Check out my side project: I rewrote rxvt in javascript

by paddy_m • 17 years ago

64 47 17 years ago

paddy_m9• 17 years ago

I never liked screencasts of text, so I built a better tool. I rewrote rxvt in javascript so that I can reanimate terminal sessions.

I would really like feedback on how the terminal recording process goes. Right now it is very tricky, primarily because of the sound recording.

There are bugs on the site 1. clicking the playbar seeks audio, not the text 2. there is no color, underlining, bold, or blinking. Rest assured these are captured in the terminal output, but I just haven't added that to rxvt-js yet. 3. There is no listing of of how long a terminalcast is

I would love to hear other bugs.

Thanks

paddy_m9• 17 years ago

Oh, it doesn't work in IE yet. It actually shouldn't take much work, but I really doubt that ie is much my target audience.

petercooper• 17 years ago

Not working in Safari either for me. I hear the sound but see nothing.

mrfish• 17 years ago

jquery?

snprbob862• 17 years ago

Yes, you could have verified this trivially:

  $ curl http://terminalcast.com | grep jquery
    % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                   Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  100  4006  100  4006    0     0  18017      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 39242
      <script type="text/javascript" src="http://static.terminalcast.com//js/jquery-1.3.1.js"></script>

DanHulton• 17 years ago

Respect my eyesight, please! We haven't had to put up with green text on a black background in terminals for YEARS now - please spruce up the colour scheme with something that's a little less eye-murderin'. And that dark-blue you use for the links on that black background is so hard to read I never even got to the point where I started watching a terminalcast - just trying to read what each already-existing terminalcast IS gave me enough of a headache that I bailed.

paddy_m9• 17 years ago

Thanks. Green on black is actually my preferred color scheme. I should add some alternative ones. Yes the homepage links are hideous. I know I'll use orange for links.

thras• 17 years ago

Browser issue? The colors seem to differ dramatically between IE and Firefox. In IE, it is quite readable. In Firefox, it hurts to look at. Same for Chrome.

jriddycuz6• 17 years ago

When people refuse to check out the content of your site because the color scheme is so alarming, it's probably a good idea to change colors a bit. I'd say that you can use those colors, but peel off the saturation on the green and lighten up the black a little bit. I tend to use #111 for "black" backgrounds, and #3f5 or something like that for green. The lower contrast is actually much easier on the eyes. I'm sure there are articles out there on the internet about that, but I'm too lazy to go look for them anyhow.

As far as the content goes, I'm not sure that I see the net advantage of this "terminalcast" idea over either a written tutorial with screen caps or a full video. A written tutorial can provide all of the information that this terminalcast provides, but you can go through it at your own speed. A regular video can show a lot of other different things visually that you're not going to be able to with just terminal text. It's a neat idea, but I just want to know what purpose it will serve.

diN0bot• 17 years ago

the progress bar obscures the bottom line of text.

otherwise, nice project. maybe hook up with a ui/design person or invest in learning and implementing that side of things yourself.

it would also be wise to make it more obvious that using your app is secure. you're going after a more savy, security-minded community, so including a friendly diagram of how things work, even if a tad technical, would probably work in your favor.

paddy_m9• 17 years ago

Yes, the css needs some work. This is the first project where I have done all the graphic/ui design on my own.

The idea is that the site is supposed to look like a vt100 terminal, with pdp 11 colored buttons. The design made sense to me because it was a bit retro, and something that I could easily aim for, but if it is seriously impacting usability, I'd be happy to change it.

http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/tty/h/vt100.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Pdp-11-40...

paddy_m9• 17 years ago

In what sense secure? This isn't used to ssh into servers. It is used to record a terminal session. The terminalcast recorder is open sourced.

maxwin2• 17 years ago

your font color hurts my eyes.

ars• 17 years ago

You mean the green? That's my favorite color for text.

It's also by far the easiest color to read for the brightness. The human eye is most sensitive to green, and the high resolution receptors in the eye are most sensitive to green.

mpk• 17 years ago

Plus, terminal green has that lovely retro feel to it.

Though I haven't been able to find some (CSS) colours that give a terminal the green glow that I remember on today's high definition video displays.

maxwin2• 17 years ago

I concur. All colors are good. It just depends on the combination. It looks much better now after he improved it a bit.

StrawberryFrog2• 17 years ago

Atwood's law at work? http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000913.html

paddy_m9• 17 years ago

Yep. Proving once again that javascript is turing complete.

jriddycuz6• 17 years ago

This had to be proved?

I'm still wondering who these people are that think JS is a "kid's" language.

StrawberryFrog2• 17 years ago

We know it's turing-complete. that's a pretty low bar to set. The real question is, is it a good language to program in?

jrp• 17 years ago

I watched part of the git tutorial, and it got jumpy at some point; i.e., losing characters, scrolling on to upper lines on the right side, etc.

grogers• 17 years ago

Also, the audio is pretty far ahead of the text making it hard to follow.

wastedbrains• 17 years ago

Very cool idea, I love the idea of copy and paste from tutorial videos.

joqueza• 17 years ago

Nice Project!

jrockway4• 17 years ago

23 comments and over half are whining about the color. This is why I just put my code in Github and let people discover it themselves... that way I don't get a bunch of unsolicited "help".

paddy_m9• 17 years ago

I asked for help. I'm fine with it. The code is on github

http://github.com/paddymul/rxvt-js

http://github.com/paddymul/TerminalcastRecord

jrockway4• 17 years ago

Notice that nobody has given you feedback on anything important, only on the extremely traditional color scheme.

Never post code-related articles when the Mac users are awake.

(BTW, I do have one actual comment -- why not delete the rxvt-unicode code that you are not using? libev, for example.)

Pistos22• 17 years ago

Login doesn't work for me after creating an account. Neither in Opera nor Firefox; rejects my login and password. Case sensitivity problems maybe?

Also: Before clicking through, I was hoping to see that this was done without Flash.

Having multiple colours show up would be a great next feature. Also: Some people might find utility in a version that doesn't record or playback any audio.

Pistos22• 17 years ago

My bad, the activation email was just slow to arrive. (I point out that there was no mention of "your account will not be active until you click the link in the email".)

kd5bjo• 17 years ago

Any particular reason you're not just wrapping "script" to capture the terminal output?

snprbob862• 17 years ago

In case you are wondering what he is talking about (like I was), see: http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?script

jessor• 17 years ago

congratulations, that's an awesome idea. i look forward to seeing it improve.

vdm• 17 years ago

This is a great idea. Can anybody recommend a place to look for help in sprucing up the visual design?

shabble• 17 years ago

You might consider integrating it with http://0xcc.net/ttyrec/index.html.en (ttyrec) for the backend, since it solves a lot of these problems, and there's quite a lot of recordings already online.

It's popular in the nethack community for watching games, such as http://alt.org/nethack/getoldttyrec.php?player=mrivan

Check out my side project: I rewrote rxvt in javascript

Related Stories