GreenScreenCraft
“Legacy” UI green screens. They are smokin’ fast.
I do a lot of things from the command line. It’s just faster. Some things, like a GUI view of a Git checkin help quite a bit. But as a Java developer living in a server and configuration world there is nothing better than a good text interface.
Applications
First, the good old Lynx text browser. Yes, you need this. Sometimes you want to test CSS degradability or usability. Sometimes curl or wget just don’t cut it. Sometimes you need a wow factor.
Now this is super cool. I used it on a Linux box cut off from all things civilized. The Alpine text email client. Just like the old days of mail -f, but with this really slick interface. If you ever use it, all of your wildest “why?”‘s will be answered.
Check this out — some people I know are using a Java Text GUI called Lanterna. I checked it out, it’s not bad. Kind of looks like Turbo Pascal.
You are facing east, there is a compiler to your left.
Maybe this isn’t “so” text-ui, but a Groovy Console gives you a great minimum way of testing code snippets. It’s a little quicker than my usual set-up-a-temp-unit-test.
Art
And then there’s the ASCII Art. I noticed an upswing in it’s usage with some tools I had been involved with recently. Like this Groovy enVironment Manager tool.
Or maybe you are working on a Hoodie stack?
Theater
Some even go waaaaay far . . . . like this old classic:
Getting rid of unneeded information and features isn’t a new thing at all. For instance, a lot of XML is being jettisoned because of the size of the files/requirements of the markup; UIs though feature-laden are being stripped down or minimally have the option to be. Even single use hardware like tiny Roku and Amazon tv devices, full computers in and of themselves (this Fire Stick has 1 GB of ram and a dual core processor and does one thing — make streaming TV available).
I am all for the greenscreens!
