Where does the idea come from?
Back in the day I installed a lot of operating systems. I learned how to do it, but there were some applications that I always used and it was a pain to always reinstall them afther changing the operatins systems. Also, when switching from Windows to Linux for example, I had to search for new applications, etc.
This is when the thought came: it would be nice to have a desktop-like interface that I can access and contains my favorite applications. So, ServiceBox was born.
What is ServiceBox?
ServiceBox is a box with services. It is a desktop-like web application that contains icons of applications. When clicked, they open in a window. Multiple applications can be opened, and closed afterwards. The idea is to have a web interface that has practical applications in it. You can access it from anywhere, you just need internet connection. The applications stay the same and function the same, no matter where you are or what operating system you use.
Parts of the project
The project consists of two parts: the front and the back. The front is meant to function without the back in any browser. The back is there to serve requests from the front in cases when data needs to be stored, or authentication is required.
Technical details
The front is pure HTML, CSS and JS, using Bootstrap 3 as HTML framework and jQuery as JS framework. The majority of applications are loaded by iframes or JS. It is totally separated from the back and can be loaded from any browser, even if you just download the front to your machine. No server is required.
The back is mainly PHP, using MySQL database. It has only once communication point, the index. It is created to serve just the front. It uses a self-made communication protocol based on JSON. Every request and response has the same structure known by both sides.
There is a live example of ServiceBox you can check out here:
If you want to contribute to the code, or just check it out, you can find the git repos here:
