What's New
- Mar. 13, 2007: Beta 1 Coming Soon... We are planning to announce SameDesk Beta 1 next week at the AjaxWorld Conference and Expo http://www.ajaxworld.com. Stay tuned...
- Mar. 12, 2007: SameDesk demonstrates OpenAjax interoperability http://www.openajax.org.
Live Demo at OpenSpot.com
We are now running OpenSpot.com on SameDesk. Please visit
http://www.openspot.com/ to see SameDesk at work.
What's SameDesk?
(Revised...) We have revised the scope of SameDesk in response to feedbacks from developers, feature requirements at OpenSpot.com, and consideration of similar offerings on the market. If you have visited this project last year (2006), the most important change is that SameDesk no longer includes a Java-based reference server implementation. Instead, SameDesk is now a pure JavaScript and HTML library and it can run off any web server, or even the local file system. Another important change is that the 3DApplet module is no longer part of the project. It has become part of 3DHomeSite, which will be available directly from OpenSpot.com as a free embeddable module for web pages. Both changes are meant to allow broader applicability of SameDesk, especially in use as part of web portals.
Developed by OpenSpot.com, SameDesk is a virtual desktop environment where applications serving directly from different web servers can interact with each other locally at the browser across domain boundary, using a technique we named XDDE (Cross Domain Data Exchange). Resembling a traditional desktop GUI, SameDesk is also enhanced with browser-adapted innovations such as 2½ D, minimize-to-link, maximize-to-tab, and more.
The SameDesk environment itself is implemented purely on JavaScript and HTML, but web applications based on various standard technologies are also supported, including most AJAX frameworks, Flash, Java, WPF/.NET 3.0, and server page systems. We pay special attention to make sure heavy-weight applications such as Java applets and ActiveX objects work well with light-weight applications in an overlapping window environment. There is no need for developers to throw away proven technologies or to bet exclusively on one emerging technology over another. With SameDesk, all options remain open and available. Better still, it is open source.
Unlike other visually similar products in the "web desktop" category, the SameDesk environment is a generic windowing environment and it does not come with any applications. If an analogy in the Unix world may be used - even though we are obviously aware that CodePlex is a Microsoft web site :) - SameDesk is more akin to X Window than GNOME or KDE. In other words, SameDesk is designed not as an end user product, but rather a framework for building multi-application web sites.
Most existing web applications can operate inside the SameDesk environment with no or little change. Most notably, the SameDesk API conforms to the interoperability requirement set forth by the OpenAjax alliance. Web applications developed on any compatible toolkits should be able to operate inside the SameDesk environment. Please refer to the demos at OpenSpot.com for more information.
Indeed, SameDesk itself has become smaller. When we introduced SameDesk as a conceptual stage product in 2006, it came with a reference server and a number of Java applets for 3D graphics. While their inclusion provides a more complete out-of-the-box solution, it also creates dependency that seems to make SameDesk less applicable in environments where there are existing server environments or where Java applet is not desirable. As a result, we decided to remove those modules from SameDesk. They will be available under different products from OpenSpot.com.
Release Timetable
Meeting our earlier estimate, beta 1 of SameDesk will be available by the end of Q1 2007. FCS is expected by mid 2007. The current archived releases at this site is several months old and should only be used for educational purpose.
Simplified License
When we introduced the SameDesk project, it consists of a client core package and a reference server implementation. The client core package is released under what is commonly known as the
MIT license. The reference server implementation is released under
GPL 2 license. Since the reference server is no longer included as part of the SameDesk package, SameDesk is now released wholly under the MIT license. Please ignore the GPL language in the download page.
Links
The source and released binaries of this project is mirrored at SourceForge.net for developers on non-Windows platform who may not have access to the TeamExplorer client. However, please come to the CodePlex project site for discussions and issue trackers, which are not mirrored.
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/samedesk/
Contact
Please contact OpenSpot (info@openspot.com) if you are interested in helping out with this project.
