51–60 of 116 posts
Didn't they try this with HP web OS. That failed I wouldn't put money on this.
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Designing a good GUI is hard indeed and it requires a completely different skill set than the engineering task of writing a good OS/kernel/broswer. That is why ideally the two should be taken on by different teams in my opinion.
So the plan is to force the UI-team to work in javascript and that way automatically get rid of the kernel-guys? No, but seriously, who does that today? (aside from one-man operations) And how is this going to help? As to a third party GUI, I'm fond of the idea in for instance the android world. Instead of manufacturer-specific user interfaces, why not a third party interface developed by an independent company that…
People used to write code in assembly and interface directly with the hardware. Then OSes and compilers came and made everything easier for everyone involved. Only a few highly specialized hackers know how to write device drivers and assembly anymore.
I am convinced that in a few years from now (remember I was talking about the future) the majority of developers will be "frontend developers" who know HTML/CSS/JS (or hopefully JS replaced with something more productive). Right now that thought might suck, but imagine how many tools and libraries will be available by then.
> But there are serious obstacles to succeeding with that and I don't see why that has anything to do with the development-side of it.
I am not sure what you are talking about. I am talking about completely decoupling the user interface from the rest of the OS, a little bit like it is the case on the desktop with Linux / BSD and KDE / Gnome. Only that making user interfaces does not require a lot of technical knowledge.
EDIT: Just to clarify. I am talking about a hypothetical future mobile OS not Android or iOS. The way I am seeing this is a little bit like WordPress plugins. There would be a default GUI, but most people would download a custom one. A large number of UIs would be free, but if you want to be hip you need to pay for the latest one. There will be an entire new class of UI designers, just like since a while ago there is a new class of mobile app developers.
EDIT2: The OS itself would be FOSS and the hardware would dead cheap, because it is just a commodity. Eventually it will replace desktops, for instance with a special javascript API to run a virtual machine, which can run a desktop OS on your phone, if you need one, e.g. for development.
There are a lot of "looks promising" comments here. Am I the only one who thinks this does NOT look promising? Aside from games, rendering a markup language is one the most taxing things we do on our mobile devices. When I get handed a new phone to play with, the first thing I do is load a non-mobile optimized website and see how it scrolls. This worst-case scenario is a good indicator for how laggy and jittery a mob…
Similarly there's also been an underestimation about the cost and nature of systems software, any one remember Oracle's 'Raw Iron' (http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/techs-all-time-top-25-f...).
At the same time, isn't it striking how users embrace mobile apps as opposed to paywalls on the web? I wonder how this OS would address this problem?
This runs a Linux kernel with some components in common with Android like libusb, so really linux is the operating system and there is a browser running on top of it. Lots more info: https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G
I love that the mozilla guys have done the legwork of figuring out what APIs were missing in order to do that. That is a nice piece of work.
There are a lot of "looks promising" comments here. Am I the only one who thinks this does NOT look promising? Aside from games, rendering a markup language is one the most taxing things we do on our mobile devices. When I get handed a new phone to play with, the first thing I do is load a non-mobile optimized website and see how it scrolls. This worst-case scenario is a good indicator for how laggy and jittery a mob…
But that rule doesn't seem to be holding true for the mobile market.
I don't really understand it. Maybe simplicity, affordance, and marketing are now the important factors, given the kinds of users we are now reaching.
Or, maybe it's Apple's ability to deliver key hardware innovations, years ahead of the competition. (http://www.quora.com/Apple-Inc-2/What-would-be-a-good-use-of...). One would think this trend couldn't last, but they do it over and over again.
This runs a Linux kernel with some components in common with Android like libusb, so really linux is the operating system and there is a browser running on top of it. Lots more info: https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G
Yes, the title is misleading. It should have read "an entire phone user interface implemented in a browser" which would have been more descriptive. I love that the mozilla guys have done the legwork of figuring out what APIs were missing in order to do that. That is a nice piece of work.
There are a lot of "looks promising" comments here. Am I the only one who thinks this does NOT look promising? Aside from games, rendering a markup language is one the most taxing things we do on our mobile devices. When I get handed a new phone to play with, the first thing I do is load a non-mobile optimized website and see how it scrolls. This worst-case scenario is a good indicator for how laggy and jittery a mob…
Unfortunately I own this Tegra2 based POS thing and I'm quite positive that I'll never see even a glimpse of the B2G experience on this device.
Still, this is remarkably close to the WebOS approach and - I like the idea very much.
Mozilla will to have sell an awful lot of these phones for their organization to be viable in the future.