Well, you may have been noticing I've been busy with other things lately and not updating Wakaba or Kareha. One of the things I've been working on has now reached a state where I feel I can release a beta version of it. It is...

The Unnamed Javascript Desktop

http://wakaba.c3.cx/desktop-test/desktop.pl (Log in as test:test)

This is basically a remote administration tool. I got tired of messing around with ssh and scp and FTP and all kinds of horrible three-letter acronyms to keep my websites updated, and I started thinking about alternatives, and things got kind of out of hand. This is the result.

It's a graphical desktop system, written in Javascript, with a server backend written in Perl. It is not a very mature piece of software yet, and it has numerous bugs and issues with bugs in browsers, but it works, after a fashion. I've been using it for a little while now for my various servers. I am releasing it now so that I can take a break from coding it, and also with some sort of vain hope that somebody would find it cool enough to help me work on it, because I don't know if I'll ever have the time to do everything I want with this.

You can see the files on the web server at http://wakaba.c3.cx/desktop-test/files/

General Usage

Anybody comfortable with windowing and desktop systems should be able to figure out how to use this fairly easily. There's a file manager to browse the file system, drag-and-drop to move or copy files (shift-drag or right-click-drag to copy files instead of moving, on browsers where this works), a trashcan for deleting files, a context menu for further actions (This has issues on several browsers. Use either right-click or click-and-hold to trigger it, depending on what works).

From the context menu, you can change permissions on files, rename them (also works by clicking a selected file, like most OSes do), download files, upload files, make new files and directories...

There's a text editor to edit files, with basic support for different character sets. It's quite limited at the time, and has some bugs, but it works. It's set as the default action for most filetype, so just doubleclicking a file will open it.

You can minimize windows by double-clicking the title bar. The little red square (which really needs some actual graphics) is the close button.

Server-side installation and issues

There are two alternatives for installation of this thing. One is the good old zip archive:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/desktop_0.1.0.zip

Unpack it on your server, chmod 755 desktop.pl, and go to http://.../desktop.pl, and you should see a small config screen.

The other is more experimental and exciting. I have created a self-installing package in Perl:

http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/desktop_inst.pl

Upload this to your webserver, chmod it to 755, and run it through a browser (or from a shell, but that's not as much fun). It should show you the files it has unpacked, and will then delete itself and set the right permissions on desktop.pl. You can then just hit desktop.pl, and you're good to go.

Well, that's the theory. There will no doubt be a lot of issues.

One thing to realize is this: The web server must have access to write all the files you want to work with! This will work fine under certain conditions: If you or your host uses mod_suexec to run CGI scripts under your user, things will work. If your web server runs as some other user, you will have to chown all files you want to be able to change to it. You might also be able to get it to work by suiding it to run as root, but if you want to do that, I'm going to assume you know what you're doing. It might be a bit risky.

Browser issues

Since this thing really goes far beyond most normal uses of JS and the DOM, it is very good at triggering bugs in browser implementations. No browser will run it entirely correctly as it stands now. I've added a lot of workaround for various browser bugs, but some things just can't be fudged to work. Here are some issues with various browsers:

Firefox, Windows

• Scroll wheel doesn't work in filemanager. No idea why. I suspect a bug in Firefox.
• The text cursor disappears sometimes when several text editor windows are open. Firefox bug.

IE, Windows

• Sucks in general. IE's CSS support is laughable, as is the JS. I've tried to get it to at least be usable in IE, but it has many, many quirks and issues.
• No line numbers in the text editor. There might be ways to implement them here, but I haven't put in the effort. If anyone wants to give it a shot, go ahead.

Safari, Mac OS

• Can't open context menu with right mouse button - Safari bug.
• Upload is somewhat broken - Another Safari bug.
• In Safari, there's a "Log out" button that closes down everything and syncs the registry. This is needed if you want to close down before the registry has had time to synchronize on its own (which happens every minute or so). All other browsers will automatically synchronize when you close the window. Safari bug, again.
• Minimizing text editor windows will lose your scroll position - the workaround code for this doesn't work in Safari like it does in other browsers, no idea why.
• No line numbers in the text editor.

Firefox, Mac OS

• Context menu works strangely. Haven't investigated much.
• Scrollbars are drawn all over everything. Firefox bug.

