Open-Source HTML5 Terminal Emulator To Support X11

[Alex Sarmiento]

Why not just eliminate the middle man and all the bloat like the web browser and then proxy code, and instead use real native apps with decent performance?

[Alex Sarmiento]

LOL?!?!?!

[dstaubsauger]

@sarmad:
you write

"use asm";

above the asm.js code. If the browser supports it, it will treat the following block of code as asm.js and will try to compile it. if the browser does not support asm.js, the statement will do nothing, but the code will still run (albeit slowly), because it's still javascript after all. Emscripten (the main reason asm.js was invented) uses static typed arrays as memory for the c/c++ program, so i guess they do their own garbage collection inside that array which the browser gives them.

[riskable]

how does this use ssh (mentioned in the article)? Is there some new Javascript API that allows websites to do raw TCP/IP? Also, which browsers does it work on?

It is a combination of a Python daemon--which acts as a web server translating your keystrokes/terminal output--and JavaScript which runs in the browser. The server keeps track of your terminal state so that if you get disconnected everything will resume precisely where it left off.

It works in IE10+, Chrome/Chromium, Firefox, Safari (if you don't use a self-signed certificate), and Opera. Probably others too. The only major requirement is that the browser support WebSockets and Web Workers (never seen a browser that supported one but not the other).

[riskable]

So, in theory can I install it on a server, point a DNS to it, and use it to have a terminal I can always use whatever the device I'm on?

Does it have access to the local file system? Or just SSH?

Yeah, pretty much. It doesn't do filesystem access directly (not yet anyway) but you can do whatever you can do in a normal terminal.

I'd also like to point out that if you just want to access the server remotely you can configure Gate One to run 'setsid /sbin/login' instead of or in addition to the 'ssh_connect.py' command. That will be pretty much exactly like logging into the server's console. In fact, it will work even if you stop sshd.

[dstaubsauger]

how does this use ssh (mentioned in the article)? Is there some new Javascript API that allows websites to do raw TCP/IP? Also, which browsers does it work on?

[sarmad]

Asm.JS is a subset of Javascript and is effectively Javascript compatible binary code.
Asm.JS is produced by compiling C/C++ to Javascript and doesn't contain
dynamic objects, duck typing, garage collection or anything like that. It doesn't
even contain strings!

So normal apps that doesn't require performance can be run in pure Javascript
(many programs is written in Python and works good, Javascript is faster in todays
browsers).
And apps that require performance can be compiled to Asm.JS and receive near native
performance (for browsers that support it, browsers that don't will run it as Javascript
so it'll work but slower).

How will it handle memory management if Javascript is limited to garbage collection? Does browsers recognize an asm.js code and treat it differently?

[devius]

So, in theory can I install it on a server, point a DNS to it, and use it to have a terminal I can always use whatever the device I'm on?

Does it have access to the local file system? Or just SSH?

[liam]

Am I the only one who feels HTML has become an operating system? A slow and memory intensive operating system that is?

Yes, I think you are.
Perhaps you mean the html+css+js+DOM running in your browser?

[Pajn]

Nope, not true and never going to be true. Yes, it's going to be near native performance of apps that are written in a dynamic way (dynamic objects, duck typing, garbage collection, etc) but that's different from writing your app in C++ with static objects and high performance memory management.

Asm.JS is a subset of Javascript and is effectively Javascript compatible binary code.
Asm.JS is produced by compiling C/C++ to Javascript and doesn't contain
dynamic objects, duck typing, garage collection or anything like that. It doesn't
even contain strings!

So normal apps that doesn't require performance can be run in pure Javascript
(many programs is written in Python and works good, Javascript is faster in todays
browsers).
And apps that require performance can be compiled to Asm.JS and receive near native
performance (for browsers that support it, browsers that don't will run it as Javascript
so it'll work but slower).