Important Orbiter Forum Migration to XenForo

[Quick_Nick]

Exciting to see this moving forward.

A friendly reminder about point 6. Xyon didn't say it was the only reason, in fact it's the last one on the list. We--those of us who remember the beginnings of this forum and the one that came before it--have to remember that Orbiter-Forum is the face of the Orbiter community, and how we present ourselves to newcomers and visitors will determine whether or not the next 13 years of this forum are as wonderful as the first.

There's always this theme: https://www.orbiter-forum.com/printthread.php?t=41208 if anyone's feeling nostalgic for 1994.

How do I get this theme?

 

[jedidia]

I don't really like that particular theme, but in general mid-90s interface styles rule. 99% of what's available today is crap.

We must have lived in very different 90ies, or maybe I just didn't visit the right websites. What I remember 90ies websites to be is overbearing, overloaded and gimmicky (because any gimmick was still cool back then, I guess) with quite often awful interface consistency.

The trend nowadays is towards plain, minimalistic interfaces, so... I kind of don't get why so many people hate it?

 

[Moach]

mankind's abuse of white backgrounds will yet burn out their eyeballs one day....

I like VB - it has a nice balance of features and usability, though it is going a bit over the hill and there are indelible stains on the carpet.

Most newer designs still strike me too much like they were made for mobile screens by designers who never touched a PC in their lives. They have that "iClean" look and feel all over as if that style could never get old.

<old man voice> Back in MY day, User Interfaces were designed proper! These kids... </old man voice>

 

[GLS]

​

How do I get this theme?

With or without all the gun fighting?

 

[n72.75]

How do I get this theme?

Time machine...

Or scroll all the way down, bottom left -> M6-Classic

 

[Xyon]

If you're strongly attached to the retro feel I'm sure we can devise a forum skin for XenForo that caters to that need. Something to look into for after the migration is done.

 

[Artlav]

The trend nowadays is towards plain, minimalistic interfaces, so... I kind of don't get why so many people hate it?

Not on the back end... Back then making a web browser was a weekend project with a month of polishing and debugging afterwards.

These days? A browser is way more complex than an OS and to make one would take multiple lifetimes.

And the sites themselves are obscenely complicated. Before you could get into, say, ISP status page by submitting one form and then parsing a page. Now you need to run an entire javascript interpreter to wrestle the access tokens from whatever mess they put into there jut to get started.

Ability to automate went up in smoke over the last decade or two.

mankind's abuse of white backgrounds will yet burn out their eyeballs one day....

Ha. 5 years ago someone said "if i see a site with white text on dark background, i close the page regardless of context" after seeing my Orbides site.

And now dark themes are all the rage...

---------- Post added at 21:46 ---------- Previous post was at 21:44 ----------

I'm sure we can devise a forum skin for XenForo that caters to that need

Would there be a skin like that?

 

[jedidia]

These days? A browser is way more complex than an OS and to make one would take multiple lifetimes.

They are, because... well, they are kind of an OS. The web has become a platform to run applications on, pretty much by necessity (increasing demand on complexity coupled with increasing importance of security).

Now you need to run an entire javascript interpreter to wrestle the access tokens from whatever mess they put into there jut to get started.

But... but... why would you do that? server frameworks as well as browsers and frontend frameworks were developed to handle that in a consistent, secure manner without the need for the high-level developer to write his own implementations for that stuff all the time, which is a security nightmare. Yes, both frontends and backends have become increasingly complex, but that's because there has been increasing specialisation in the software industry. Because it needs that just like every other industry to be productive.

Now I'll admit, the whole frontend business is a bit of a mess currently, but that's just because the frontend industry pretty much exploded during the last decade. Things are getting better, and I hope that in another 10 years we'll have established industry standards for transpilers, frameworks and toolkits. Right now it's still a bit wild-west, but industry leaders are starting to emerge, and many of them are open source (which I consider an important aspect of an industry standard, really).

 

[Artlav]

But... but... why would you do that?

Because i don't want to have to flip through a few dozen various sites and pages.

I want all the accounts, bills, terms, traffic limits, fines, rates, counters and stuff to be on a single page.
So i made a program that logs into all these dozens of pages periodically and pulls all the data out into a single dump to be displayed at convenience.

As years went by, many sites went more and more obnoxious about access. And not in a secure way, but in a mess way.
Like, how hard is it to add an API?

