WebOS 2 Devlog #6: UI, UX and functionality improvements

This update focuses heavily on stabilizing what i already have and also refining the less finer aspects of the UI. Here is what i did:

• Theme improvenets: I overhauled the .theme-retro class. stuff were contradicting each other with one thing saying this and the other saying that (too many to even give an example). I also changed some other minor stuff too like increased the grid size in the desktop to prevent icons from overlapping.

But this was the main change:

• System Security & Identity Manager: Implemented a global sanitizeIdentity utility (Regex: /[^a-zA-Z0-9_-]/g) to remove spaces and illegal characters from usernames and hostnames when the user sets it before writing to localStorage because if i have sth like ‘John Doe’ as the username and ‘my school computer’ as the host name, the terminal command would look sth like John Doe@my school computer. And this just looks hella ugly.

• Dedicated Identity UI: removed the raw identity inputs out of the Settings menu like i had before and moved them into a dedicated Identity Manager window because its more secure that way. I also added an authenticaiton wall before this window pops up. To do this, i wrote an async while loop for identity verification. All the users now have successfully pass the password prompt (or use the recover override to bypass the password) before it allows them to modify any identity settings.

• Bootloader improvements: btn-shutdown now properly halts system processes (clearing systemClockInterval and locking pointer events) instead of just hiding the UI like it did before where it just had like a black screen with text on it saying shutting down and stuff. It now has like a loading screen and all that stuff.

• Context Booting: i also implemented sessionStorage.setItem(‘boot_context’, ‘warm’) to track system restarts so different boots have like different bootloading sequences (the point below this). This didn’t take too long as i could just copy and past what i had in other sequenes and just take the text.

• Differnet Boot Sequences: The bootloader now reads the sessionStorage context. A Cold Boot triggers the full POST memory checks and hardware scans (dont know what this is. had to use ai for the sequences cus i didnt know what the data was). A Warm Boot (restart) bypasses POST and executes a different initialization sequence. THis makes the user more immersed in the environment.