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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

#81

Post by Trezoid »

damncabbage wrote: post #74
Trezoid wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's improved significantly since that video.

Interesting. Do you have a video or link?

No, unfortunately. Most of the videos going around (read: all of them) are from MWC where B2G was demoed.

The development group is VERY active on IRC and there was some chatter at the time about that. Some of the slight lags in the demo were actually parts of the CSS transition they use (originally intended to avoid accidental swipes when they wanted taps) and was tweeked to be much better not long afterwards.

More recently there have been significant improvements in the actual CSS animation on the gecko side (improvements which will hit firefox in the future) which means everything feels even faster and more natural.

At this point B2G is making significant progress _every day_ so about the only real way to get an up to date idea of how it runs is to either read the github commit log frequently or put it on a device (and currently that means a GSII)

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

#82

Post by Raphael »

hammersend wrote: post #28
knowtheory wrote: post #13

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:/…

It is possible they see their OS as being suited for one-handed devices. One of the things I do not like about Ice Cream Sandwich on my Galaxy Nexus is Google has removed the "+"/"-" buttons in most of their native apps so now I have to either use some really unwieldy one-handed finger contortions or use two hands to zoom in and out. I think an argument can be made that in many instances at least on a smart phone as…

Did you try double tap to zoom?

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

#83

Post by catilac »

shinratdr wrote: post #70
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.

- Everything is already one terrible interface for everything. Make a better interface.

- The better companies will minimize this. We still depend on cloud services like Gmail, github et.. on a day to day basis. And they still mess it up occasionally.

- There are ready designers who know nothing about UI design for each particular device pumping out apps.

- Look at the linux ecosystem. I think its working out.

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

#84

Post by eli_gottlieb »

wavephorm wrote: post #60

This is actually a battle cry for Mozilla. The desktop GUI paradigm is done for, it's at the end of the line. Once desktops die off in popularity there will be no growth for web browsers like Firefox unless they own the whole stack like Apple and Google have successfully done, and Microsoft and RIM are attempting to do. Mozilla is developing Boot2Gecko because without expanding into a full mobile platform Mozilla is…

I'm sorry, desktop GUI applications are done for.

Someone please notify my entire computer setup of its impending death. Also, my wife, my mother, my brother, my stepfather, my father, and everyone else I know.

Hey, everyone, your computers are dead! It's time to convert to WebSmartiPhonePadTablets running nothing but web-browsers! Sure, you don't want to because they run like crap compared to actually writing native programs, but they're a growth market for corporate behemoths!

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

#85

Post by eli_gottlieb »

mhd wrote: post #32
lbotos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well sure, but how is the Web 2.0 bubble supposed to keep going without trying to displace the entire actual computer?

Someday they'll try and download the hardware as FPGA over a RESTful web API, too.

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

#86

Post by joenathan »

mmaunder wrote: post #23

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

Linux isn't an operating system, it's a kernel, the OS is Boot-to-Gecko, in the same way that Android is an OS with a Linux kernel.

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

#87

Post by serge2k »

grannyg00se wrote: post #76
ChuckMcM wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think recent versions of windows can realistically be thought of as a UI on top of MS/PC-DOS anymore.

Can any version that was built on NT?

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

#89

Post by JVIDEL »

Regardless of how it is, it's too late: Android is the new Windows, iOS the new System7, and everything else is the equivalent of AmigaOS, OS/2, BeOS, etc...

About ease of development being a gateway to shovelware, yeah right as if the artificially high and expensive barrier to iOS is keeping all the fart apps away. The fact is if there's money to be made then everyone will try to get in, even the wantrepreneurs hiring cheap coders to copy some old game and repackage it as something new (for more information check Harvest Moon).

If Android has more freemium shovelware is simply because it became the dominant OS in that industry, so wantrepreneurs are targeting that market instead, same as it happened with Windows and MacOS.

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

#90

Post by aboodman »

shinratdr wrote: post #70
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.

All software can update. There is nothing fundamentally different between a web apps' ability to update and a desktop applications' ability to update. If you need any proof of this, just look at Chrome.

Once you run software on your computer, if that software can connect to the internet, it can update itself!

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