Things that need work

There are quite a number of things that I would like to have, but that I haven't yet implemented. Among these are:

• A prettier look. The current one is partly just a placeholder.
• An archiver app for unpack and creating zip and tgz files.
• Snap-to-edge for window moving
• Keyboard controls
• A better login system, and support for multiple users (logging in with your normal login for the machine, for instance)
• Gzip encoding support to make the downloads smaller - there's a LOT of JS code being downloaded.
• An alternate file browser for those who prefer more browser-like file management.
• Save and open dialogs for apps.
• A much less broken text editor - support for saving after opening a new window, better charset handling, better line number calculations, prettier interface...
• Cleaning up circular references when closing down, to avoid memory leaks. Javascript supposedly leaks memory quite a bit due to this.

Copyright

This early version, at least, is public domain. I might change to some sort of license later, but not yet. The icons are all stolen from David Vigoni's Nuvola icon set: http://www.icon-king.com/. Those are released under the LGPL, but I really have no idea what that means when it comes to icons. I'll have to ask the man himself at some point, but for now I hope he doesn't mind.

In closing

Sheesh, what a huge pile of text.

What I'm hoping for now are a few things. Bugreports and suggestions are very welcome, but read through this text first to see if I already know about it. What is even more welcome is actual code. This thing is very modular and extensible, and others can easily (or so I'd like to think) implement extra applications for it. If you've got code to fix bugs or add other functionality, I'd like to see that, too.

I should write a whole bunch of documentation for the internal APIs for this thing, but that will have to wait a little while. If you're interesting, dig into the .js files, or talk to me.

Well, I'd hope that's that, but I'm sure I forgot to mention something. But for now, I hope you'll have some fun with this.

That's strange. That error message is actually a leftover debug thing, and I should remove it (or you could try just commenting out that line with a #), but it should only trigger if you try to access a file or directory that doesn't actually exist.

When do you get this? Immediately at login, or when trying to open up a directory?

immediatley upon login. I also noticed that when trying to go from / to /home2/ in the file manager (/ set as base dir) the folders in home2 never show up. thanks for the speady reply, btw

What Perl version is this? I really can't figure out what it's doing... Try running "perl -v" in a shell.

perl 5.6.1

is there any kind of debug statements I could add?

I wish I had a 5.6 installation to test on, but sadly I don't... I suspect there is something fishy with some module or other in 5.6... I'll have to check around some though.

As a workaround, can you just put both desktop.pl and .desktop in the directory you want? Does that work?

Unfortunately, no. I tried moving them to my public html folder with no luck. I'm going to try a fresh install there and let you know what happens

OUTSTANDING work on the unnamed desktop! May I suggest a name? Iniquity Desktop (A reference to the Iniquity BBS software I used to run :P )

I've made some changes:

• Look and feel of the desktop: Rounded edges, prettier colors (IMHO), some transluent areas, and a background image from gnome desktop :P (I hope to have this configurable soon too)
• I changed the Data::Dumper+eval usage for the registry and server settings to use YAML instead. It's safer and the config files are easier to edit by hand if needed.
• small ImageCache library that the Filesystem context.js file uses to precache the images in the dropdown menus.

I setup a demo here: http://xantus.org/desktop-test/ (test/test is the login) The config task is disabled.
Here's a screenshot: http://xatnus.org/images/desktop.png

I'm a perl programmer (xantus on CPAN). My site is http://teknikill.net/

I'd like to get in contact with the author.

OOPS I screwed up the link to the screenshot. Here it is again: http://xantus.org/images/desktop.png

Nice! The look I made really needs some work - much of it is just a placeholder, really. Yours is a nice start. The selected window colour could be a bit more noticeable, possibly. And the close gadget needs to be turned into something more than a pink square at some point.

I've avoided using any non-standard modules to make the desktop as easy as possible to use on web hosts where you can't install modules. Can YAML be included as just another file in the distro?

I'll have a look at the other code later. If you want to mail me, my address is at the bottom of the front page: http://wakaba.c3.cx/

I really like this desktop application, and I'm very interested in helping out with it. It would be a great website administration tool for the less technically savy. I also see a lot of opportunity for the Perl code to be improved and added on. I'll probably be playing around with it for a little while and I'll let you know if a make any useful changes to the code.

Go right ahead! I'll be happy to include any improvements people make.

