14th Oct 2007
A while back, I had an idea to try and re-create the look and feel of Microsoft DOS using modern web-based techniques. I think it'd be nice to go back and take another look at it.
First of all, have a play...
(Click Here to open it in a popup window (better))
As you can see, its merely a proof of concept and it carries only a few of the original commands (though it does add it's own commands also (namely Search and Contact)).
Im quite happy with the Google search aspect! It uses the Google API (limited usage per day last time I checked) which is why the search results take a little time to appear on screen.
Accomplished using AJAX - the procedure kicks off when the user hits the Return key - generating a remote procedure call to a server side page that handles the 'command' and sends back the relevant HTML which then gets outputted on screen.
Have a play. Hope you enjoy!
Notes: As I and the server on which this code sits reside in the UK, the 'Time' and 'Date' commands will reflect GMT - (I realise these commands could both have used the browser's client side javascript handling to accomplish this, but I was aiming to demo and play with AJAX and so decided against existing javascript functions.)