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An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

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Re: An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

#11

Post by nextparadigms »

"You can run on less expensive hardware, because you've got less technology going on under the covers. You don't have to pay the penalty of a big smart phone operating system if you're running directly on the web."

That's misleading. Sure, you might need fewer resources to pull something like a simple web page. But try using web apps that are the equivalent of native apps on Android or iOS, and you'll need a lot better hardware to run those just as well.

Re: An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

#13

Post by knowtheory »

So, I noticed there was no mention of multi-touch events in the video, and none of the apps demonstrated used multi-touch. I did some digging to see whether this was a gap or whether mozilla had been working on multi-touch in browser (since the consequences of such a change for JS APIs are interesting to consider).

Mozilla has apparently been working on multi-touch in browser as one can see in these two links:

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/08/multi-touch-firefox/

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/10/multi-touch/

Re: An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

#14

Post by suprgeek »

This is a really promising direction to take for Mobile Apps. If I can write amazing HTML5+JavaScript apps for the Mobile then the logical extension to this is to write the Uber-app "Phone OS" using these technologies as well. Lets get this working on at least the Dual & Quad core beasts first and worry about the lesser-hardware ones as B2G evolves

Good work Mozilla and keep Pushing the "Open Web". A walled garden despite its many advantages, is still a Gilded Prison for some.

Re: An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

#15

Post by MitziMoto »

Radzell wrote: post #9

Didn't they try this with HP web OS. That failed I wouldn't put money on this.

I had the original Palm Pre with WebOS. The OS itself was actually top notch. I absolutely loved it. I believe it failed because Palm just didn't have enough weight behind it (like Google or Apple have) to make it reach critical mass.

That said, this isn't the same as WebOS. WebOS ran javascript apps, but they ran on the device itself. From what I can gather, B2G is running everything on the actual web. It's very different.

--

Edit: I may have been wrong there. Apparently it is running locally. This quote from the web page through me off:

"You don't have to pay the penalty of a big smart phone operating system if you're running directly on the web"

That's a bit misleading.

Re: An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

#16

Post by joelhaasnoot »

EastCoastLA wrote: post #2

Looks like with Enyo, the JavaScript app framework, and leveraging this new Boot2Gecko, smartphone hardware will become the focus rather the phone OS.

Yes, to be honest, Palm already demonstrated this could be done in 2009. Oh, and that was a released product.

Re: An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

#17

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

mhd wrote: post #6

Boy, the video's constant use of " the web" really annoyed me. I know that you have to cut down the jargon to make it presentable, and "HTML, CSS and JS" gets a bit confusing. What about "web technologies" or even just "a browser"? Also: "You can run on less expensive hardware, because you've got less technology going on under the covers." You can't really call a full HTML5 stack light-weight. Sure, you save some lib…

HTML5, or perhaps better termed "emerging web technologies" are an incredibly heavy stack. You have 3 different means of markup being parsed from the get-go: HTML/SGML, XML and JSON. HTML is a quite lightweight component, OK. But then you get CSS. CSS used to be simple, but it's getting incredibly complex with tons of new standardised features and vendor prefixes. Initially it just drew lines and boxes in colour with text, positioned correctly on the page according to a few simple positioning systems. Now it draws coloured boxes and lines with 3d transformations, animated, with alpha transparency, a drop shadow and rounded corners, at the same time as rendering text, and positioning them correctly on the page using several different layout systems. Then, there's the image formats commonly supported. PNG, JPEG, GIF, and ICO (Windows, favicons). SVG, a fully-featured vector graphics format which also uses CSS, as well as having its own, different animation system, and its own scripting system! Then we have common audio and video formats. MP3, WAV, OGG, MP4/H264 and WEBM. As well as the subtitle formats. Oh yeah, MathML parsing is in there somewhere too.

And then we have Javascript, a simple, not terribly complex language. OK. But we also have tons of APIs for it. The Document Object Model API. The XMLHttpRequest API. The Canvas API - a complete 2d rendering context AND full OpenGL ES 2.0. WebSockets. Local storage and session storage. IndexedDB. Game controller API. Page visibility API. Audio composition API (forgot proper name). Touch events. BlobBuilder. Geolocation. History API.

Just to name a bit of it.

Re: An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

#19

Post by [deleted] »

MitziMoto wrote: post #15
Radzell wrote: post #9

Didn't they try this with HP web OS. That failed I wouldn't put money on this.

I had the original Palm Pre with WebOS. The OS itself was actually top notch. I absolutely loved it. I believe it failed because Palm just didn't have enough weight behind it (like Google or Apple have) to make it reach critical mass. That said, this isn't the same as WebOS. WebOS ran javascript apps, but they ran on the device itself. From what I can gather, B2G is running everything on the actual web. It's very dif…

[deleted]

Re: An entire Mobile OS built using HTML, CSS and JS - by Mozilla

#20

Post by [deleted] »

suprgeek wrote: post #14

This is a really promising direction to take for Mobile Apps. If I can write amazing HTML5+JavaScript apps for the Mobile then the logical extension to this is to write the Uber-app "Phone OS" using these technologies as well. Lets get this working on at least the Dual & Quad core beasts first and worry about the lesser-hardware ones as B2G evolves Good work Mozilla and keep Pushing the "Open Web". A walled garden de…

[deleted]
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