ÆTHER (pronounced “ay-ther”) is the Greek personification of the upper sky — the pure, glowing air the gods breathed above the mortal atmosphere. Later, physics borrowed the name for the theoretical medium that fills all space and carries light
Devlog 1 drew the canvas. Devlog 2 built the OS. This one was about cutting features, fixing bugs, and shipping something I’m proud to show.
ÆTHER OS ver 7 is a cosmic WebOS built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No framework, no build step, no runtime dependencies—just one HTML file, one CSS file, four JS files, and ~5,500 lines of code.
Ships with 9 built-in apps:
ls, cd, mkdir, mv, rm, neofetch, warp, and js.Ctrl+S saving.Supports draggable titlebars, eight resize handles, edge and corner snapping, double-click maximize, triple-click zoom, minimize-to-dock animations, z-order updates, Alt+Tab switching, and a shared drag state that eliminates listener leaks.
Everything is backed by one JSON tree stored in localStorage (aether:fs).
The Terminal, desktop, File Explorer, and editor all use the same data. Move or delete a file anywhere and every app immediately reflects the change.
Added custom scrollbars, purple text selection, Google Fonts with preconnect, focused window glow, boot typing effects, dock magnification, spring animations, notification toasts, and six synthesized Web Audio sounds.
Earlier builds contained more apps. I removed everything that wasn’t solid enough to ship. Nine polished apps are better than shipping unfinished features.
Twelve major release blockers, including:
desktop.js
Ctrl+W closing the browserThe biggest fix was replacing per-window event listeners with one shared drag system, eliminating multiple unrelated bugs at once.
✦ breathe the void
P.S. Devlog was delayed. I forgot to post devlog 2 and just kept building, so Hackatime only shows 16 minutes on this one. The code didn’t write itself—I simply forgot to log the voyage. ;)
Devlog 1 laid the foundation. This week was about turning ÆTHER OS into something that actually feels like an operating system: a real window manager, virtual filesystem, built-in apps, polish, shipping, and a bug-fixing marathon.
The window manager now supports draggable titlebars, eight resize handles, edge and corner snapping, double-click maximize, triple-click zoom, minimize animations to the dock, close animations, and automatic z-order updates.
One of the biggest bugs came from installing a new mousemove listener every drag. After enough windows were opened and closed, stale listeners accumulated, dragging became unreliable, and buttons stopped responding. The fix was a single shared drag state with listeners installed once.
The filesystem is stored as a JSON tree in localStorage (aether:fs).
The Terminal supports ls, cd, cat, mkdir, touch, mv, cp, rm, rename, and more.
The desktop renders /home/explorer as an icon grid with drag-and-drop, context menus, and File Explorer integration with folders, breadcrumbs, and direct file editing.
Built eight core apps:
neofetch, cowsay, warp, js, and more.Ctrl+S filesystem saving.Added custom scrollbars, purple selection, Inter + JetBrains Mono fonts, focused window glow, randomized boot typing, dock magnification, spring animations, notification toasts, and six synthesized Web Audio UI sounds.
After deploying to Vercel, I spent thirty minutes using the OS like a real user and found another wave of bugs.
The clock froze after unlock, the volume slider wasn’t wired, Ctrl+W closed the browser, the GPU chart was missing, the scientific calculator layout broke, maximized windows hid behind the menu bar, file opening crashed because of a template literal typo, and the window manager listener leak caused multiple unrelated issues.
The biggest lesson: fix the root cause, not every symptom.
Integrated @vercel/analytics and @vercel/speed-insights to monitor production traffic and performance.
Thirty-five bugs spotted, including window snapping, Alt+Tab, filesystem edge cases, calculator fixes, audio leaks, notification cleanup, dock magnification, font loading, window manager listener leaks, frozen clock, GPU monitoring, wallpaper caching, Finder title sync, maximized window layout, and
The biggest fix was removing duplicated event listeners from the window manager, solving several seemingly unrelated bugs at once.
✦ breathe the void
Day 1 of Hack Club Stardance. The cosmic medium takes its first breath.
I’ve been sketching this idea for weeks: a full-fledged WebOS that feels like diving into deep space. Today I finally wrote the first line of code.
The commit log will be my captain’s log. Stardance only ships if you document the voyage, so here goes.
ÆTHER (pronounced “ay-ther”) is the Greek personification of the upper sky—the pure, glowing air above the mortal atmosphere. Later, physics borrowed the name for the theoretical medium that fills space and carries light.
ÆTHER OS is a desktop environment running entirely in a browser tab: a window manager, menu bar, dock, virtual filesystem, and 12 built-in apps. No backend, no framework, no build step—just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Its design blends glassmorphism with cosmic depth: frosted panels over a parallax starfield with slowly morphing nebulae, using Void Black, Nebula Purple, and Cosmic Cyan.
The project consists of one index.html, one styles.css, and four JavaScript modules:
core.js — boot, lock screen, menu bar, dock, notifications, sounds, shortcutswm.js — window managerfs.js — virtual filesystem and desktopapps.js — all 12 appsNo npm, bundler, or framework. Just globals and the DOM.
The desktop uses two animated layers: a <canvas> starfield rendered with requestAnimationFrame and a morphing nebula made from blurred radial gradients.
Stars belong to near and far layers (parallax factors 18 and 6). Mouse movement is smoothed with:
tmx += (mx - tmx) * 0.06;
Near stars receive a cyan halo and subtle twinkle, while the nebula morphs over ~24-second cycles using filter: blur(80px).
The boot log is typed line-by-line using await sleep(...), alongside a progress bar and ASCII logo.
The system announces NEBULA KERNEL v1.0.0 before printing fake kernel logs like:
A live clock, date, user avatar, decorative password field (any password works), and click-anywhere-to-unlock.
A macOS-style menu bar with the ÆTHER menu, active app name, Wi-Fi, battery, notifications, volume, and live clock. Context menus include working actions like New Window (Ctrl+N), Close (Ctrl+W), and Fullscreen (F11).
All UI sounds are synthesized with the Web Audio API through a single helper:
beep(freq, duration, type, vol, slide)
Current sounds include boot, open, close, click, notification, and error.
filter: blur(80px).
Moved the boot overlay above the nebula layer using z-index.
2
Window z-order never updated.
el.style.zIndex = ++zTop on focus.
3
Starfield broke after resize.
Added a resize listener that updates and reseeds the canvas.
Next comes the window manager: dragging, resizing, minimizing, maximizing, snapping, z-order, spring animations, double-click maximize, triple-click zoom, and finally the dock with magnification.
That’s when ÆTHER starts feeling like an operating system instead of a website.
✦ breathe the void
