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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

#61

Post by asadotzler »

Osiris wrote: post #37
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.

WebOS uses JS+HTML but it does not expose nor advance standards-based APIs for all the phone hardware capabilities like B2G. Also, WebOS requires you use their framework where B2G lets you use any frameworks or no frameworks -- it's really just like the real Web plus a bunch of DOM APIs for things like the phone's telephony stack and vibrator and accelerometer and all that.

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

#62

Post by asadotzler »

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…

B2G runs apps from the web and locally cached for offline use. B2G apps are not required to use some non-standard library to get at the phone hardware like WebOS did. APIs for camera and telephony and vibrator and accelerometer and all that in B2G are proper DOM APIs that will be web standards.

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

#63

Post by ChuckMcM »

asadotzler wrote: post #57
ChuckMcM wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's more than a user interface though. It's a platform for Web applications that let those apps reach all the way down to the full capabilities of the hardware.

Perhaps we share a definition disconnect. Is X11 a platform for a user interface or is it a OS?

I lean to the former definition but I'll be the first to agree that I come from an earlier time. When 'windows' came out it really was a user interface on top of MS/PC-DOS (and it still is IMO) however now several generations of folks have been brought up saying that Windows was the OS.

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

#64

Post by azakai »

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…

> I thought that the general consensus was that you never wanted multiplatform anyway.

There is no consensus. It's like there is no consensus on static vs. dynamically typed languages. Both are good for different things, both have an important place.

On the one hand, without multiplatform apps, new platforms have a problem. The original iPhone had no apps, but it ran the web and everything on it. Likewise, without multiplatform apps, people on minority platforms - Linux, OS X, etc. - have far fewer choices.

On the other hand, without platform-specific apps, you miss out on a level of customization and tailoring that isn't possible in a multiplatform app.

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

#65

Post by azakai »

awolf wrote: post #38

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…

> 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.

The point here though is that you have less overhead by focusing just on the web. Running a web browser on a normal mobile OS, as you mentioned, runs a browser stack on top of the normal OS. There is additional work there, for example, on Android to run the browser you also run the Dalvik VM, etc. And the underlying OS and userspace is optimized for native apps for that platform, not just for the browser.

B2G purposefully has just one VM - JavaScript - and just one native app - a web browser, and the underlying OS is optimized for running exactly that, not native Android apps or native iOS apps in addition to a web browser.

It's too early to say how the final result will be. But the approach makes sense and is worth trying.

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

#67

Post by jay_kyburz »

The reason I'm excited about this that I won't need to wait for the carriers to update my UI. I imagine there will be a whole rage of interesting 3rd party interfaces I'll be able to browse and download.

Want and interface that's just command line. Somebody will make it.

What about an interface for Grandma that just has really big fonts in just a dialer, contacts and photo album.

I feel like I got burnt when I bought my 7" Samsung Tablet because Samsung is not supporting it anymore and it has some really clunky interfaces.

I would love to see and ecosystem where I have full and easy control to install and remove apps from my phone easily. Fingers crossed.

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

#69

Post by corford »

asadotzler wrote: post #58
awolf wrote: post #38

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…

And that's why we all still use Outlook instead of Gmail and Encarta Atlas instead of Google Maps, right?

I use and prefer Thunderbird over Gmail. Same for Google Earth versus maps.google.com ...

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

#70

Post by shinratdr »

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…

Just imagine...

- One terrible interface for everything

- Apps that update to broken versions without asking you and can't be reverted

- A web designer, who knows nothing about UI design for an app let alone the specific UI conventions of each device pumping out apps

- An ecosystem where it's a complete free for all. That always works out right?

Yeah I think I'm going to stop imagining now.

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