Talk:The Rebol Viewtop
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Reuse the Viewtop Window
When people run an application these days and click on something, they don't like it when new windows pop up. The programs run by the Viewtop should cooperate and execute from within it. Fork 15:56, 7 January 2010 (EST)
- The programs run by the Viewtop are run by separate interpreters in separate processes. It would require a major restructuring of the semantic model to allow separate processes to reuse the same window and that won't happen in R2. For R3 we have planned to have something completely different than the Viewtop, and more like what you request here. BrianH 17:43, 7 January 2010 (EST)
More Exciting Splash
The viewtop does not start up with a lot of pizzaz. It seems that since many of the demos people are going to click are going to be graphics oriented, that perhaps picking a snazzy effect that isn't too computationally burdensome to would be good. Pointilize is fairly nice... maybe it could bring up a splash screen?
Also, Google Nexus One has got some nice subtle animations of the background as you're picking out icons. Maybe the Viewtop could do a little subtle animation of its own. If the window were reused then it wouldn't be a concern that this would degrade performance once you've picked a demo to run. Fork 15:56, 7 January 2010 (EST)
Security
This is important. Among things needed:
- Security should be tight (e.g. reads and writes on the local filesystem should be disabled by default) and if you turn them on, the viewtop should set them back
- There should be a "Sandbox Test" people can click on before running anything pulled off the network.
- You should also be asked if you want to wipe the interpreter state. Imagine this case:
>> data: load %my-personal-data.txt == ... ; Much later.... >> viewtop
People should be very conscious that they're running these demos off the network, so messages to that effect ("Downloading"/"Executing") should be prominent. Fork 15:56, 7 January 2010 (EST)
- The reblets are run in separate processes so wiping the interpreter state is unnecessary - they use separate interpreters. Reads and writes to the local filesystem are limited to a per-reblet sandbox directory, and are required for most reblets. BrianH 17:46, 7 January 2010 (EST)
Reblet Comments
Viewing the source of these Reblets is one of their main values... to educate. But the absence of comments undermines this purpose.
Perhaps when comments are added, they could always be put on their own line. Then there could be a "show comments" and "hide comments" button in the provided Rebol-based editor/viewer. That could be the best of both worlds—driving home how brief the code is, while giving new users some kind of guidance on how the programs work. Fork 16:06, 7 January 2010 (EST)
