AntOS web desktop 0.1.11-alpha release

I've started the development of the AntOS web desktop long time ago, but this post is the first official pre-release of the project. The idea on a web-based desktop came when i worked on embed Linux and remote server. These system are often headless, so accessing the resource on these systems is not always obvious. The aim of this project is to develop a client core API that provides a desktop like experience to remotely access resource on the server using web technologies. AntOS is based on jQuery (for the API development) and Riot JS (for the UI), it is first designed to be used along with my antd HTTP(S) server and Lua based server side app, but can be adapted to be used with any server side languages (PHP, etc) and server, by implementing all the system calls API . Basically, application design for the web desktop relies on these system calls to communicating with the server. The API defines the core UI, system calls (to server), Virtual File system, virtual database and the necessary libraries for easing the development of applications. Applications can be developped with coffee/javascript/css without the need of a server side script.

(click image for the full size version)

Features

1. Core UI that facilitates the GUI development of application. The core UI provides some basic UI elements such as Button, list view, grid view, Hbox, Vbox, menu, Window etc.

2. Core API for application development including:

   • Server side communication via a set of systems calls using AJAX, using these system calls, most of AntOS applications can be developed using only HTML, Javascript and CSS
   • Virtual file system that provides an independent file system interface for application. With the VFS API, application can easily access different underneath file systems (such as remote file, Google drive API, Dropbox, etc) using an unique interface.
   • Virtual database (VDB) API provides database access to applications that requires relational data database, such as Blogger, the application that i used to write this release note.
   • Application interface that factilitates the development of new Application, Dialog, Service and so on.
   • Notification API
   • Supports of Google Drive API binding as VFS
   • Automatically search an open files using mime type

3. AntOS comes with some default applications as a showcase:

   • Market place: package manager
   • NotePad: default text editor
   • Files: default file manage
   • Spotlight service: quick search of files and application
   • Push notification services
   • Terminal: accessing linux terminal from the web
   • Preview: default PDF and image viewer
   • Blogger: tool used for my blog
   • Activity monitor: process monitor
   • Markdown editor: Writing document with Markdown
   • More to come on the MarketPlace...

4. Theme is customizable, theme changing will be supported in the next road map

You can find more information on my Github repository https://github.com/lxsang/antos.

Change log for 0.1.11-alpha version:

• Improve stability
• Support global shortcut binding
• Adding Spotlight implementation, CTRL+SPACE to open it
• Adding search mechanism to API, allow user defined search handler for Spotlight
• Google drive API: allow Sportlight to search the Google Drive caches
• Automatic logout Google drive when user sign out the Web desktop
• Improve some application:
  • MarketPlace is now fully implemented, it will be used as default package manager in future release
  • Blogger application now support embedded youtube video
• Minor bug fix
• Virtual Database API now allows to select data by fields