web-based game browser

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A suggested feature was to make a web-based game browser to replace QSnoop.
It could be based on AJAX and such.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by pphaneuf on 20 Apr 2008 at 5:12

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Original comment by pphaneuf on 20 Apr 2008 at 5:12

• Added labels: Type-Enhancement
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

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Using AJAX techniques would be nice, but I'd rather write the 20 lines of 
javascript 
needed to parse the Dict format than use any XML at all.

The installer for windows already makes an association for MIME type 
application/x-
quadra-server (as well as a different one for .qrec recordings which could be 
used 
to view highscore games). The format is simply an IP address in text form that 
the 
client should connect to. Qserv could serve up documents of that type to enable 
connecting to a server from a web page.

Caveat 1: I wouldn't be surprised if Vista (or even XP) frowned upon that 
manner of 
starting applications. An annoying "are you sure you trust this" popup might 
appear.

Caveat 2: I'm not sure Firefox honors those associations on windows. Annoying 
popups 
might apply there as well.

Caveat 3: We'll need to add similar stuff to the OS X and Linux installers. 
They 
will also have to work with the various browsers used on those platforms.

Caveat 4: Implementing this will merely highlight the fact that Quadra itself 
should've been a Flash application in the first place :).

All in all, that seems like a bit of a porting marathon to me... We should 
discuss 
other options before accepting this as is. Example: make our own simplified 
QSnoop 
based on existing Quadra code.

Original comment by slaj...@gmail.com on 20 Apr 2008 at 7:25

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Oh, when I say AJAX, I *certainly* don't mean to use XML! The thing used for 
making
HTTP requests is called xmlHttpRequest, but the XML is there for no particular
reason, you can get whatever you want and parse it however you want. Most
applications actually use JSON, I'm told...

This idea is quite low priority (reflecting that in the metadata now), IMHO. 
Just
something that might be intriguing to explore. In fact, a fan knowledgeable in 
those
programming techniques could very well do it without our help at all!

The main trick is how to start Quadra from a web page. This isn't exactly rocket
science, but how to do this so that it works on a number of platforms isn't 
obvious.
RealPlayer has been doing this kind of this for a long time, so I'm guessing 
it's
possible (even on Linux), but what needs to be done exactly in the installer?

Quadra doesn't suck nearly as much as most Flash games, IMHO! Multiplayer games 
are
pretty rare (in fact, I don't remember ever seeing one), and fullscreen usually 
sucks
pretty badly.

I'm not really sure about writing more native code... Maybe it's the Google 
kool-aid
affecting my brain, but this sounds like the kind of thing that's trivial to 
do, and
reduce the barrier to entry. I'm certainly not about to do *anything* about this
right now either way, so whoever writes code will probably automatically win the
argument. :-)

Original comment by pphaneuf on 20 Apr 2008 at 9:07

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