@Riley I love open source

@Riley wait, really? I’ve been away all day.

@ajroach42 See linked toot

@Riley The linked toot didn't load for me on mobile, but I found it when I clicked through to the web view.

Have you tried it yet?

@ajroach42 Nothing to try it on.

@Riley lmao I literally saw these posts right next to each other I'm

@nev @staticsafe

* a joke (what if I ported this C# code I had for talking to masto APIs to .NET CF?)

* then I got too into it (wait, it works; it seemed to come together; and working in the IDE is easy)

* I also love PDAs (even if I prefer the Palms)

@calvin @nev @staticsafe I wasn't around #PDAs; would you say that they do/did anything different than modern smartphones? Is there anything about them that you think e-Ink devices could learn from? #PDA

@bthall @nev @staticsafe mmmmmmm

the iPhone changed everything; it allowed access to the "normal" web, radically altered app distribution, and radically altered UX metaphors and interaction; popularizing the category

PDAs and smartphones built like them were more desktop like UI-wise. of them, winmo tried to do everything and felt like using desktop windows; palm os was much simpler but aged badly into the smartphone era

not sure what eink devices could learn

@calvin @bthall @nev @staticsafe I'd also say that the iPhone learned pretty heavily from Palm OS, even if it didn't have the same goals.

Basically, Palm OS was trying to bridge the gap between fixed function organizers, and the early 1990s PDAs (that tried to do too much for their hardware, and were too bulky). Emphasis there was on quick access to the data you needed, and part of the philosophy was that it shouldn't do too much - if you wanted to do heavy tasks, bring your laptop.

@calvin @bthall @nev @staticsafe The iPhone definitely didn't exactly follow that - Safari supporting the full web seamlessly was seen as revolutionary (there were attempts with Opera Mobile, primarily on Windows Mobile, but it was clunkier).

But, especially early on, Apple did follow some parts of the philosophy - don't multitask, make programs launch fast. Don't do too much (I mean, early on, they didn't even have copy and paste), just do what's needed for a phone.

@bthall @nev @staticsafe The UI changes that @calvin talked about, quite frankly, were largely because of a technology shift from resistive touch (which measured pressure) to capacitive touch (which measured skin contact).

Resistive displays were often used with a stylus (which could produce a very small point of pressure on the display), so UI element spacing tended to be similar to desktop UIs at the time.

@bthall @nev @staticsafe @calvin The trend towards more whitespace in UIs (not just mobile, but you're seeing it in web and desktop UIs) is a manifestation of what mobile devices nowadays require, though.

Capacitive displays are used with relatively large fingertips, and therefore require wide spacing between UI elements, to be able to easily select one.

@bthall I know you didn't ask me, but would you be interested in my answer to this question?

(I'm trying to find a balance between offering unsolicited advice and skipping conversations in which I would be welcome. I think this kind of a question is necessary for those grey areas.)

@ajroach42 Yes 😊

@bthall

I used a PDA as my primary secondary device for ~6 years?

I had a Palm Tungsten e2, which was a midrange device with a low resolution square screen, graffiti input, and an SD card slot.

It did some things very well (ebooks, offline web pages, music, slideshows, games) and some things okay (wireless communication with compatible devices over short range point-to-point connections)

And some things very badly (anything involving live internet)

@Elizafox why not?

@calvin This will end up with me booting up the IBM z50 and then enabling all sorts of broken SSL on my Mastodon server...

(Not before the next weekend though...)

@galaxis @calvin z50's far too old for this, you need Windows Mobile 5 Pocket PC (which is CE 5.x), z50 is running CE 2.11 Handheld PC I think.

@bhtooefr @calvin Ah right. Too much retro again... Don't think I have any CE devices that modern.

@galaxis ...although .NET Compact Framework 1.0 SP3 has been backported to CE 2.x, apparently: https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=netcfwince200

But, you'd need to backport to that target, and redo the UI, I think.

@bhtooefr @galaxis I could backport to 2003, but TLS is even crumblier there

@calvin @galaxis I suspect you'd basically just have to bring in your own TLS library to run as far back as CE 2.xx?

@bhtooefr @galaxis .NET actually can run on 2.11, it's been backported; though it'd be the 1.x runtime, and not the 3.5 I depend on

1.x means no generics, autoprops, JSON parsing libs, and especially no funcprog