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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

#31

Post by sp332 »

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…

Mozilla very consciously uses the term "the web" because it evokes the right things in the minds of their target audiences: developers and end users. It has a sense that everything works together like "normal" web content. You don't have your videos stuck in an embeded plugin rectangle. You can control playback of audio with JS. Mozilla doesn't want you to look at a phone and think "I can run Firefox on that" because no one cares. They want you to think "I can use the whole web on this" because that's much more interesting.

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

#32

Post by mhd »

lbotos wrote: post #24
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…

Regarding the Angry birds argument, if there were some type of deep-reaching JS "extensions" that expose lower level stuff I'd wager that you could get the game running pretty fast. I think Appcelerator/PhoneGap offer things like this. Granted, It is "twisting" JS, but I'd assume they are considering the limitations of the current "HTML5" platform and hopefully offer some solutions to get a "Web" Angry Birds version…

That's why I used the comparison, it's definitely doable and I would assume that you'd get a decent enough performance out of it (as opposed to e.g. a JS-based Rage).

I just don't get the argument at all that this would enable it to run on a cheaper platform, i.e. somewhere where a native app wouldn't run. You're slicing away a tiny bit of overhead (once a kernel+browser is loaded), but adding more than that.

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

#33

Post by mhd »

sp332 wrote: post #30
mbel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why? I might be looking at it a bit too naively, but how system build for running interpreted JavaScript apps can perform better than one designed for compiled ones?

It doesn't perform better. But at the low end, you don't need to bootstrap a java VM (like Android) just to check your email and browse the web etc. You can do the little things on less hardware.

Dalvik being a bigger overhead than JägerMonkey?

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

#34

Post by tjoff »

sp332 wrote: post #30
mbel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain why? I might be looking at it a bit too naively, but how system build for running interpreted JavaScript apps can perform better than one designed for compiled ones?

It doesn't perform better. But at the low end, you don't need to bootstrap a java VM (like Android) just to check your email and browse the web etc. You can do the little things on less hardware.

No, but you have to bring along a whole browser just to interpret code that checks the mail...

Anyway you spin it the low end that can't manage android will never in a million years be able to run an "OS" in javascript. There is a reason they demo it on a SGSII ;)

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

#35

Post by nooop »

"This is now just running the web directly."

This makes absolutely no sense. This is borderline an insult to system developers -- because system software is what the device is running directly.

I'm all for people to state a bit of sensationalist statements so they can sell there shit and be understood by the general public and so over, but this is going way too far. Being proud of an intrinsically limited product (this is a linux that runs only one program by design, so this is less capable than an android or whatever) for the improvements it can brings as side effects is one thing, but a statement like "this is running the web directly" is misleading because it will be understood as the real stuff by less knowledgeable people who will believe in some kind of incredibly innovative magic, like a magical processor "running the web" or i don't know what idiotic fantasm, instead of taking the thing for what it is: a system that can do less, with maybe some advantages as a side effects, but of course some inconveniences too.

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

#36

Post by ma2rten »

I feel like I have just seen the future and it is very bright. This would make mobile development so much easier and open up a completely new range of possibilities.

Just imagine ....

- writing just one app that runs on every desktop and mobile phone out there.

- apps which update entirely automatically, without any extra line of code, because they are basically just cached versions of a website.

- a designer, who just knows CSS & HTML, can make an entirely new GUI for your phone.

- an eco-system where the development of the interface (HTML) is completely separate from the kernel/browser and you can choose which kernels/rendering engine to run on your phone, independent of the user interface and vice versa.

- etc. etc.

Kudos to Mozilla for their vision and for not just developing the technology, but making a good looking prototype to demonstrate it.

However, I am a little bit skeptical that a web-based OS will perform the same as a native OS, especially in terms of battery consumption. But smartphones only get more powerful and html rendering engines only faster, so it can only be a matter of time. Also a little nitpick with respect to the title: the OS not entirely build using HTML, CSS and JS, it's just the user interface, which is just small part of the OS (compared to the kernel, etc.).

EDIT: I know most of this is already possible in principle, but the user / developer experience would be completely different.

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

#37

Post by Osiris »

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.

As I was watching the video I was thinking the same thing that WebOS has been out for years. I'm sure the underlying technology and framework is quite different from Mozilla, but it's not a ground-breaking idea.

Perhaps they should take the opportunity to work on the newly open sources WebOS which is likely to be able to grab more market share than an entirely new Gecko OS.

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

#38

Post by awolf »

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 mobile OS will be at sporadic times throughout the day.

Now a mobile OS built entirely on the worst-case of rendering HTML, CSS, and JS for every interaction? Sure, devices will keep getting faster as time goes on. But keep in mind that as device performance over the years increases, so do our expectations. I am skeptical that this will ever deliver a sufficient user experience when compared side by side to other mobile OSes.

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

#39

Post by tjoff »

ma2rten wrote: post #36

I feel like I have just seen the future and it is very bright. This would make mobile development so much easier and open up a completely new range of possibilities. Just imagine .... - writing just one app that runs on every desktop and mobile phone out there. - apps which update entirely automatically, without any extra line of code, because they are basically just cached versions of a website. - a designer, who ju…

I thought that the general consensus was that you never wanted multiplatform anyway. Not because it can't be done but an app that looks and acts the same on both iOS and android (for instance) will suck horrible on at least one platform (but probably both).

Apps which will update automatically? That's just as possible with native apps but you have the option to turn that off - because it's a bad idea for a lot of applications. In general if you don't respect that as a developer I don't want to use your apps.

You can make an entirely new GUI for android right now if you wanted to. But for the same reason as in my first paragraph, you really don't wan't to fragment your userbase. The GUI guidelines are very important for apps to integrate well, as an app developer you would now have to support all those third party interfaces that will change every five minutes... I wouldn't call that a bright future.

Designing a good GUI is hard and if you have managed to make it easy it is going to be really bad.

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

#40

Post by ma2rten »

tjoff wrote: post #39
ma2rten wrote: post #36

I feel like I have just seen the future and it is very bright. This would make mobile development so much easier and open up a completely new range of possibilities. Just imagine .... - writing just one app that runs on every desktop and mobile phone out there. - apps which update entirely automatically, without any extra line of code, because they are basically just cached versions of a website. - a designer, who ju…

I thought that the general consensus was that you never wanted multiplatform anyway. Not because it can't be done but an app that looks and acts the same on both iOS and android (for instance) will suck horrible on at least one platform (but probably both). Apps which will update automatically? That's just as possible with native apps but you have the option to turn that off - because it's a bad idea for a lot of app…

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.
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