I've made some improvements to the desktop:

• Collapsed notes stay collapsed when the desktop is reloaded.
• Notes auto title themselves from the top line. This helps finding the right one when notes are collapsed.
• I added a Media Player as a desktop floater (bottom left). It works with the next item.
• I now have an XM, and Sirius radio app working. Both require a valid account (or guest account) to work. It lists all the channels and double clicking one plays via the Media Player floater.
• I added an About 'The Desktop' app to give credit to the author.
• Added an X image to windows and moved it to the top right.
• Probably more...

Drool over this screen shot: http://xantus.org/images/desktop2.png

I will release all my improvements to the author soon. It needs to be cleaned up and tested with other OS's and browsers.

-Xantus

Sirius is like all the worst radio stations on Earth in one big pile. Could you write something that plays from a list of bookmarkable radio streams?

is the fact that the desktop scrolls if you move a window down past the bottom or over past the right edge a feature or a bug?

A little of both. It might be possible to remove the scrollbars, but since window positions are remembered, you might use it on a large monitor and move things far away, and then use it on a small one, and not be able to find them again.

I like Sirius 20 Octane, but I also have XM radio. My next mod will probably be a MP3 system. I've already created a playlist slider to go above the media player. I can't turn on the Sirius and XM modules for the test user until I can create dialog boxes to set the user/pass for that session. I added openrico for the fading and sliding effects. http://openrico.org/ I also added multiple account support. Each user can have a different config, but this also breaks the current config script to set the username and password. On the bright side, I converted the config files to yaml so they are easily edited on the server. I like the note system, but I would love to get a schedule/todo list app written.

Anonymous: I could write something to accept a url, or even a shoutcast module that pulls a stream list from winamp.com. The desktop api is easy enought to just use mediaplayer_play(url) to start a stream.

Click on my name above to visit my site.

Hey. Do you have any tips on how I could take advantage of this script if the only browser I had access to was Internet Explorer. I hope one day you build in a full fledged word processor (something like at my university). They don't seem to have any alternative browser installed. Occasionally I see FireFox and then the next day it's gone (?). Thanks.

It does work in IE, it's just a little bit buggy ugly.

Oh, yea, it does work now. The last time I tried it, every time I moved a window it closed for some reason.

Any idea how I could log out? This doesn't seem to be logging me out right now, and I don't have a log-out button.

Ah, haven't bothered to implement that yet. You'll be logged out once you close the browser...

This looks really cool, but the username and password (test, test) don't seem to actually work. I want to see what you've done!

^^

That's funny, it works fine from here. There's some obscure bug that might break it if you create some weird enough filenames, but that doesn't seem to have happened. I can log in just fine.

Be aware some browsers don't work properly.

Like, uh... Opera... sob

http://digg.com/design/CSS_Javascript_Desktop

These people have missed out.

http://digg.com/design/CSS_Javascript_Desktop

These people have missed out.

Needs more recognition!
http://digg.com/software/Virtual_desktop_in_your_Web_browser

Also, I found a link to The Desktop on here:
http://wema.sourceforge.jp/cgi-bin/index.cgi?page=DustBox

>>62

I made something like that, way back, but it was designed to be much stupider! It might even still be working:

http://infa.abo.fi/~dagren/cgi-bin/damage/damage.pl

does this desktop thing work in konqueror 3.5?

I haven't the slightest.

>>64
>>65

Just tried it in Konqueror 3.4.3, it stops loading with "Internal error: Task not supported" just after logging in. I don't have 3.5 on this machine.

>>66
i know it doesn't work in 3.4.3... that's what i'm using...
i'm wondering if it will work once i upgrade to 3.5 (once 3.5 is in freebsd ports)

i just upgraded to kde 3.5 and it works in konqueror now...

Is development totally stopped on this?

It'd be awesome if it was just a little more developed.

*Zip/tar/rar re-archiver?
*Media player?
*Backgrounds?

>>72

Yeah, I've kind of got too many other projects to want to bother with the major headache of trying to get advanced javascript working across multiple browsers.

I really wish somebody would else would pick it up and work on it, though.

I like what the David Davis dude was doing with it, I hope he releases a version of his mods soon.
Also, for anyone who wants to know, the version I have (I actually dont know what version of desktop it is, but It doesnt seem to have updated in a while, so i assume its 'latest') doesnt work at all in the new safari 3 beta for windows. When I access desktop.pl, the background comes up, but the login box thingy never shows. cant even login at all....
Just thought someone would want to know this if development was started up on it, Also, If i knew either JS or perl, id help, but I'm not learning either of those for another year or so.... :(
-Aranje
Loyal beta tester and user of 'Desktop'

>>74 Safari for Windows is broken badly.

