][1]Lobby is a new project of mine which was under development for more than a year. I’m proud to release it today with the first version 0.2. Lobby is a localhost Operating System like Android, iOS etc.
What It Is
I’ll explain it to you. There are many OSs in this world. From Ubuntu to Windows to Mac to Android to iOS and so on… Developing an application is tough as you have to port it to different OSs. And the language to develop is also different :
- Ubuntu – C, C++, Python
- Windows – C, C++
- Mac – C++
- Android – Java
- iOS – C#
As you can see, a simple developer like you and me have to learn multiple languages for creating a single app. What If, you only have to create a single app with languages that you know such as HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript + jQuery and the best thing it runs on a browser. Life has become easy… This means, the app can be used in various devices as long as it has internet.
Lobby is a software completely written in PHP to simplify the process of creating an app. With Lobby, you will only have to create the app once and you can use that app in EVERY system that has a PHP localhost server.
Lobby is a software that runs on a web server, like WordPress. You can download it from here, extract it into your localhost folder (/var/www) and visit the page in your browser. There is a small installation process and after it, you can download apps from the Lobby Store.
Image it like WordPress, because I created it from the inspiration of WordPress.
Why ?
WordPress had some cool plugins which I would like personally on my computer. Since I’m using Ubuntu, there aren’t that many apps available like Windows or Mac. And even if I create one, its gonna take a long time. So, to save the time as well as help others who are also in situations like this, I created Lobby.
For example, I always had a thought in my mind to write diaries. If I did it in a paper, there’s a big chance for it to be easily lost, destroyed or anything that makes it unusable in future. So, I digitalized the diary as an app in**Lobby**. You can download the Diary app from here.
Another app that I created was a game “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire ?”.
So, to me if I wanted to create a tool that anyone can use it on their computers, I can just upload it to Lobby. Example: The logSys Admin app which helps in managing users using logSys.
Features
Here are all the features :
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One App For All OS
Create a single app and use it for all systems.
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Super Fast Framework For Apps
Each line of the 5000+ lines code was created to be super fast and efficient.
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Easy To Learn & Use
Lobby is not using MVC or any other types of existing models. It was created to be fast and easily understandable and hence is a deviation from the current types of softwares created in PHP.
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Open Source
Like my previous projects, this is Open Source too. It is licensed under Apache License. You can see the GitHub repo here
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Safe & Secure Apps
A central repository of apps is integrated into Lobby meaning all apps that are in the Lobby Store is tested for security as well as privacy. So, no apps can use your personal data to make profit.
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FileSystem
Like an OS, Lobby has its own filesystem to access files of the user’s system. And every app is required to use this class. This means, Lobby is aware of what the app is doing ie your privacy is very important to Lobby.
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Auto Update
See when a new version comes out and update with a single click. Lobby will update the source code, database and make sure nothing bad happens while updating. This is available to both apps and Lobby itself.
And many more features to be added… Here is a snapshot of the dashboard :
Future
I have created many apps using Lobby and it all works well. I have some great plans for it in the future and I hope it would help you too. You can head straight to the docs for learning Lobby and when you create and app, you can submit it to Lobby Repo
Lobby is an evolving project and the goal is to make stuff SIMPLEST & FASTEST.
The documentation is not complete. It is the hardest part to do, not the code. But, Lobby was created to be SIMPLE & POWERFUL and you can easily grasp how it works by looking at the example apps. Here is the source code of lEdit – The official text editor of Lobby.