On and off over the last week or so, I've been working on what will become a pretty elaborate web application I'm currently calling Dingo. It's very much in early developmental stages and the only working application so far is the Google app (currently hosted on the Web Devout site to show off cross-domain application loading), but I eventually hope for this to evolve into a full-fledged web-based desktop environment with all of your basic applications. The system will be designed so that third parties can write applications for it and users will be able to customize their menu and load up those third party apps. Unlike typical XMLHttpRequest-powered applications, this system is designed to be able to load applications from different domains, so it's that much easier for third parties to develop and test Dingo apps.

There's still quite a bit of work that needs to be done before I can start encouraging people to write applications for it, but so far it's working pretty well. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer freaks out on pretty much everything in the system, and I'm going to have to spend a massive amount of time getting it to work in IE if I end up going in that direction. Safari and Konqueror also have some problems, the biggest of which should be trivial to fix. Currently Dingo works in Firefox 1.5 and Opera 9 beta. Firefox is recommended.

I'm aware of several bugs, so you don't need to tell me yet. Currently the scripts for new applications aren't cleaned up after they're run, but this is easy to fix. When you drag a window full of contents, it may temporary paint a trail until you stop moving. This is nothing I can fix, but hey, Windows sometimes has this problem too. As for Opera 8, Safari, and Konqueror, I may end up serving them a different stylesheet that simplifies the menu and doesn't reveal those positioning bugs. The system uses semantic markup, aside from the nested divs that are necessary for the design and the p elements I use for the window buttons instead of button due to a couple styling issues in Firefox. The system is designed with a lot of focus on web standards. I will likely implement plain link fallbacks for the navigation items so that JavaScript support technically won't be required.

During development, Dingo might be inaccessible or bugged to heck every now and then. The official estimated release date is May 8, 2845, but it might get an earlier release if all goes well.