Web apps on the desktop
While CleVR is mostly web-based, the Stitcher has always needed to be a desktop app. This is for a number of reasons. Primarily it’s because it needs access to the local filesystem so that you can import your photos. Also, it is processor intensive, so runs best as a native app.
However, it also needs to be tightly-integrated with the server, so that it can handle the uploading, authentication and similar. It also needs to be cross-platform, as we don;t have the resources to develop separate apps for Mac, Windows (and possibly Linux). The current system is pretty good - we use Java Webstart which allows us to launch from the browser, while giving us the access we need to the filesystem and native libraries. However, I’ve never been totally happy with it, and am always looking for a better solution. Luckily, there seem to be some on the way.
The other day, I ran across Adobe Apollo, which looks pretty damn cool. This is still in development, but will allow Flash, Javascript and HTML apps to be deployed on the desktop. That sounds a lot like CleVR to me. From first appearances, it seems to be a much more elegant system than Webstart (and the Java platform in general). The HTML renderer is based on WebKit, which of course makes it even cooler.
This stuff seems to be becoming all the rage at the moment - Pulse Laser has a few more examples. WebKit on Rails looks fun, though we don’t use Ruby here so it’s not massively relevant to us.
