Palm Pre Development In the Browser 53
introspekt.i writes "Palm is building upon the Mozilla Bespin project to deliver an IDE for the Palm Pre entirely in the web browser. Apps can be developed on the server and then downloaded and deployed locally. It is an interesting tool, especially given that WebOS is so web-centric. This tool comes as a supplement to the existing development tools for Eclipse and the command line released by Palm earlier this year. The project is open to anyone who registers as a Palm developer, which is free to do."
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Android, as an application API, is effectively J2ME-Touch-Pure-Web.
J2ME - it uses a lot of the core Java API.
Touch - it uses a custom Android UI API.
Pure - it dumps the JVM in favour of Dalvik, and it dumps a lot of legacy apps.
Web - it incorporates a lot of Java APIs from Apache, etc, for web uses.
If Sun weren't stuck in some weird place for the past five to ten years, they would have eventually come up with something like Android (but on the JVM instead of Dalvik) for the current generation of phones.
Goog
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I can't see any reason why they can't incorporate an Android runtime for Android application compatibility - well unless there are any licensing issues for Android beyond the fact that it is open source.
Instant 20,000+ applications (mostly about manoeuvring shapes to cover areas). You don't need the launcher or all of that gubbins, just the application runtime compatibility.
This makes a lot more sense than developing their own "native" API, SDK, etc. Android is here to stay, in one way or another.
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If anything, their choice of "more or less webapp languages and architecture, with a few local storage/access bits and bobs" seems fairly sensible(assuming they can get the speed issues of their first round worked out).
Because it is architecturally so similar to the webapp widgets and things that are being written, in vast quantities, to be put on the net and run on
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J2ME, Android, or some native API. Phone hardware has certainly gotten faster, but that's no reason to go bogging it down by requiring everything works through HTTP and web browsers. Seriously, what is that? We could have applications that flew on smartphones, if only vendors wouldn't force them to go through layers of nonsense.
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No kidding. I don't understand what Palm is doing here. If Palm were to offer a standard Java or .Net environment, I would start targeting their devices again. They could differentiate themselves from Android by offering a standard Java environment with value-added extensions, rather than delivering a kick to the community's groin just because they could.
I have so far refused to target the iPhone for just this reason: the platform is proprietary, and unnecessarily so. I'm betting on Android to be the next S
Re:Talk About a Dead Platform (Score:4, Informative)
I do hope my sarcasm tags aren't necessary, given how absurd you sound. Yes, there are plenty of Java devs out there, and yes, I do wish Palm would release a Java SDK for the phone, but the fact is that that's not the developer segment they're going after. They're aiming development for this phone toward the millions of web developers out there. I've tried writing an app for the phone when the SDK first came out, and though I had no experience with the Prototype Framework they use for Javascript, I still had a little VLC remote control app up and running within the afternoon, with a pretty decent UI. They use the HTML5 specs for a bunch of things and I've seen some pretty impressive things done on the phone.
The only major problems are the current lack of low level networking (homebrew coders have written services for the linux backend though, in Java no less, to work around this for things like an IRC client), and 3D acceleration, though apparently they're working on the latter and even hired someone a few months back as a graphics framework engineer for the phone. There's speculation that that's one of the things they'll be talking about at CES.
Now, let me be clear about something, I have a Pre, but I don't think it's the greatest phone or OS in the world. There's actually a lot that I wish it had that Android has, but at the same time, there's a lot that WebOS has that Android doesn't (let's not even discuss the iPhone, as I honestly don't care about smartphone that can't do true multi-tasking). Both platforms still have a ways to go to true maturity though, and keep in mind it's still very early in the game respectively. The Pre's been around for what, 6 months? Android's v1 was pretty bad and many thought it dead till more phones came out and the OS matured. The reason the iPhone is so popular is primarily because it was the only game in town for a long time, and it didn't even have its much touted app store when it came out, or 3D acceleration. The way I see it, the more competition, the better. And the more innovative and creative ways they can all try to pull in both users and developers, the better it'll be for everyone.
