Web Browser
Is anyone working on a web browser for the Roku? GoogleTV will leap frog the Roku for this fact alone. Here is a list of features that would make for an impressive web browser. Bookmarking pages a...
Forum Discussion
"scrager" wrote:"kbenson" wrote:
Well, you can pay $60 for unit to do dev on, so it's not TOO bad. That's pretty cheap, as long as you have a TV to hook it up to, and it's not like there's no use to when not doing development.
we're getting off topic now, but even with a dev unit, you have to switch from computer keyboard input to roku remote input and it is a pain. a proper ide (of which roku doesn't even supply an impropper ide) would allow you to view and test within the ide itself, including debugging code without putting in print statements all over the place.
Yeah, but there are specific, obvious reasons for that. To truly emulate the unit would mean that Roku couldn't provide assurances to content providers that their content was safe, would allow people easier access to the firmware running, and wouldn't necessarily match the actual performance metrics of the device. This wasn't an oversight by Roku, it was a conscious decision.
I could actually make an argument that requiring development to be done on a live unit using the actual control mechanisms may result in better code, as developers are actively prevented from assuming something that works in their emulated version will work in the wild, which isn't always the case.
