New Release coming - Alpha testers welcome

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Have you ever tried to look for lively via internet? There arises a problem, because one only gets hits for Google Lively. Google Lively once was a web-based virtual environmen. Google Lively was discontinued 2008, but still it will shadow lively. One might look for lively-kernel, but then you need to know about the project - otherwise one does not have a chance to find it.

I do not have an idea how to overcome the problem.

Regards

B. Blochl


Am 11.07.2011 21:44, schrieb Dan Ingalls:

Folks -

Last fall we made the decision to refactor the graphics kernel, rewrite our serialization scheme, and make things better for end-users as well.  In the process, we took our communications pretty much off line so, to look at the mail list, one might assume we just stopped working.  Nothing could be farther from the truth, as you will see from this summary of features in the upcoming release of Lively Kernel 2.0...

New Rendering Architecture

We have refactored the rendering architecture so that it can equally easily support not only SVG and Canvas, but also standard HTML and CSS.  There were several reasons:  improved graphic performance, easier incorporation of existing web content, and the flexibility to interoperate with other widget sets, visualization software and the like.  By separating the rendering state from the morphic state, it also allowed us to serialize objects in a rendering-independent manner.  The importance of this will emerge when we talk about Parts Bins.  Here is an examples enabled by the new architecture

    http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/demos/visualizations/FPSProtovis.xhtml

Native Widgets

One advantage of the new system is access to native widgets in the browser, most notably text frames that can edit multi-megabyte string.  We also look forward to such native support in mobile devices where there are high expectations of both appearance and performance.

New Serialization

We have rewritten the entire serialization module in LK2 removing its dependence on the browser DOM. Serialization now uses JSON exclusively, and it now handles all morphic structure, including non-rooted morphs and arbitrary JavaScript objects.

Parts Bins

We have made a step in ease-of-use for many simple creations.  Beginning with the Lively Fabrik project, we had gained experience with a simple drag-and-drop palette of components.  It became obvious that this is a generally more convenient and more concrete access to a lively library than menu commands, plus it offers the potential of storing as well, and is thus a true user repository.  Around the same time, we were experimenting with Node.JS, and this, together with a general desire to slim down our kernel, suggested that our parts bin should be cloud-resident (and thus sharable), replicable, and generally scalable as well.

We soon discovered that storing objects in this manner was more convenient than saving code and files.  Originally used only for simple shapes, we now store all sorts of active content from widgets to full-blown applications, styles such as fancy borders, behaviors such as throbbing, spinning, etc, and services such as map views and language translation.

Iconic Connect

In addition to drag-and-drop access from the parts bins, it is necessary to be able to connect objects together in a live way.  For this we have developed a dataflow connection similar to the bind operation found in many GUI frameworks.  Connections can be made simply by drawing out a line from one component to another and selecting from a menu which property of the source should be connected to which property of the target.

Script Browser

With the move to a less class-oriented style of development, we have developed a simplified browser that also offers control scripts and connect functions.  The script browser itself is built in this manner, and is something much more accessible to casual understanding than our more heavyweight programming tools.

Live Web

The change to direct scripting of objects and iconic storage in the cloud is a true paradigm shift for the Lively Kernel.  The experience is one of living in a vast and shared cloud of active content that is easy to grab and play with, and equally easy to publish back to.

Lively Archives

A wonderful side-effect of the new serialization is the ability to create a full-system archive of any Lively Kernel world.  A lively archive is a web page that includes the entire code base, and that can thus be run without access to the Internet.  It can be stored as a clickable app on one's desktop and, being self-contained, it should remain a stable artifact for years to come.

Personal Lively

Using the lively archive technology it is now possible to store Lively Kernel worlds to your Dropbox account, thus letting you keep them and share them as long as you want.  We plan to extend this facility to parts bins as well, so that you can build and share your own personal gallery of weird and wonderful lively content.

The punch list for Lively Kernel 2.0

We are now operating at maximum warp to assemble a stable release so that people can play with it and we can take this environment to the next level of creative productivity.  We are intentionally refraining from perfection in favor of early release, knowing that we will want to change it the minute we are done.

