| | 1 | = Where Is the Future? = |
| | 2 | Now that we are 1/52 into the year 2006, it seems like a good time to vent about some things. |
| | 3 | |
| | 4 | == GUI Widgets == |
| | 5 | I am writing this in a <textarea> in Mozilla Firefox. It is virtually indistinguishable from a multi-line text-editing widget in Windows 3.1. I do not have any choice in this matter. The best alternative I can find is [http://mozex.mozdev.org/ mozex], which loads some text into my favorite text editor, lets me edit it, and then dumps it back in Firefox when I am finished. That is hardly elegant, when I can accomplish the same thing with about as much effort by copying and pasting. |
| | 6 | |
| | 7 | Why can't I embed [http://www.vim.org/ vim] in Firefox? Why can I not replace every multi-line plain text-editing widget on my system with instances of my favorite text editor? I know KDE explored this idea, but it's not working for me right now, and I've certainly never seen it done anywhere else. |
| | 8 | |
| | 9 | == GUI Toolkits == |
| | 10 | [http://www.gtk.org/ Why] [http://www.trolltech.com/ must] [http://www.fltk.org/ every] [http://www.wxwindows.org/ GUI] toolkit [http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/vcmfc98/html/mfchm.asp suck]? Before you argue that your favorite GUI toolkit does not suck, realize that some of the following are true: |
| | 11 | * It can't do something that every other GUI toolkit can do. |
| | 12 | * The rapid development GUI editor sucks. |
| | 13 | * Creating GUIs manually in code is cumbersome. |
| | 14 | * They just released a new version, because the previous version sucks. |
| | 15 | * They are currently working on a new version, because the current version sucks. |
| | 16 | * It is competing with other GUI toolkits that suck. If it didn't suck, it would clearly be superior. |
| | 17 | * It doesn't work everywhere. |
| | 18 | |
| | 19 | == Computer Mediated Communication == |
| | 20 | I suspect that right now a whole lot of people are chatting with other people using [http://www.aim.com/ AOL's stock chat client]. I suspect they are looking at advertisements that they don't want to see, and on average, their names probably contain almost as many digits as letters, and not by choice. Meanwhile, I am connected to several IRC servers, IRC being a protocol which is quickly approaching its 20th birthday. Few will argue that [http://rfc.net/rfc1459.txt IRC] is a good protocol, but it is curiously pervasive. |
| | 21 | |
| | 22 | What is wrong here... |
| | 23 | * I can't send a message, using AIM, to someone is isn't currently online. |
| | 24 | * Staying on AIM all of the time to be able to receive messages like an answering machine is problematic, at best. |
| | 25 | * I can't connect from multiple places, or if I can, I can't reliably get all of my messages. |
| | 26 | * I can't talk to people on some other service. |
| | 27 | * On occasion, service is unavailable with no explanation. |
| | 28 | |
| | 29 | == !WikiWiki == |
| | 30 | It has been great to see [http://en.wikipedia.org/ wikis] gain public attention this year, but why should they stop there? I want to see data in more structured formats being edited in the style of wikis. Rather than specifying high-level presentation details as well as content in flat text files, can't we have a better system where data exists in terms of lists, tables, name/value pairs, graphs, or whatever is desired, accompanied by a friendly GUI to edit this new structure of information? I also want to be able to access a wiki as a local filesystem and make my changes as though I were working on a local text file. [http://search.cpan.org/~markj/WWW-Mediawiki-Client/bin/mvs MVS] is the idea, but there has to be a better way to do this. |
| | 31 | |
| | 32 | == Another Thing == |
| | 33 | Vendors: fix your crappy web sites! |
| | 34 | |
| | 35 | I should '''not''' be able to go to [http://www.asus.com/ some vendor's web site], navigate a maze of pages to find a product in the ''Products'' section, and then have to start over and find it again in the ''Downloads'' or ''Service'' section to get a file I need. Welcome to the World Wide Web. Use those wads of cash I have given you to invest in some [http://www.webcom.com/html/tutor/hotlink.shtml hyperlinks]. |
| | 36 | |
| | 37 | == Conclusion == |
| | 38 | Some of these ideas are pretty bad. I don't care. Science fiction had us inhabiting other planets by now. I don't think it's too much to ask to make some better software. |
| | 39 | |
| | 40 | == Also... == |
| | 41 | What's the deal with airplane peanuts? And where are hovercars? I want hovercars! |