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In the beginning (heh) the iPhone only had the possibilities to use HTML and JS for custom applications and many, many people complained about it. There wasn't even a healthy application landscape until Apple decided to give an API to (most of) the guts of the system and create a central, affordable and (in return) possibly profitable repository of apps.
That nobody even cares that Palm Pre development can only be done in HTML should be an indicator of the amount of coders that care about the Palm Pre.
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Yeah but everything had to be hosted off the phone, which makes a big difference. As much as I dislike them I can see that web UI tools are improving all the time, much faster than other ways of creating UIs.
Seriously, I can do more with 1 kb of html in ten minutes than with Swing in an hour.
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The age of WebOS and the Pre has nothing to do with why it sucks. If the company that gave life to the PDA can't put together a decent smart phone, and the reason why it has problems aren't teething and maturity issues, maybe maturity isn't what the OS needs. It needs newer, fresher management that's not trying to go after the fringes of disappointed iPhone users. While there are disappointed iPhone users and devs, they're vastly out numbered by the number of iPhone owners and zealots.
The more competitio
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That's cool, but... (Score:2)
1) what's the security look like (I'm fairly sure they're sandboxing everything, but still... what other steps if any have they taken?)
2) Err, the Pre has Exchange connectivity and all, but can that bit be accessed, and what other kind of enterprise connections are available up in this piece?
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I think it only got 10 minutes, actually.
I tried a Pre, such a POS. I like my iPhone, though I've shattered the stupid thing no less than three times in 6 months. Android looks very good, and if it is still on the same path in a year, I'm dumping AT&T and Apple and going with an Android device.
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Re:Palm Pre? (Score:4, Informative)
You are a troll. I suspect you know nothing about the Pre nor WebOS.
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I'm not sure what GP is trying to say, but if he has broken an iPhone every other month for the past half year, the Pre (and any other smartphone cased entirely in plastic) would probably have lasted him about a week each. Perhaps he tried a Pre in the Sprint store and before he could even give WebOS a chance, he accidentally crushed the device with his bare hands.
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You're not far off. Build quality is a very important issue to me - I own a Panasonic Toughbook, if that gives you an idea.
Troll my ass. Troll != "Disagree"
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I know a decent amount about the Pre and WebOS (longtime reader of /. and other such sites) and ten minutes (with a friend's) was more than I could stand. Tiny, rubbery keys with horrible feel (I used to have a Nokia w/ a physical qwerty keyboard and I have a BB from work and I much prefer the iPhone's virtual keyboard) and the UI isn't as smooth. Sure, it's subjective, but then again, that's all that is important--YOU buy the phone YOU like. If the iPhone were as it is and only sold 50k units I'd still lov
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At least YOU provided some reasons why you don't like the Pre. Even in your case, not liking the keyboard and the "UI" not being as "smooth" as the iPhone doesn't make the Pre a "POS", as the grandparent called it. It might make it "not the phone for you" or "not ideal", but certainly not a "POS".
He was a -1 Troll post, and I called it exactly that.
Had he wanted to elaborate on what he thought was wrong with it (which he didn't) and perhaps say he didn't like it... fine. That might even be "+1 Informativ
About damn time. (Score:1)
Browser - Networked App Framework (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see why it's still taking so long for "developing browser applications" to become indistinguishable from "developing applications". The browser is just an application framework that includes a network API, rendering API, and an API to its other functions. Since the browser became the overwhelmingly primary app framework for PC development, there have been several generations of UI frameworks that have come and gone, each of which had the opportunity to be both fully functional per OS platform and with the same API across platforms.
We should just be writing applications, any of which can use a cross-platform UI API and reach the network with HTTP and other protocols using a cross-platform API. Phones have so many different OSes, GUI layers and network protocols that they should be the first to unify into a single platform. Since Java promised that but failed to deliver many years ago, we should have something else by now that does do it.
Re:Browser - Networked App Framework (Score:4, Interesting)
What I've seen saying for years we need in order for that to happen is either for Javascript to become a first class platform outside the browser, or for a current generation language to become a first class browser citizen that Java applets never were.
