BlackBerry 10 is Going to Have the Best Web Browser of Any Mobile Platform • Hacker News Board

Re: BlackBerry 10 is Going to Have the Best Web Browser of Any Mobile Platform

#41

Post by icefox » Sat, Nov 10, 2012, 5:14 AM UTC

jonhohle wrote: post #37

icefox wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well BB10 devices might not be for sale, but the browser has been shown off and it is part of the dev devices that developers got at BBJam in September. If you want to see a little preview of it in action checkout this preview video taken at BBJam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onNTDUncA44 If you follow the link in the article to Matt's post on the RIM developer blog there are more articles on the browser and what it…

> As mentioned in the video one of the neatest aspects of the browser is the fact that the chrome itself is written in HTML/JS. Why, as an end user, would I ever care about this? All this says to me is that the part of the browser which should be fast and get out of the way is written in an abstraction layer with significant overhead (compared to the alternative, native code), which - to me - means using more RAM and…

I highlighting this feature for this particular crowd because the same bits that make the html web applications work on BlackBerry10 is what drives the new Chrome. This means that the guys making the chrome _really_ do care that html applications work well.

As for overhead the browser team has always concerned itself with keeping its footprint down both in memory and cpu and by using JS+HTML our total overhead was actually reduced compared to running another framework along side WebKit just for the Chrome. Checkout the above second video for more in depth presentation on this.

Disclaimer: I am part of the WebKit team at RIM these opinions are my own

Re: BlackBerry 10 is Going to Have the Best Web Browser of Any Mobile Platform

#42

Post by rileyt » Sat, Nov 10, 2012, 5:59 AM UTC

As much as I would love to stop even pretending to care about dealing with blackberry's brutal web browser, I still think that this title is way to bold and extremely unlikely...

Re: BlackBerry 10 is Going to Have the Best Web Browser of Any Mobile Platform

#43

Post by nnq » Sat, Nov 10, 2012, 6:48 AM UTC

...the only thing that could motivate me nowadays to write a BB version of a mobile app would be the ability to use HTML5 and javascript and just have the same app on both Android and BB... so if the browser is better than what 90% of Android users have, I wouldn't care, because I'd be targeting the Android webkit browser... Android won, so they should first strive for compatibility first (and HTML5 apps seems the only way for them) and then show off any superior features their OS may have on top of this...

...it seems that they are running through the woods without a map (AGAIN!) right now, and it really doesn't matter how fast they can run or climb trees if they don't know where they're going

[EDIT: added what's next] my 2 cents for RIM: throw some money at Xamarin (http://xamarin.com) to make BB a target for their app development platform... putting your eggs in the multiplatform basket would seem like the only sensible decision now that your basket is hosed / on fire, and enterprise devs that would be more inclined to target BB will probably prefer C#...

Re: BlackBerry 10 is Going to Have the Best Web Browser of Any Mobile Platform

#44

Post by CosmicShadow » Sat, Nov 10, 2012, 4:51 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #23

hemancuso wrote: post #12

Predictably there are a lot of haters on the thread, but can't we look at this as a good thing? A great browser won't be anywhere near enough to win, but a crappy browser is game over. I, for one, would like more competing platforms rather than fewer.

They're hating because RIM * is claiming they have the best browser. But it's all hot air, or more precisely, vaporware. It's not even on the market. And with RIM's track record, I'm not holding out for hope. * By proxy of Techvibes, which appears to be one of those tech "journalism" outfits that writes articles per what their hiring vendors tell them to.

Techvibes is probably one of the most anti-RIM blogs I've ever read, practically every day they have a negative RIM spin story, even if it's supposed to be positive news for RIM, it's like their main money maker is writing anti-RIM stuff. I'm surprised they actually wrote this. So if you think RIM paid them to write this, I would be surprised.