It was pretty nice, easy to setup, practically no setup, simple and it worked. Can't save files from the text editor though, dunno, maybe i made a boo boo.

Though i highly doubt you just hacked this together to replace ssh or other methods of managing files on remote systems. Sounds like bullshit to me, sorry but considering how easy it is to setup convenient ways to manage files through sftp or ssh and the fact that 'web2.0' desktops have been all the craze on the world wide web these last years i just think you're full of shit.

>>76

This was made two and a half years ago, genius.

i almost forgot i had this on my site too.

5/5

ok, i know this i really old.... but its relative to my interests!

i'd like to do something similar to this in the future

when i try to access it:

  Undefined subroutine &main::make_http_forward called at /home/htdocs/jd/desktop.pl line 33.

i figured if i manually inputted the config url it would work, but i get a blank screen.. (dated javascript?)

can anyone help me? i wish i could fix it myself, but i'm rather new to perl..

--do you think the concept of this is obsolete now?

Did you upload all the files properly? Sounds like something's missing.

I found the cause of the Firefox XML parsing problem.

If you have links in header.html or footer.html, the perl code is not processing/parsing those files correctly.

You are probably also getting orphaned .dat files in your root directory for each board.

>>80

Sorry LATE reply. The only file in http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/ contains a single script, desktop.pl. After I setting its permissions I get that error when I try to execute in the browser.
Are there other files I need to get it to work?

> The only file in http://wakaba.c3.cx/releases/ contains a single script, desktop.pl.

