disco

The Discovery Web Desktop

What Is Disco?

Disco is a node.js application that implements the Discovery Web Desktop (but keep in mind, I sometimes use the terms interchangeably.) The "Discovery Web Desktop" is a web application that looks like a standard computer desktop. You have a menu bar, resizeable/repositionable windows and even icons.

Disco was created mostly to provide an environment to test user interface ideas. As it took shape, however, it became clear it could actually be a useful part of my daily life. Disco currently provides a framework for you to make your own desktop application, but we'll continue to add features to make it more usable "out of the box."

How Do I Install Disco?

To install disco, first install Node.JS, git and the make utility for your platform. Once you've done that, you can install disco by cloning the repository:

git clone https://github.com/OhMeadhbh/disco.git

Next issue the make command to download prerequisite node packages and fonts.

make

Disco uses the sn-app package, so you will need to install this package if it's not already on your system. If you type the sn-app command into a terminal window and get a message like "command not found", use the NPM tool to install the sn-app package:

sudo npm install -g sn-app

Disco is configured to listen on port 8080 by default. If you want to change this behavior, edit the disco.json file and look for this JSON clause:

"listen": {
  "port": 8080
}

and change the number after the "port" identifier to the port you want to listen on. If you want to listen on a specific network interface, add a "host" key-value pair specifying the IP address of the interface you want to listen on. Here's an example of listening only on port 9000 of the loopback interface:

"listen": {
  "port": 9000,
  "host": "127.0.0.1"
}

After making appropriate changes, change to the root disco directory (the one with the disco.json file in it) and launch the application with this command:

sn-app --config file://disco.json

Once launched, you should be able to see the Discovery Web Desktop at the URL http://localhost:8080/.