Here are the major stepping stones remaining to get us to 2.0:

                Archive the old version with many demos

        Check operation in all major browsers

                Code cleanup of the new version - remove deprecated code, etc

                Address a few usability issues

                Basic documentation and web site organization

                Anticipation of future extensions such as canvas rendering and touch support

Stability

In addition to our normal practice of making the up-to-the-minute alphas accessible, with 2.0 we plan to begin a practice of providing links to a reasonably documented stable release as well as the up-to-the-minute development version.

Check out the alpha pages

To get a sneak peak at Lively 2.0 visit

            http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/webwerkstatt.xhtml

A FAQ has been started at

        http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/documentation/FAQ.xhtml

Please note:

You can help to make the 2.0 release a success by testing these pages, and any other features you discover.  Please send us your comments and suggestions.

Also note:

At this writing, LK2 runs best on recent releases of Safari, Webkit and Chrome.  It is our intention also to support IE (9+), Firefox and Opera.  Help us to test these and send us your comments.

Lively up your web!

        Dan Ingalls (as scribe) - SAP Research, Pal Alto

        Robert Krahn - Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam

        Jens Lincke  - Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam

        Marko Roeder -  Hasso Plattner Institute, interning at SAP

_______________________________________________
lively-kernel mailing list
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With http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/demos/visualizations/FPSProtovis.xhtml I get an error with Firefox 3.6.18. The relevant lines following
http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/apps/ProtoVisInterface.js loaded in 73 ms
are:

trying to reclaimRemovedChunks of a text chunk with no prev chunk
trying to reclaimRemovedChunks of a text chunk with no prev chunk
trying to reclaimRemovedChunks of a text chunk with no prev chunk
trying to reclaimRemovedChunks of a text chunk with no prev chunk
Error while loading undefined: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIDOMSVGLocatable.getBBox]"  nsresult: "0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame :: http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/generated/combinedModules.js?9101515766470f7151d6167064f5309f :: anonymous :: line 18391"  data: no]
dependencies: Global.anonymous_module_5


Am 11.07.2011 21:44, schrieb Dan Ingalls:

Folks -

Last fall we made the decision to refactor the graphics kernel, rewrite our serialization scheme, and make things better for end-users as well.  In the process, we took our communications pretty much off line so, to look at the mail list, one might assume we just stopped working.  Nothing could be farther from the truth, as you will see from this summary of features in the upcoming release of Lively Kernel 2.0...

New Rendering Architecture

We have refactored the rendering architecture so that it can equally easily support not only SVG and Canvas, but also standard HTML and CSS.  There were several reasons:  improved graphic performance, easier incorporation of existing web content, and the flexibility to interoperate with other widget sets, visualization software and the like.  By separating the rendering state from the morphic state, it also allowed us to serialize objects in a rendering-independent manner.  The importance of this will emerge when we talk about Parts Bins.  Here is an examples enabled by the new architecture

    http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/demos/visualizations/FPSProtovis.xhtml

Native Widgets

One advantage of the new system is access to native widgets in the browser, most notably text frames that can edit multi-megabyte string.  We also look forward to such native support in mobile devices where there are high expectations of both appearance and performance.

New Serialization

We have rewritten the entire serialization module in LK2 removing its dependence on the browser DOM. Serialization now uses JSON exclusively, and it now handles all morphic structure, including non-rooted morphs and arbitrary JavaScript objects.

Parts Bins

We have made a step in ease-of-use for many simple creations.  Beginning with the Lively Fabrik project, we had gained experience with a simple drag-and-drop palette of components.  It became obvious that this is a generally more convenient and more concrete access to a lively library than menu commands, plus it offers the potential of storing as well, and is thus a true user repository.  Around the same time, we were experimenting with Node.JS, and this, together with a general desire to slim down our kernel, suggested that our parts bin should be cloud-resident (and thus sharable), replicable, and generally scalable as well.

We soon discovered that storing objects in this manner was more convenient than saving code and files.  Originally used only for simple shapes, we now store all sorts of active content from widgets to full-blown applications, styles such as fancy borders, behaviors such as throbbing, spinning, etc, and services such as map views and language translation.

