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511 points ayaros | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | 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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int_19h ◴[] No.44485865[source]
Is keyboard not supposed to work? E.g. tabbing through the widgets.
replies(1): >>44485914 #
ayaros ◴[] No.44485914[source]
The Lisa doesn't have an alt-tab function for Window management, so I haven't added one. Also, it would be difficult to use those keys in particular because it would conflict with your system's alt+tab keyboard shortcut.

When you select text in a textbox, the keyboard should input text. Also, individual menu items have their own keyboard shortcuts. If you're on a PC, it defaults to using the Control key as the "Apple" key. If your on a Mac, it defaults to using the Command key. This option can be changed in the preferences app in the "Set Conveniences" pane.

replies(1): >>44486912 #
int_19h ◴[] No.44486912[source]
I don't mean Alt+Tab, just Tab by itself to move focus through the widgets in the current window. I don't know how it's supposed to work on Lisa, but pretty much every TUI or GUI I've seen from early 90s onwards had full keyboard navigation support like that.
replies(1): >>44495380 #
1. KerrAvon ◴[] No.44495380[source]
Nope. AFAIK, full keyboard navigation was first developed for Microsoft Windows, as a necessity, because they couldn't rely on people having a working mouse.