v86
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User interface
The user interface would benefit from a review, I believe.
Any ideas? Opinions?
I've been meaning to open an issue for this but I've found it a bit difficult to explain: I would like to see better separation between the UI and the engine.
For example, id's of DOM elements, and callbacks like window.onload should not be hard-coded in a Javascript file that is part of the compilation process. Instead, I ought to be able to instantiate a v86 engine, from Javascript, on my page, under conditions that I define, and have it use only specific elements that I pass to it during instantiation. (a sort of "dependency injection" for the UI.) And (ideally) I shouldn't have to recompile anything, if I change those conditions or id's.
Ideally, this would let you use v86 on an existing page where you don't have as much control over the layout (e.g. you already have an element with the id step and for whatever reason you don't want to change that), or even run two instances of v86 on the same page.
I thought I had made some hacks to this effect when I started using v86 on my site (which was months ago, so maybe everything I'm saying is out of date), but looking at them now, they're not very enlightening: https://github.com/catseye/v86/commit/5608c2c0e456c1ccc079ac53bac7bc91f7c56a21 and https://github.com/catseye/v86/commit/a8c704a23cfe267c5ab6e1f00e376360fba2cd52
@cpressey This issue was intended for graphical improvements in the user interface. That said, I acknowledge your problem and I already create another issue about it: #17. Part of the problem is that src/browser/main.js got really bloated. I'll clean that up and later also create a "minimum" version of the emulator, so that people have something to get started.
I don't know how much of your website is part of the emulator's UI, but I've been wanting to say something about this for a while, so I'll put it here. It's really weird that the load up page where you pick a disk image and the actual emulator share the same URL, without there being any sort of button to go back or at least change disk images. To switch anything, I have to go back to your home page and click to open the page again.
@trlkly The operating systems are now linked (for instance http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=linux26) and the back and forward button should work normally. Sorry for the delay and thanks for the suggestion. This should have been in from the beginning.
@copy Good work, but I would suggest also having an additional profile option for "custom" so that custom images also get the proper back and forward buttons. In other words, if someone uses their own disk image, you can refer them to the URL http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=custom .
This is my primary means of interacting with your emulator, as I use it to get copy and paste ability from DOS games, something DOSBox, for all its features, does not provide.
@trlkly Right, I'll push the custom profile thing live in a couple of days. Note that the forward button is actually not going to work, because the disk images need to be reselected from the local file system (otherwise I can't restart your custom profile).
One thing I could do is to load disk images from a remote, CORS-enabled server (for instance Dropbox). It would then look like http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=custom&hda=https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12345/linux.img
Friendly greetings !
1st : thank you ! thank you ! thank you for this software :)
2nd : The UI is good enough for me but if you "enhance it" please keep it lightweight (yes, i know it's silly considering we're running heavy js here) but i'm developing my OS (i also use bochs when needed) and i keep going back and forth to load a new hdd image and i really appreciate that it doesn't have some kind of "heavyweight" IDE with external js framework (yui/jquery/whatever)
3rd : thank you ! thank you ! thank you for this software :) 4th : see 1st and 3rd :)
some things that I think would look better is to turn the buttons at the very top of the emulator window into a menubar with drop downs like qemu and other applications, and also make the details element into a semi-transparent, toggleable, and draggable overlay in fullscreen
HAS NOT BEEN CLOSED SINCE 2014
The interface wasn't improved since then (and doesn't need to be)