Iconic Connect

In addition to drag-and-drop access from the parts bins, it is necessary to be able to connect objects together in a live way.  For this we have developed a dataflow connection similar to the bind operation found in many GUI frameworks.  Connections can be made simply by drawing out a line from one component to another and selecting from a menu which property of the source should be connected to which property of the target.

Script Browser

With the move to a less class-oriented style of development, we have developed a simplified browser that also offers control scripts and connect functions.  The script browser itself is built in this manner, and is something much more accessible to casual understanding than our more heavyweight programming tools.

Live Web

The change to direct scripting of objects and iconic storage in the cloud is a true paradigm shift for the Lively Kernel.  The experience is one of living in a vast and shared cloud of active content that is easy to grab and play with, and equally easy to publish back to.

Lively Archives

A wonderful side-effect of the new serialization is the ability to create a full-system archive of any Lively Kernel world.  A lively archive is a web page that includes the entire code base, and that can thus be run without access to the Internet.  It can be stored as a clickable app on one's desktop and, being self-contained, it should remain a stable artifact for years to come.

Personal Lively

Using the lively archive technology it is now possible to store Lively Kernel worlds to your Dropbox account, thus letting you keep them and share them as long as you want.  We plan to extend this facility to parts bins as well, so that you can build and share your own personal gallery of weird and wonderful lively content.

The punch list for Lively Kernel 2.0

We are now operating at maximum warp to assemble a stable release so that people can play with it and we can take this environment to the next level of creative productivity.  We are intentionally refraining from perfection in favor of early release, knowing that we will want to change it the minute we are done.

Here are the major stepping stones remaining to get us to 2.0:

                Archive the old version with many demos

        Check operation in all major browsers

                Code cleanup of the new version - remove deprecated code, etc

                Address a few usability issues

                Basic documentation and web site organization

                Anticipation of future extensions such as canvas rendering and touch support

Stability

In addition to our normal practice of making the up-to-the-minute alphas accessible, with 2.0 we plan to begin a practice of providing links to a reasonably documented stable release as well as the up-to-the-minute development version.

Check out the alpha pages

To get a sneak peak at Lively 2.0 visit

            http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/webwerkstatt.xhtml

A FAQ has been started at

        http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/documentation/FAQ.xhtml

Please note:

You can help to make the 2.0 release a success by testing these pages, and any other features you discover.  Please send us your comments and suggestions.

Also note:

At this writing, LK2 runs best on recent releases of Safari, Webkit and Chrome.  It is our intention also to support IE (9+), Firefox and Opera.  Help us to test these and send us your comments.

Lively up your web!

        Dan Ingalls (as scribe) - SAP Research, Pal Alto

        Robert Krahn - Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam

        Jens Lincke  - Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam

        Marko Roeder -  Hasso Plattner Institute, interning at SAP

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Thanks, I will look into it.
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This is great!
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On 7/19/11 7:44 AM, Davide Della Casa wrote:
> This is great!
>
> Is there a revamped installation document as well?
>
> The installation doc at
> http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/documentation/LivelyInstallation.xhtml
> doesn't seam to "kick off" on my browser (engine keeps spinning).
>
On Mac OS X Snow Leopard, Safari 5.1 and FIreFox 5.0.1 show errors.
Chrome just keeps spinning the engine.

What can peons like myself do to help make this thing acceptable to more
people? I have a jillion possible uses cases for it, from Seaside-served
pages using Morphic widgits as the templates, to google map widgets to
game widgets but until I can use it myself, reliably, it is hard to
imagine convincing anyone else to try it, letalone use it....



L.
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Note: none of the pages found at:

http://lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/

work with the plain vanilla WebKit lib found in the latest Second Life client.

L.


On 7/31/11 4:53 PM, Lawson English wrote:
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Hi,

we just wrote something that might be the beginning of an installation
guide:
http://www.lively-kernel.org/repository/webwerkstatt/documentation/Lively2Installation.xhtml

Please feel free to ask and comment. We know that it's  not terribly
detailed but we're working on that. It might give you a rough idea.

Any questions or comments might also be helpful for our installer project.

Regards,
Fabian

On 8/1/11 1:53 AM, Lawson English wrote:
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