I think the former, Javascript, is a dead end. In my opinion as an observer, it's primarily Microsoft through IE and their feet-dragging in the standards process that is hampering the evolution of Javascript into a proper platform. Microsoft has their own proprietary vision for a platform for rich, web-based applications, and industry standards like ECMAScript and Java don't factor into it other than as potential spoilers.
In my opinion the way forward is for Java or Python to become first-class citizens in Mozilla Foundation products. My preference would be Java due to the richness of its standard and community libraries, its mindshare among professional engineers, and its acceptance by industry.
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I think you've got this almost exactly backwards (Score:2)
javascript is (finally) starting to evolve more rapidly into a reasonable language for application development. You can already get Javascript VMs with excellent performance, and they're only getting better. With the growing adoption of Javascript for server-side work, there's a lot more support for the kind of improvements in Javascript that "real programmers" want.
ECMAscript 5 is a step in the right direction, and Harmony will build upon that. And with Google, Apple, and Mozilla now all on-board to improv
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Let me explain it this way:
"developing browser applications" is lumping stuff [sticks, rocks, gum] together using duct tape.
"developing applications" is using proper tools [saws, drills] and materials [wood, steel, plastic, concrete] to build real things.
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I've been developing SW for 30 years, browser apps for 15. We do each of what you describe for both browser apps and standalone apps. That's not the distinction, even if browser apps are usually more of the ad hoc style than the engineering, and standalones a little more of the opposite.
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Let's all remind ourselves what the acronyms HTTP, HTML, and the like stand for.
I think it's a classic case of over-engineering. We're building applications with rich interfaces over a stateless text-based protocol. The application UI is being delivered in source-format to be rendered by this "browser/application framework" that thinks of it more like a document (because technically it is). That the end result happens to look and quack like a duck doesn't change the reality. An interactive UI shouldn't be w
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Actually, Microsoft has Silverlight and the CLR, with whatever managed language you want to program them in. With "the" Microsoft platform now a highly fragmented collection of often incompatible OSes and unpredictable app installs, they need a "cross platform platform" just to manage their own stuff. That's probably a reason Microsoft interfered with the development of open tech that would serve that purpose, crossing platforms beyond even Microsoft products.
But "document browser" is a contrived definition
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I'm afraid I'm already familiar with your rhetoric.
All I am saying is that there has to be a better way to build web-aware networked applications.
Web browsers like FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc -- they all treat the resources they fetch as documents. Sure it's archaic by our human notions; we've been building interactive applications inside of them for years. Yet the tools we build to do this are only tricking us and this is my major point. We see fly-out menus and pop-ups that insert information into the
What's the value proposition here for developers? (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope they don't think they're going to pick up serious developers just for making their tools web-based, as if that was an end in itself, so I hope that they believe there is some benefit to making their tools all web based.
Reading the articles, I'm no so sure that isn't what they're doing here. According to them this is about enabling a next-generation web-based development workflow. It's different because... the IDE runs in your web browser.
The kind of developers you want to attract to your platform, who are going to build the quality apps that you want to be a reflection of the quality of your platform your platform, aren't held up on account of the "barrier to entry" of such ponderous requirements as having to install a J2ME development environment or have local storage space available.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a longtime fan of Palm and want to see them succeed. I owned many of their PDAs over the years. But this isn't the way to go about it. This sounds like marketing running their engineering organization. A next generation mobile development workflow isn't one that lets met develop in a web browser. It's one that gives me powerful APIs at multiple levels so that I have an API of appropriate richness and complexity whether I want to develop a calendaring extension, whether I want to develop a social media client, or whether I want to develop a game. This does none of those things, and it should go with out saying that my products won't be targeting any of the current webOS devices.
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Perhaps you can clear something up for me: It was my understanding that in developer mode, you have a complete Linux environment, command line and all. Doesn't that mean you can compile C and C++ code to run on the Pre? Of course I know that the UI has to be handled through HTML/JS, but is it possible for the UI to talk to back-end components running as compiled code?
AJAX (Score:2)
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Apple is crazy if they think this is going to work (Score:2)
The iPhone will never succeed if they only allow developers to use web technologies instead of native code. Real apps require features that only native code can provide. ...oh what? You said Palm Pre? In that case web code roxxors!