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Open Web Device

openwebdevice.com

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Re: Open Web Device

#71

Post by malandrew »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #65
malandrew wrote: post #63

I hope that some sort of support for inter-app linking is supported. One of the biggest problems with native apps on iOS and Android is support for moving from one app to another, but still allowing the user to easily return to the originating app. At the moment, the only native support for this kind of feature that I can think of is maps support. For example, if you click on a Google Maps directions link on OS X, th…

Not really a problem for Android, it's what Intents are for and it powers all inter-app interaction. It's actually extremely slick. Which is why Web Intents were modeled after it. They're surely coming to Gecko, if they're not already in place.

I haven't read up on web intents yet. I need to check them out. Thanks.

Re: Open Web Device

#72

Post by azakai »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #64
azakai wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about this too. The FAQ mentions they will update the core browser like Firefox normally does, but I wonder if that means they also need to update the web browser frontend (written in HTML/JS) at those times as well.

The entire "OS" that is visible to the user is effectively a XUL style iframe. You get an updated gonk/gecko core, and you're "updated".

Is gaia updated at those times?

Re: Open Web Device

#73

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #3

It looks like all "apps" are web pages. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they can make it run things like Angry Birds. And how well they deal with background tasks. On Android I can upload my photos in the background, or play music through Spotify (or my MP3 app) while I'm doing other things. Will I be able to do similar things here?

Well, Angry Birds runs as HTML5 app already perfectly well. http://chrome.angrybirds.com/

Re: Open Web Device

#74

Post by AndrewDucker »

Sami_Lehtinen wrote: post #73
AndrewDucker wrote: post #3

It looks like all "apps" are web pages. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they can make it run things like Angry Birds. And how well they deal with background tasks. On Android I can upload my photos in the background, or play music through Spotify (or my MP3 app) while I'm doing other things. Will I be able to do similar things here?

Well, Angry Birds runs as HTML5 app already perfectly well. http://chrome.angrybirds.com/

I thought that it used Flash for the sound.

Re: Open Web Device

#75

Post by fragsworth »

benihana wrote: post #45

Until I use this, I'm going to hold off on the excitement everyone seems to have for it. The tagline is "The Device the developer community is waiting for." That's great for the developer community. Unfortunately, the developer community is a small minority of people and honestly, people don't really care if their device is easy to develop for. People care how good their device is. If a device is easy to develop for,…

> That's great for the developer community. Unfortunately, the developer community is a small minority of people

I think you underestimate the amount of influence developers have on the rest of the population. If you get developers to love you by making their jobs that much easier, they will go out of their way to promote your product and get other people to start using it. It's in their profit-minded interests to see to it that your product succeeds, because if it doesn't, then they have to bear the costs of doing things the old way.

The quality of the product matters, too, and we'll have to see if this will be a high-quality product. But there's something to be said about getting developers on your side.

Re: Open Web Device

#76

Post by drivebyacct2 »

toyg wrote: post #23
AndrewDucker wrote: post #3

It looks like all "apps" are web pages. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they can make it run things like Angry Birds. And how well they deal with background tasks. On Android I can upload my photos in the background, or play music through Spotify (or my MP3 app) while I'm doing other things. Will I be able to do similar things here?

And how well they deal with security. I look forward to the day when a malware-distributing webpage can pwn millions of phones without being detected... EDIT: uh, downvotes?

How is this any different than a popular app on the Android Market or an exploit in the same webpage affecting Mobile Webkit. This seems like a really random absurd scenario.

Re: Open Web Device

#77

Post by left_behind »

daeken wrote: post #29

Wow, what a thing to wake up to! At the heart of the Open Web Device is Mozilla's Boot2Gecko project. I just joined up with Mozilla on B2G a couple weeks ago and it's been an honor to work alongside so many amazing people, with a great goal: building a truly open mobile ecosystem. If you guys have any questions about B2G itself, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.

What about support for Nokia's Linux phones?

There are probably millions of soon to be unsupported devices, N900 (already left behind), N9 and N950 that could conceivably run this. After all, N900 can run open office and it is the oldest of these devices.

It would be much easier to test and contribute if one had a device already to properly experiment with. My N900 is gathering dust and there is no good replacements for its OS.

Re: Open Web Device

#78

Post by daeken »

left_behind wrote: post #77
daeken wrote: post #29

Wow, what a thing to wake up to! At the heart of the Open Web Device is Mozilla's Boot2Gecko project. I just joined up with Mozilla on B2G a couple weeks ago and it's been an honor to work alongside so many amazing people, with a great goal: building a truly open mobile ecosystem. If you guys have any questions about B2G itself, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.

What about support for Nokia's Linux phones? There are probably millions of soon to be unsupported devices, N900 (already left behind), N9 and N950 that could conceivably run this. After all, N900 can run open office and it is the oldest of these devices. It would be much easier to test and contribute if one had a device already to properly experiment with. My N900 is gathering dust and there is no good replacements…

In terms of getting 'official' support (meaning Mozilla employees working on it for real, I guess), I don't know how likely that is. But that said, it's all actually open, and porting it to other devices is not just ok, but encouraged -- I don't know about anyone else, but I'd love to see this running on other devices, and have some plans for some personal projects along those lines myself, when I have some spare time.

Re: Open Web Device

#79

Post by fiznool »

notatoad wrote: post #51

How is this going to handle updates? Obviously the UI/html5 portion will be trivial to update, but Firefox gets updated every six weeks. Is the system core going to lag behind the rest of the Firefox ecosystem, or ami I going to have to rely on my carrier or manufacturer to push out system updates every six weeks?

I would also like to find out how this is planned. Ideally a Chrome-style auto-update would be great. The bane of mobile web application development is dealing with the lowest common denominator - developing for multiple Android versions is especially painful. Anything to prevent fragmentation will be a good thing, as we all know carriers won't bother updating very often, unless they have a good reason to do so!

Re: Open Web Device

#80

Post by mbrubeck »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #74
Sami_Lehtinen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Angry Birds runs as HTML5 app already perfectly well. http://chrome.angrybirds.com/

I thought that it used Flash for the sound.

Angry Birds uses the Web Audio API for sound, with Flash as a fallback for browsers that don't support that API:

http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2012/01/angry-birds-chr...

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