Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 11th Feb 2013 15:22 UTC
"'But how is it going to beat Android or iOS?' That's the reaction many people have when I tell them that I am working on Firefox OS, the new mobile operating system from Mozilla. It is a logical reaction. After all, we live in times where every major software company and its mother is releasing a mobile platform, struggling to lure developers into their new proprietary environment, APIs, libraries, etc. And indeed, many of these companies barely make it or don’t make it at all. But Firefox OS will not be directly battling against other mobile platforms. Its main objective is to change the way the world develops mobile apps, and even in the unlikely event that Firefox OS itself disappears in the process, if web-apps become mainstream, it will have succeeded."
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RE[3]: Good luck trying to get your developers to write HTML5
by lucas_maximus on Tue 12th Feb 2013 12:31
in reply to "RE[2]: Good luck trying to get your developers to write HTML5"
Member since:2009-08-18
To be fair, sencha wrote the facebook app properly and it worked fine.
http://www.netmagazine.com/news/senchas-html5-remake-facebook-12246...
However write once, run anywhere unfortunately is a myth.
RE[4]: Good luck trying to get your developers to write HTML5
by Nelson on Tue 12th Feb 2013 19:54
in reply to "RE[3]: Good luck trying to get your developers to write HTML5"
Member since:2005-11-29
Let me sum up what they had to do to make this happen:
- Implement UI virtualization with a scrolling list
- Used IFrame partitioning to reduce DOM count
- Stopping rendering while scrolling
- Implementing what amounts to a Dispatcher queue in XAML land
Why the hell should developers need to implement this themselves to get reasonable performance out of a mobile app?
The "promise" of mobile apps was reusing existing knowledge, not having to learn to write a bunch of boilerplate that most non-braindead UI platforms do for you already.
Comparing a native stack like XAML to HTML5 is like comparing an internal combustion engine to a stack of pancakes. HTML5 is so primitive its almost offensive that people still consider it a viable app platform.
Features
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:38 UTC
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 11:29 UTC
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:33 UTC
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
Linked by David Adams on 05/16/13 4:23 UTC
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/11/13 21:41 UTC
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/08/13 14:22 UTC
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/02/13 15:28 UTC
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/29/13 21:06 UTC
Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/24/13 22:24 UTC
They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 04/18/13 11:21 UTC
Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.More Features »
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Member since:
2005-11-13
Write once, hack everywhere is usually my motto in web projects.
HA! Yeah, people keep touting how HTML5 is going to take over the world, and we see how well that worked for Facebook, they wrote a mobile app in HTML5 that sucked so much ass, they switched to native apps on iOS and Android. I'm not a web developer, but even some of the most BASIC web pages I've written for myself to run on phones look completely different on Android, depending on which web browser I'm using (stock, Firefox, Chrome, etc).
I think Firefox OS has identified a real problem - having to code native apps for different platforms is a pain. But I don't think HTML5 is the right solution. Not to say that there's a better one right now that I know of, but we should be in pursuit of something better, instead of just going with something that's half-assed, and hope it won't suck so much in 5-10 years.