$ unzip -l desktop_0.1.4.zip
Archive:  desktop_0.1.4.zip
  Length     Date   Time    Name
 --------    ----   ----    ----
        0  05-29-05 15:56   .desktop/
        0  05-20-05 19:15   .desktop/Applications/
        0  05-20-05 19:28   .desktop/Applications/Dock/
      748  05-09-05 20:31   .desktop/Applications/Dock/dock.css
     1929  05-20-05 19:26   .desktop/Applications/Dock/dock.js
     4269  10-14-04 07:00   .desktop/Applications/Dock/logout.png
     4997  09-29-04 11:13   .desktop/Applications/Dock/trashcan.png
        0  05-20-05 19:44   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/
      981  10-14-04 06:59   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/chmod.png
     5043  05-13-05 19:00   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/context.js
      678  10-03-04 10:40   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/copy.png
      860  10-14-04 06:27   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/delete.png
     3131  10-07-04 18:15   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/download.png
     3387  05-11-05 12:35   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/download_small.png
     2320  05-13-05 18:03   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/dragdrop.js
     1110  05-21-05 19:00   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/filemanager.css
    10711  05-30-05 07:31   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/filemanager.js
     4921  09-29-04 11:40   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/filemanager.png
      502  10-14-04 13:30   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/makedir.png
      805  10-14-04 06:27   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/makefile.png
      708  09-25-04 07:39   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/move.png
      857  10-14-04 06:28   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/rename.png
      908  10-14-04 06:25   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/run_js.png
     1485  05-13-05 19:40   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/selection.js
      144  05-04-05 18:04   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/transfer.css
     3579  05-30-05 14:18   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/transfer.js
     1570  05-21-05 19:40   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/transfer.pl
     3256  05-04-05 16:33   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/upload.png
     3487  05-11-05 12:36   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/upload_small.png
     1217  05-11-05 17:00   .desktop/Applications/Filemanager/utils.js
        0  05-18-05 06:04   .desktop/Applications/Imageviewer/
      721  04-26-05 20:06   .desktop/Applications/Imageviewer/imageviewer.js
        0  05-20-05 19:19   .desktop/Applications/Notes/
     1421  05-21-05 18:47   .desktop/Applications/Notes/notes.css
     3072  05-18-05 15:12   .desktop/Applications/Notes/notes.js
     3267  10-08-04 07:05   .desktop/Applications/Notes/notes.png
        0  05-21-05 17:04   .desktop/Applications/Texteditor/
      173  04-23-05 17:03   .desktop/Applications/Texteditor/texteditor.css
     8157  05-21-05 17:19   .desktop/Applications/Texteditor/texteditor.js
     4979  09-29-04 04:50   .desktop/Applications/Texteditor/texteditor.png
        0  05-31-05 06:48   .desktop/Config/
       14  05-22-05 15:42   .desktop/Config/.htaccess
        0  05-18-05 06:04   .desktop/Icons/
        0  05-18-05 06:04   .desktop/Icons/Large/
     2566  10-03-04 10:32   .desktop/Icons/Large/archive.png
     1895  10-03-04 10:35   .desktop/Icons/Large/css.png
      782  10-03-04 10:44   .desktop/Icons/Large/default.png
     3030  09-29-04 11:40   .desktop/Icons/Large/directory.png
     2034  10-03-04 10:43   .desktop/Icons/Large/html.png
     1605  10-03-04 10:43   .desktop/Icons/Large/image.png
     1116  10-03-04 10:40   .desktop/Icons/Large/multiple.png
     1860  10-03-04 10:33   .desktop/Icons/Large/perl.png
     1648  10-03-04 10:30   .desktop/Icons/Large/text.png
        0  05-18-05 06:04   .desktop/Icons/Small/
     1050  10-03-04 10:32   .desktop/Icons/Small/archive.png
      941  10-03-04 10:35   .desktop/Icons/Small/css.png
      458  10-03-04 10:44   .desktop/Icons/Small/default.png
      502  10-14-04 13:30   .desktop/Icons/Small/directory.png
      951  10-03-04 10:43   .desktop/Icons/Small/html.png
      824  10-03-04 10:43   .desktop/Icons/Small/image.png
      678  10-03-04 10:40   .desktop/Icons/Small/multiple.png
      848  10-03-04 10:33   .desktop/Icons/Small/perl.png
      734  10-03-04 10:30   .desktop/Icons/Small/text.png
        0  05-22-05 15:43   .desktop/Libraries/
        0  05-18-05 06:04   .desktop/Libraries/Crypto/
     1318  05-12-05 18:47   .desktop/Libraries/Crypto/rc4.js
        0  05-18-05 06:04   .desktop/Libraries/Dragdrop/
      197  04-23-05 19:13   .desktop/Libraries/Dragdrop/dragdrop.css
     4138  05-30-05 07:42   .desktop/Libraries/Dragdrop/dragdrop.js
        0  05-18-05 14:48   .desktop/Libraries/File/
     2893  05-11-05 17:15   .desktop/Libraries/File/fileactions.pl
     2163  05-13-05 19:43   .desktop/Libraries/File/filecopy.pl
     7984  05-21-05 18:33   .desktop/Libraries/File/filelib.js
     2486  05-22-05 17:34   .desktop/Libraries/File/fileutils.pl
        0  05-20-05 19:21   .desktop/Libraries/Login/
      783  05-22-05 17:30   .desktop/Libraries/Login/auth.pl
     1359  05-20-05 20:11   .desktop/Libraries/Login/desktop.css
     2539  05-30-05 07:48   .desktop/Libraries/Login/login.js
        0  05-20-05 20:02   .desktop/Libraries/Menu/
      156  05-09-05 20:14   .desktop/Libraries/Menu/blank.png
      528  05-13-05 21:32   .desktop/Libraries/Menu/menu.css
     3111  05-21-05 18:07   .desktop/Libraries/Menu/menu.js
        0  05-22-05 15:43   .desktop/Libraries/Misc/
      574  04-23-05 14:53   .desktop/Libraries/Misc/applications.js
      463  05-05-05 16:59   .desktop/Libraries/Misc/icons.js
     6907  05-20-05 19:18   .desktop/Libraries/Misc/utils.js
    23037  05-30-05 13:12   .desktop/Libraries/Misc/wakautils.pl
        0  05-20-05 17:07   .desktop/Libraries/Registry/
     4081  05-20-05 18:35   .desktop/Libraries/Registry/registry.js
     1004  05-22-05 17:32   .desktop/Libraries/Registry/registry.pl
        0  05-22-05 15:44   .desktop/Libraries/Server/
     3834  05-31-05 06:48   .desktop/Libraries/Server/config.pl
     1090  05-22-05 19:34   .desktop/Libraries/Server/desktop.pl
        0  05-21-05 17:24   .desktop/Libraries/Window/
      199  04-18-05 12:55   .desktop/Libraries/Window/resize.png
     1814  05-09-05 20:09   .desktop/Libraries/Window/window.css
     6059  05-21-05 17:44   .desktop/Libraries/Window/window.js
     1350  05-22-05 17:40   desktop.pl
 --------                   -------
   188996                   98 files

>>84

i see what you did there