From: Guido Sohne Date: 2006-09-15T04:11:07+09:00 Subject: Re: Browser applications (applets, flash...) with Ruby? On 9/12/06, francis.rammeloo@gmail.com wrote: > Is it possible to write applications in Ruby and let them run in an > internet browser, just like you could with applets or flash? Preferably > without the user having to install a special plug-in... It depends on your goals. If you want everything in Ruby then you have to use it on the server side and then it can generate all the content that you want. I have used Rails as a 'launchpad' for a Javascript application. It really started as a Rails application, but I wanted to achieve two things, the first was reducing the frequency of round trips, and to eliminate session from the server, so that it can run from anywhere. I have considered writing Ruby code that generates JavaScript but code generators are not the road that I thought would be best. JavaScript and Ruby can communicate with each other, as long as you can pass your data around as JSON, or as URL parameters (say, for updates). RJS I wouldn't say is a code generator, but rather it helps to orchestrate various common scenarios for making the normal static content much more interactive. If you want to take this to the conclusion that I reached, then you would write the application in Javascript and only rarely talk with the server at which point it is no longer a Ruby application but a JavaScript applications. The division fell naturally into server side processing that does data updates, fetches and validation (to get around the same origin limitation) and the client represents the data directly as HTML elements, or objects attached to these elements. But what you are trying to do, I'd say that is what JavaScript was created for. Rails comes with the prototype and scriptaculous JavaScript libraries, which help to make your JavaScript idioms a bit more Ruby like ... See http://semaflickr.sohne.net if you want to see what I mean ... -- G.