 

[Thinker55]

I'm just excited for the ability to find things on OHM again. Full steam ahead on the migration :thumbup:.

Amen! Look and feel are less of a concern than the ability to FIND THINGS!

 

[jedidia]

Like, how hard is it to add an API?

Ah... I hear you. Fortunately, the REST-pattern is becoming more and more the standard for web application backends. I did an MVC application once for educational purposes, but I'm really glad I can do everything with REST at work. But that rest is becoming the new normal is *exactly* thanks to higher specialisation in the industry. The main driving force behind it is not so much consumer comfort (since most consumer never know what technology anything is using), but because it provides a way to keep the backender and the frontender as seperate as possible and out of each others hair. In other words, the complexity increase on the web *is* totally leading to more easily accessible backends.

We're not there yet, though. All I can say is that if you were talking to any of my services, and many that are written nowadays, you'd have your API. We need it for our own sanity's sake... :lol:

 

[Face]

Fortunately, the REST-pattern is becoming more and more the standard for web application backends.

Unfortunately, that's the next mess right up there. ReST is - as you wrote - more of a pattern than a standard. There is no "ReST conformity", because it is merely a kind of suggestion what you do with your endpoints. Sure, there are some additional concepts, like Swagger and OData, but that's again subject to hype and/or taste. And for it being an API: in it self it only allows polling, making yet another pattern/concept necessary for robust push notifications.

Really, the whole web programming ecosystem is one growing steaming pile of . Even the "security"... OAuth2 is just another mess with crap added on top. I can't really see a light at the end of this tunnel.

 

[Urwumpe]

Really, the whole web programming ecosystem is one growing steaming pile of . Even the "security"... OAuth2 is just another mess with crap added on top. I can't really see a light at the end of this tunnel.

I just got some training for Apache Kafka, which at least looks like a solution for some problems, that you wouldn't have without it....

 

[Face]

I just got some training for Apache Kafka, which at least looks like a solution for some problems, that you wouldn't have without it....

Well, the name alone is a dead giveaway. :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, the name alone is a dead giveaway. :lol:

Yeah. :lol:


Designing good APIs is really an art. There are some best practices, technologies and concepts around, but in the end, its up to the architect to decide how things work out best.

 

[Xyon]

Not on the back end... Back then making a web browser was a weekend project with a month of polishing and debugging afterwards.

These days? A browser is way more complex than an OS and to make one would take multiple lifetimes.

And the sites themselves are obscenely complicated. Before you could get into, say, ISP status page by submitting one form and then parsing a page. Now you need to run an entire javascript interpreter to wrestle the access tokens from whatever mess they put into there jut to get started.

Ability to automate went up in smoke over the last decade or two.

Ha. 5 years ago someone said "if i see a site with white text on dark background, i close the page regardless of context" after seeing my Orbides site.

And now dark themes are all the rage...

---------- Post added at 21:46 ---------- Previous post was at 21:44 ----------


Would there be a skin like that?

I can give it a go, but I'm no frontend dev. Feel free to knock one up yourself and contribute!

 

[jedidia]

Really, the whole web programming ecosystem is one growing steaming pile of .

I won't argue with that, but I don't see how it could go any other way at the speed it has grown. All in all, I think things could be worse...

And how usable a REST API is depends mostly on the documentation... which depends mostly on whether you want 3rd parties to actually be using it or not :shifty:

 

[Urwumpe]

And how usuable a REST API is depends mostly on the documentation... which depends mostly on whether you want 3rd parties to actually be using it or not :shifty:

Or worse - had no idea 20 years ago, that the people who knew the interfaces might be gone, when the next big change was needed...


I just saw some Java component using a version of the Apache http client that must have been older than Version 3.0. The source code API was older than 2005....

 

[Artlav]

Still, a REST API tends to be a pleasure to work with even if it's not well documented.
Beats a "blob of minified encrypted JS" API any day.

 

[Urwumpe]

Still, a REST API tends to be a pleasure to work with even if it's not well documented.
Beats a "blob of minified encrypted JS" API any day.

Still, its way more effort than to use a good SOAP API... because the lots of bloat in the protocol is especially for that case. Find a service, talk to it, even without knowing it in advance.

---------- Post added at 19:54 ---------- Previous post was at 19:52 ----------

BTW, while talking about it... how could a service discovery look like in Orbiter (like by using the clbkGeneric callback)