Great Web Update

02/17/2023

It may not look like it, but after over four weeks of work, we are finally releasing the biggest update ever to NET and EDEN Online.

This update introduces real-mode web applications. These can provide user experiences close to everyone else's without third-party libraries, much like the NET-Slides Concept UI we made three years ago. This time however, we have a real, working albeit less complete example: J-Card Template Update 2. While our pages are still built with Jekyll, their end result uses 100% in-house components built from scratch on standard web technologies.

That alone is one of many changes. We listed over a screenful of logic, semantic, stylistic, and technical improvements and corrections; plus another screenful of page creations and edits; all on the Changes page. While working on the pages, we found a bug in Firefox ESR--our main web browser--and filed it as #1816270. If you read the report and run the tester, then--yes, we wanted to put a honk button in the User Agent page, but alas.

What got us here is an internal plea to replace J-Card Template's tedious user interface. In it, you scroll down to edit the form, then back up to see the real-time output. Its replacement divides the window into two parts: one for the output, and the other for otherwise. Despite still having to scroll in the latter, the page menu stays in place for section-jumping at any time. We have written a separate post on J-Card Template Update 2 to announce its prerelease.

Lastly, in celebration of EDEN Online reaching a 100-page milestone, we made it installable for offline access. The process is both explained and handled by the newly-created NET-Installer, found under NET Services in NET World. This and its use in J-Card Template mark our entry into Progressive Web Applications (PWAs), where websites can turn into apps. In other words, PWAs bypass storefront bureaucracies, install as first-class citizens, and run on any platform with a supporting web browser.

With all of that done, we finally felt complete towards every single one of our work except for NET-Slides, which is just too much of a hassle. There will definitely be no Updates nor new projects for this year. Instead, we will fix bugs and respond to mails whenever possible.