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511 points ayaros | 4 comments | | HN request time: 1.032s | source

https://lisagui.com/info.html

This is a web OS I wrote in vanilla JS that looks like the Apple Lisa Office System (1983-85), with other contemporaneous influences and additional improvements and features. It's currently in alpha and isn't remotely bug free. I had been holding off on posting this here until it was somewhat presentable and useful. Please note; the Lisa conforms more literally to the desktop metaphor than most modern GUIs - some of the important differences are mentioned in the readme.

This is a complete recreation of the UI in JS; it all renders to a single canvas element. It's not a CSS theme, and not an emulator ported to JS. None of the code is written by Apple. I'll be happy to elaborate more in the comments, but the short version is the entire UI is defined outside the DOM using JS objects. Thus, every interface element - menus, windows, controls, and even typefaces - was recreated from scratch. There are no font files - I wrote my own typesetting system, which supports combining multiple text styles and generates new glyph variants on the fly.

Many of the technical decisions I made were motivated by a desire to have this look the same in every browser. That's harder to do with the DOM and CSS, and why I moved as much logic as I could to JS. Also, the only part of the project outside of vanilla JS and standard web APIs is the Gulp toolkit, which I'm using as a minification/build tool. No vibe coding was used to make this!

This is based on a UI from the 80s, and won't work well on your phone. If you insist on running it that way, turn on trackpad mode in the touchscreen settings panel of the preferences app. For best results, install it as a PWA (add it to your home screen). Also there are some odd Android bugs; the native touchscreen keyboard is currently broken, and there's an issue with the cursor when dragging windows.

I realize there's not a whole lot to do within LisaGUI right now; I've got a big list of additional features and apps I'll be adding in the future. I've been working on this project for a while, and I'm eager to hear people's feedback and answer questions about it.

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jonathanlydall ◴[] No.44483584[source]
Very cool.

Something I recommend doing for the mouse cursor on mobile is to make it work like Microsoft’s Remote Desktop on iOS (possibly Android too, but I’m an iPhone user so don’t know for sure) where the cursor isn’t where you tap on the screen, but you kind of pan anywhere on the screen which proportionally moves the cursor which is somewhere not under your finger. It’s a bit hard to explain, you just need to try using RDP on Microsoft’s free Windows App on your mobile device.

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1. ayaros ◴[] No.44483646[source]
Thanks. And yes, I did that! Under preferences, go to the touchscreen options panel, then enable trackpad mode!
replies(1): >>44484550 #
2. john-aj ◴[] No.44484550[source]
That is surprisingly pleasant to use, actually!
replies(1): >>44484643 #
3. ayaros ◴[] No.44484643[source]
Yes, one thumb on each side works great in landscape mode. Eventually I'll have to add some UI feedback to this mode when toggling it on or off, which shouldn't be too hard to do with a little CSS since the trackpad and button are just div elements overlaid on top of the canvas.
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4. phatskat ◴[] No.44485788{3}[source]
I don’t know if multi-tap functions are already spoken for, I’ve only played with this a little so far (great job btw!). I think being able to toggle Trackpad Mode with a three-finger tap would be a nice _touch_.