Web Desktop/OS Pt.1

I've been looking at a couple Web Desktops/OS's such as EyeOS, BrowserOS(from iCUBE), YouOS, Desktop Two, and so on. This is going to be a series of round ups so look for more on this subject in the future.

EyeOS is good if you have a copy downloaded to a home machine and are running it with Apache and PHP, with the Office dependencies it requires to handle office applications. And your connection to your home machine has restricted access to only a set number of domains and is access over an https connection. So I'd vote no unless your willing to do all the work it takes to set that up. There is a demo you can if you want to try before signing up for free.

BrowserOS looks good, but it lacks applications at the moment. What I'd like to see in it would be a console similar to BASH or dos. Call me old fashioned for wanting that, but most of my best works come from the command line. This is for the Office outside of the office.

YouOS: While YouOS has a console, the interface is somewhat awkward, as though the devs wanted to have a tie in between a Mac and Windows 95. There is a slew of Apps being developed for YouOS, but you'd have to sit and sort through hundreds of apps to find the ones you want. There isn't much in terms of Office documents aside from a rich text editor. But the login interface is in https, so there is more security in keeping your password from being snagged. This has some great potential for improvement and I can't wait to see what they can pull out this year.

DesktopTwo has a petty interface but has a builtin ad-widget you cannot hide from your desktop(but on the bright-side it does stay at the bottom now). It has an office suite, MP3 player, blog, webpage, email(w/pop), IM software(use Meebo instead), message boards, etc. It's currently in the beta phase of development so you can't expect much. for now. I'd advise against it for now until the information on the site is arranged better.

Final Answer, YouOS. The interface may not be the prettiest, but it'll get the job done.

Coccinella IS Portable

Coccinella is a Jabber client with a builtin Whiteboard(used to go by that name) and has VoIP features optional. A recent update made this client portable with a simple preference option. Once checked the data is saved in a folder(Coccinella-prefs) outside of the Application folder.
/App
/Data
Get the idea now? Back to the subject.
And to make the portable feature easier to use, it comes in a nifty little zip file. Either grab the build with VoIP or the one without. I'd rather use Meebo for voice communication over the web anyway. In this case it's for those who have managed to migrate completely to Jabber and somehow convinced their contacts to follow too. I should mention the new update also comes with a sleek black skin.

Alternate shell from your USB

BlackBox is an alternate shell some of you have probably seen on Linux distros. But it has a port for windows. There are a few variants for Blackbox for windows(BB4W) as well. And best of all, they are to the best of my knowledge portable. Even though they are portable you have the option of full installation. It's fast, lightweight, minimalistic, and even though it was designed to be fast and not pretty you can have that too. If you don't like the styles that came with Blackbox or the flavor you downloaded you can always hit up BoxShots to see more or even make your own.

My Flavor of choice is BBLean, because I can drag and drop wallpapers to my desktop. Now I'm sure those of you who have tried running Blackbox from your USB or tested it without installing noticed there were some minor features you couldn't use without installing(or so you first thought). Ditto. Like how some icons never show up in the tray, I have a shortcut for you.

1.Three finger Salute Ctr+Alt+Del , This brings up task manager
2. Kill the Process Tree for Explorer.exe
3. From the task manager, start a new task:

[path-to-blackbox]\Blackbox.exe

4. Presto, you're running Blackbox without installing and your BlackBox tray now loads all icons.

With this you can have BBLean running portable.


BBLean
BlackBox for Windows
BlackBox Wiki @ Sourceforge

Another Portable Wiki

StickWiki is a small lightweight portable wiki that is standalone and operates from a single xhtml file. It offers AES encryption as well. It isn't that large and has built in documentation for making and adding pages, links, etc. It certainly has a different approach compared to TiddlyWiki in terms of function and interface. I recommend this as an alternative to TiddlyWiki, if not for the encryption features.



Wiki on a Stick!
StickWiki Project page @ sourceforge

Portable Prism -Final-?

I did a quick once by of Prism. Same as Webrunner, and them same as other Mozilla apps for that matter. I can't actually recommend anyone use this, as https connections are a pain to setup with this and require loads of testing to make a proper "Webapp" file. But there it is. I'm going to uninstall Prism now.

Portable Prism Update

In my attempts to begin working on a portable I looked at my previous posts covering making Firefox and Thunderbird both portable. I figured, sure why not and behold the same method works on Webrunner. But tthere is a trick, you need a basic profile. And to create that you need the profile manager(which webrunner also has).

First start webrunner via command line:
Webrunner -p -turbo

And then make yourself a profile folder. Copy it whereever you plan to store your data on your Device and then from command line fire off:
webrunner -profile "[Profile path on USB device]" -turbo

Note I haven't tested this on Prism yet, but you can expect an update soon.

Make your own Portable Thunderbird

Wow, Two in one go...I'm a super man!

Here it is, making the Official build of Thunderbird portable. In case you didn't already notice the post about making Firefox portable with the Official build, you may want to take a peek. Not that much of a difference in this post. Same song and dance, different app.

Thunderbird -profile "[Profile path]" -turbo

[Profile path] can be anything, relative, absolute, as long as you don't end it with a trailing back slash.

"E:\Thunderbirddata\Profile" Works
"E:\Thunderbirddata\Profile\" Fails with a program crash.

With this you won't have to invoke -CreateProfile to make a new profile, Thunderbird does that for you in the specified directory, and -turbo makes Thunderbird load faster.

I used the information from my post concerning Firefox, which based of the information supplied here.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments

Making your own Portable Firefox

Firefox.exe -profile \profiles\ProfileName

This may upset some people but I wanted to do it for the sake of doing it. What I present for you is a method of running Firefox From your USB drive/device and have the security to know it was the Official Mozilla build that you are using. This can be performed from DOS, a shortcut, a program launcher, etc. And right about now you're waiting for the ultimate weapon so here it is.

Firefox -profile "[Profile path]" -turbo

Now [Profile path] can be anything, relative, absolute, as long as you don't end it with a trailing back slash.

"E:\Firefoxdata\Profile" Works
"E:\Firefoxdata\Profile\" Fails with a program crash.

To make it even better you don't need to invoke -CreateProfile to generate a profile, you just need to provide a specified directory. And Firefox will make one for you. Sweet eh? And yes, I included -turbo not for good measure, but because it makes Firefox load that much faster. Much faster than just UPX'ing it. I'll be making a similar post concerning Thunderbird.

I used the information supplied here to help make this post.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Command_line_arguments

Portable IM clients(alternatives)

I've discussed Meebo and Pidgin/GAIM for portable IM. But I thought I'd give you some variety and choice in case you wanted something different. Here are some other that are portable as well:

Miranda
EasyMessage
TrillianAnywhere

I had some things keeping me busy from posting but I'll cover these in my next posts.