Arch Linux

fflarex

Member

Registered: 2007-09-15

Posts: 466

a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

Okay, so I've had this idea for a while to write a program that provides a dynamic home page that runs locally on the user's computer. It would do all the normal things that home pages usually do (search, links, rss feeds, stock prices, news, etc). But I can think of a ton of advantages of having it locally which would allow it to do other useful things that online pages can't: because it's local it does not need to worry about privacy, and can therefore collect all kinds of data such as browsing history statistics, recent spending trends, or other sensitive info. And also, because it's local, it can interact with other programs on the user's system (media controls, an embedded conky, IM contact presence information, maybe something to embed plasmoids/gdesklets, bookmarks aggregated from all your currently installed browsers, and I'm sure other people could come up with all sorts of other ideas). It would be themable via differents presets or custom CSS. And of course it would be modular, so that people could write their own gadgets for their page, or skip out on certain dependencies (like for the embedded plasmoids, which may only work in a KDE desktop and WebKit-based browser, or more likely not work at all (but I can dream big, right?)).

Currently the status of this project is just an idea in my head. The only similar thing I've heard of is a local page that the web browser Flock provides, although I haven't used it at all. But I'm thinking this would be more browser/desktop agnostic. If anyone knows of a similar program please let me know.

I will be starting this project regardless of pre-existing programs or community interest, but how far I take it will depend entirely on community interest. After all, any time I spend working on this could just as easily be spent maintaining my own custom home page in bare xhtml/css. I'm fairly new to programming, so the development pace wouldn't be the fastest. So, what do you think?

Last edited by fflarex (2008-02-26 18:54:57)

kumico

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Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 224

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Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

not of too much use to me, mainly because of the privacy issues. basically, if i can know it, an it's not in my head.
then other people can know it.
but i'm always interested in new ideas, and am willing to pitch in where i can.

fflarex

Member

Registered: 2007-09-15

Posts: 466

Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

If you are that concerned about privacy, are you already using encryption? It's not perfect, but it's a near-guarantee of privacy if done right. My entire drive is encrypted and not even I know the password (it's on a usb drive that I carry with me on my keys, which I could easily hide or destroy if someone got my hard drive).

finferflu

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From: Manchester, UK

Registered: 2007-06-21

Posts: 1,899

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Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

That sounds like an interesting idea... reminds me of my plan for the Graphics Terminal or Whatever-You-Call-It. I'll subscribe to this thread

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ibendiben

Member

Registered: 2007-10-10

Posts: 519

Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

To me this is a great idea too! I've had the exact same thoughts a while ago (after I first tested Linux actually)... I didn't think of it as a homepage only, more like an superbig taskbar or desktop... so it's more of a permanent... background
It could quicken a lot of (everyday) tasks... placing all kind of smarkt links on it (bookmarks, filelinks, app-launcher )
Embedded searchbars... console...

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finferflu

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From: Manchester, UK

Registered: 2007-06-21

Posts: 1,899

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Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

Gimme the time to actually learn some programming, and I'll be back with some prototype
Your ideas and mine seem to reflect some common aims, this is very good

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peets

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From: Montreal

Registered: 2007-01-11

Posts: 936

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Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

No wonder the title was catchy...

in "the other thread", wuischke said

But particularly in terms of information presentation and contextual interaktion, a modern GUI has the potential to be a lot more effective than any 80x25 terminal. I implemented a simple webserver in my last C application and used in fact HTML for the presentation of the information, because it allowed me the output of ALL information in a very clear way on my 1280x800 notebook screen, while terminal output would have been almost unusable for this and even a GTK application would be worse in terms of information presentation.

Still, HTML is a bad choice, because there's no reliable rendering anywhere, designing is a PITA and the communication via HTTP is more complicated than it should be for a simple GUI.

It's a difficult problem. If it's browser-agnostic, it will be hard to access things like history and bookmarks (I don't think there're standard ways of doing these?). If it's OS-agnostic, it will be hard to control applications from within the homepage.

But, HTML+CSS allows quick markup and editing (if one knows what they're doing --not me!) so that's an advantage. And, if the data comes in widely accepted formats (e.g. rss), and if a wise choice is made for platform-independent apps (e.g. apps with a web interface), I'm sure this can turn out to be really neat! Most everyone has a web browser already installed.

Last edited by peets (2008-02-26 18:27:40)

fflarex

Member

Registered: 2007-09-15

Posts: 466

Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

It's a difficult problem. If it's browser-agnostic, it will be hard to access things like history and bookmarks (I don't think there're standard ways of doing these?). If it's OS-agnostic, it will be hard to control applications from within the homepage.

It is a difficult problem, made more difficult by my inexperience. But I think a plugin system of some kind would work very well. There could be different plugins for Konqueror, Firefox, Epiphany, Opera to allow access to bookmarks and history. Cross-platform wouldn't be a goal of mine, at least not at first. (Although I'm positive that this type of thing would be perfect for my parents, who use Windows...)

mhd

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Registered: 2008-02-06

Posts: 21

Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

I wouldn't make a program like this too complicated, or, in other words, I wouldn't make it _a_ program at all. This looks like a decent task for the Unix tool chain. I think the interface would have to be quite dynamic, so generating a static HTML file is out. This leaves us with a small http server, configured to allow only access from localhost.

Now this "home page" would be an interface to a lot of statistics and information, but those bits and pieces are best done by small programs of their own, probably triggered as cron jobs. A rss feed parser would be a prime example. Also, if cross-browser support is important, a proxy server would be a simple solution, as any browser would use that and thus the data-mining tools wouldn't have to comb through a multitude of caches, but only the proxy's. Some of those scriptlets would write their status or information in plain text files, making integration with conky etc. rather easy to do.

Start small and add more functionality. I'd set up a web server first and create some test scripts. A news feed and maybe quota information at first.

Sigi

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From: Thurgau, Switzerland

Registered: 2005-09-22

Posts: 1,131

Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

what about cherrypy?

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fflarex

Member

Registered: 2007-09-15

Posts: 466

Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

... snippet...

Well, most all programs are essentially collections of smaller programs. I haven't thought through implementation details at all yet, as I'm still trying to pin down what exactly I want it to be able to do, although I did have a proxy solution in the back of my mind.

finferflu

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From: Manchester, UK

Registered: 2007-06-21

Posts: 1,899

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Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

The only problem I have with a web-browser specific application is the actual web-browser. They are the applications I detest the most. Hogging my system with bloat I would either opt for something which is more lightweight or create a new lightweight web-browser... or wait for a graphical Elinks

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fflarex

Member

Registered: 2007-09-15

Posts: 466

Re: a program that provides a local, dynamic home page... thoughts?

Well, browser-agnosticism will very much be part of the project, because I myself can't decide between Firefox or Konqueror at the moment. I am absolutely in love with WebKit, but the interface and plugins of Firefox beat the pants off of anything else. And of course, there are the otherworldly capabilities that are unique to Konqueror.

Last edited by fflarex (2008-02-26 19:50:49)