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buurmas is offline buurmas
2011-02-08 , 20:00
Posts: 670 | Thanked: 367 times | Joined on Mar 2009
#1
In the past week, the Firefox Roadmap has undergone a substantial rewrite, although it still states that it is a "Draft", has continued to be tweaked over the past week, and may be subject to change even when out of "Draft" mode. The most obvious surprise is the goal to release regularly and more frequently. Not only should Firefox 4 be released in 2011, but also Firefox 5, 6, and 7. And they state continued commitment to the mobile version of Firefox.

BUT the item that I think of most thought-provoking relevance to this board is this (against the threat of portions of the web becoming proprietary and closed):

"...once again our community must work to prove that open, interoperable technologies can exist on the same footing as closed, proprietary ones. To do this we must:
  • work with the community to develop and support an open web "App" model,
  • identify the key elements of an open and interoperable social network and develop an open standard for them within the Web.
"
One of their goals is:
Expand the Open Web Platform to include Apps, Social and Identity
  1. Design and implement open systems for Identity and social interactions
  2. Design and implement Web Application Framework
  3. Implement missing pieces of CSS/HTML required for compelling Web Applications
And another is:
Plan for a future where Desktop, Mobile and Web Apps run on a common platform
One of the feature targets for Firefox 6 is "Web Applications". What do you think? Is this brilliant? A pipe dream? Both?
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mmurfin87 is offline mmurfin87
2011-02-08 , 23:27
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#2
I think this is great that major browsers are pushing for tighter standards and a better ability to create web applications.

its my opinion, though, that web apps will NEVER happen while we rely on javascript. We need a bytecode language that is open. The other requirement is some way to protect the code. Right now I can grab any javascript code I want and thats it, I have access to the source code. Certainly current bytecode languages can be decompiled, but there's no reason it can't be transmitted via TLS and decrypted by the JIT.

Those two things need to happen before web apps will become a reality.

PS. Also, web sockets and a standard graphics api.
 
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devu is offline devu
2011-02-08 , 23:46
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#3
Flaemo in danger? .

Flash can handle that but right, is not fully open. Who knows maybe some day...
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buurmas is offline buurmas
2011-02-08 , 23:48
Posts: 670 | Thanked: 367 times | Joined on Mar 2009
#4
Originally Posted by mmurfin87 View Post
The other requirement is some way to protect the code. Right now I can grab any javascript code I want and thats it, I have access to the source code. Certainly current bytecode languages can be decompiled, but there's no reason it can't be transmitted via TLS and decrypted by the JIT.
In other words to support closed-source proprietary software (e.g. sold for profit)?

The other question is hardware specific issues. Like the ability to take a picture and seamlessly zip it off to some web site (e.g., photo sharing, check deposits). But maybe it has to be a regular app to do that...
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buurmas is offline buurmas
2011-02-09 , 18:00
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#5
Anyway, if this could somehow result in firms building web apps that could run on any platform on which Firefox could run, that seems like it would be a welcome development to me.
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buurmas is offline buurmas
2011-03-14 , 03:05
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#6
Glyn Moody has noticed this:

Kovacs notes that in many ways the current apps for the iPhone and Android are, in fact, Web apps: “much of what the community around the Apple products is doing are Web apps - they're a piece of client software that goes and fetches or delivers information back and forth from the Web. It's just a different GUI from the browser.”

But there's a problem with the current approach. “It becomes very hard to scale that,” he says, “developing for Apple, for Android, Windows Mobile, Linux - the barrier to ubiquity becomes difficult.” The great danger is that the online world will fragment into separate and incompatible domains - just as in the days of CompuServe and AOL. The solution is to craft apps using generic, standards-based Web technologies that work across all platforms - to create true Web apps.
“Once that happens the discussion isn't 'we have 10,000 developers', 'we have 20,000', but 'we have millions of Web developers that can build apps'.
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niloy is offline niloy
2011-03-14 , 17:36
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#7
Originally Posted by buurmas View Post
Glyn Moody has noticed this:
and we have qt web runtime for maemo, interesting thing is that they all are based on webkit, so not so fragmented afterall
 
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