pyjamas 0.7 released

[Patrick Maupin]

On Apr 26, 8:44 am, lkcl <luke.leigh... at googlemail.com> wrote:

>  the purpose of browsers is to isolate the application, restrict its
> access to the rest of the desktop and OS, so that random applications
> cannot go digging around on your private data.

Well, I would agree that a "requirement" for the browser is to help
insure the user's safety, but would argue that the *purpose* is
somewhat more functional than that :-)

>  many browsers _used_ to allow access to local files etc. but ...
> yeah.

I know.  But, with most browsers, you can say "yes, I know I'm
downloading this Java program. I know it can have its way with my hard
drive.  Trust me; I know what I'm doing here."  Same thing with Adobe
or Microsoft stuff:  silverlight, AIR, flash, PDFs.  Basically, the
browser delegates ALL security control at that point.  I just think it
would be nice if the browser could delegate a _little_ security
control to the user ("allow this JavaScript program to read/write
arbitrary files in this directory"; possibly with a total file size
limitation) for programs that can run inside the browser.
>
>  so i think you will be able to do what you describe _if_ you provide
> a browser plugin which adds the required functionality.

Agreed.  Alternatively, of course, you could have code to let the user
"download" to a local file from the application's local storage area
for backup purposes, but that seems suboptimal.

>  google gears would be a good place to start (i've part-ported GWT
> Gears to pyjamas - the SQL storage modules - to demonstrate what's
> needed).

I think even gears assumes a database under the browser's control; not
an arbitrary node in the filesystem.  Also, I think gears is no longer
being developed.  Of course, gears could be OK as a starting point,
but really what you are saying is that everybody wanting to use this
new file local storage feature would need an add-on.  I agree that's
probable, but in that case it's only really worth doing if a lot of
projects would use it.  I'm not sure if that will come to pass or not
-- it would need a lot of programmers to think that it was a great
thing.

OTOH, if a particular browser supported this functionality natively,
then it might be a competitive advantage if applications did develop
to support it.

>  if however you completely ignore browsers from the equation, by
> virtue of having to piss about writing c code, then yes, you can use
> pyjamas-desktop.  at that point, you have _full_ access to the entire
> OS and system, because you're firing up the web browser engine as a
> python application.

That's understood (and a great thing).  But if programmers could use
pyjamas in the browser without an extra download to get to all the
desktop features (which is how it *appears* to most users when they
use flash or something like that), that would be a great win.
Alternatively, a single small download of a broswer add-on package to
bring pyjamas desktop features into the browser (maybe even just for
mozilla for now) would be awesome, as well.

Regards,
Pat