all things Rev can do, for example, can flash
plugins listen on a socket? I trully don't know, also, is flash able to
build "Real" guis with drag and drop and clipboard support, or we will
run on the land of emulated graphics (cute, but, emulated). I think
exporting to java bytecodes would be better, almost half the job is
done, java can access all we need. Altought I like the Dreamcard player
better than any browser.
Another option if you trully want to go web-esque in your Rev doings is
to go CGI. CGIs are easy to do and now will all the xml wonders running
around the web one can pull very clever tricks.
For the education market, just think like this, Using a browser will
restrict your app in the browser pluging window and the popups it
spawns, if the kids in America are like the kids here in Brazil, great
chance that in the first minute the teacher turns its back, they will
all open another flap in their browsers and start chatting, playing
games, and just browse their fav sites, oh, and email all their
buddies, and there's nothing you'll be able to do. Unless you cut their
internet access and lock them inside a lan. Which when I was young in
the school was motive enough for subversion and for us to hide DOOM
copies in the machines and play without sound while the teachers tried
to teach us, it enabled situations like when the principal was
strolling thru the classes:
Principal: look all the teens are so concentrated at their screens,
computers do favor education.
Teacher: I am so proud of those teens.
Teen #1: Quick Marcelo there are rocket launchers in bay #2!!!!
(shouting)
Principal: ...
Teacher looks angry
Teen #1: Hey, I finished my work okay!
Teacher: Yeah, I belive you're all finished....
Now let us talk about the beautifull realms of Dreamcard Player in
education/subversion environment. First, Dreamcard Player is sandboxed,
so no kid can destroy the computer, install Virii or malware just by
using the thing (... in that school class, we were 5 coders and our
main activity was to code virii to kill the students lab so that we
could skip classes. When the teachers figured it out, they did the most
smart thing I ever saw, they created a 'tuition program' and gave us
benefit to keep the school clean of virii and also made us code usefull
apps for the school like public voting system for the students, we were
13 or 14 can't remember right now, but we used turbo pascal). Let us
get back to Dreamcard Player, the player can load stacks and with some
clever coding one can remote control the students players much like the
Apple eMate/Classroom dock. The player is a rich client with a rich gui
and library, there's more freedom for creating teaching tools with
Dreamcard Player then with Browsers and HTML interfaces. The students
will have no way of killing time using the player, no email, no cool
sites to browse, one school should license altBrowser and create a
students browser that they could flip on or off as the students finish
their tasks, this way they could manage their time.
There are so many benefits using the Dreamcard Player for education
that just by writting this email I keep finding more and this runs the
risk of becoming an eternal thread. I think the ideal setup for an
education lab would be:
Student computers running dreamcard player with altBrowser.
Teacher computer running Rev with altSQLite (your databases easy to
backup)
The teachers computer should have a Boss/Guide stack that would allow
him to load and unload stacks on the students computer. The students
besides all the educational stacks could have a little altBrowser based
browser, a little eMail app and a Chat app (RevChat anyone?). This
setup is safe and don't restrict your creative options as a
teacher/RevCoder, all the other two options browser plugin/flash would
not enable you to travel the far realms of true revolution engine! :-P
man, this is a big email...
andre
On Jun 5, 2005, at 11:20 AM, Ken Ray wrote:
http://www.littlefishsw.co.uk/card/roadster.html
I have been surfing supercard websites... my impression:
Plenty of very clever changes have been introduced in
Dreamcard/revolution,
compared to supercard, the IDE environment is a lot more practical in
revolution (though I agree with others on this list that it could
still be
improved), the products that I have seen developed with revolution
look more
professional than the ones developed with supercard.
I prefer Dreamcard/Revolution, by far... but the education market may
polarize
on the availability of this Roadster plugin which let them play their
stacks
over the net. Anybody is trying to address this?
Hey Marielle!
Well, the first thing you need to know is the Roadster only worked with
SuperCard 3.x under OS 9; they are currently at 4.5 under OS X and
AFAIK
have no plans to upgrade the plugin.
Secondly, the Roadster plugin was mediocre at best - lots of stuff
didn't
work, or didn't work properly, and although you could develop something
simple to play in the browser, it was hard to do something
sophisticated for
the web.
I think it may actually be better if RunRev wants to consider running
content in a plugin that it consider outputing stacks to Flash and
running
them with *that* plugin (since it is so ubiquitous) rather than
creating
their own plugin.
But that's just my 2 cents,
Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/
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--
Andre Alves Garzia 2004 BRAZIL
http://studio.soapdog.org
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