Firefox ported to Pre, N900 says 'psh, whatever, I'm still awesome'
By Chris Ziegler 
posted April 13th 2010 1:19AM
posted April 13th 2010 1:19AM
posted April 13th 2010 1:19AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
well, whoever buys Palm they better not mess with webOS. It's one beautiful and powerful OS.
@tbonez
i say whoever buys them should hire the "web-os internals" members, buy a months worth a mountian dew and munchies and lock them in a room.
@DefPoet
why, because they have a cute UI? The NDK just came out, and most of the libraries are just like in Android. I think anyone will tell you Android's native environment is still wet behind the ears. But as Denny Green said when coaching the Cardinals about the Bears:
"Why don't you go ahead and crown 'em?!"
Palm is who we thought they were! Let them die!
Sorry. Had to do it. Getting sick of neophytes claiming how advanced and genius WebOS is, when all they see is a UI...
@christexaport
apperently yuve never handled or owned one.
this is the only smartphone os that knows how to multitask properly. It also has a notification system that beats apples hands down and is on par if not better than androids. Full 3d games that android doesn't have and for the technology inclined a simple way to enable @root access
A day late a dollar short.. we're onto Google Chrome now
Palm can keep their locked-non-gsm-phone.
N900 ftw
@Don G uhh. AT&T will have a gsm verison by end of summer and Europe called informing you of thier gsm pres
@Don G The Palm Pre Plus can be had on a GSM network for a while now in Europe and it should be coming out on AT&T..
@DefPoet says:
"apperently yuve never handled or owned one."
Actually reviewed the Pre for a major tech website, as I do for many devices. I love the UI, though not perfect. But UI is just a tiny factor to make a great OS. A UI can be cloned and recreated, but infrastructure and frameworks can not just be added on without lots of work.
So while most Americans are preoccupied with the steering wheel, instrument cluster, and paint job, aka the UI/UX, I tend to focus on the engine and transmission, ECU, and security system, aka the app frameworks, graphics subsystem, and app data sharing. Some of us Americans are more advanced than others, or just with different priorities. Being cute won't win my vote very often over more technical bullet points.
"this is the only smartphone os that knows how to multitask properly."
I think you're sadly mistaken. Symbian is the benchmark in this area, and nothing comes close. I'm not talking apps in wait state, but full running apps. I used to run 25+ apps at once with decent performance on my N95, which wasn't a RAM monster in the least. Symbian is designed to be miserly resource wise. WebOS may be nice, but its far easier to switch apps with Symbian, especially running JBak Taskman. I can choose any app running in the background in seconds, without going through the entire card deck.
"It also has a notification system that beats apples hands down and is on par if not better than androids. Full 3d games that android doesn't have and for the technology inclined a simple way to enable @root access"
Apple sucks, in my opinion, as far as policy and notifications. But everyone else is fine. Are you telling me all it takes is a nice UI and decent notifications and its a crown jewel?? What about the supported toolkits, VOIP support, updating infrastructure, etc?
@christexaport
Apple sucks, in my opinion, as far as policy and notifications. But everyone else is fine. Are you telling me all it takes is a nice UI and decent notifications and its a crown jewel?? What about the supported toolkits, VOIP support, updating infrastructure, etc?
Report
-
Reply
%ChildReplyHTML%
PDK, OTA updates, and Symbian are you seriously bringing that archaic dinosaur into this debate we might as well say that WM6.1 has them both beat if your bringing outdated OS's into this
@DefPoet
"this is the only smartphone os that knows how to multitask properly. It also has a notification system that beats apples hands down and is on par if not better than androids. Full 3d games that android doesn't have and for the technology inclined a simple way to enable @root access"
Actually it is not the only Smartphone OS that does Multitask properly. Maemo is capable of it as well, and it is implemented quite nicely on the N900. Actually all of what you said applies not only for WebOS but also for Maemo
@tbonez Nor with the web os internals team!
@christexaport
LOL. You are a contrarian but I share your view on the subject.
The masses can't see pass the eye candies and the pizazz of the UI. They claim Symbian is a dinosaur of an OS and that's because they only have in mind the, admittedly, dated not-made-for-touchscreen UI.
@DefPoet LOL thats a great idea. I am willing to bet that something great will come out of that.
@DefPoet As i said a day late a dollar short. I dont live in Europe and im not gonna ship a Pre half way around the world when i have so many other options.
Palm dropped the ball months ago
This is huge.
@Nirvana09 that's what she said.
Thats it i am buying one just to mod
@DefPoet
You know this was also done on the Droid?
@drumwiz86
but this wasnt
http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/09/webos-port-of-xorg-in-the-works-openoffice-support-the-inevitab/
@DefPoet
Certainly could be if someone wanted to take the time. Pre NDK and Android NDK are extremely similar.
Pre +1
@Petfiji WIN for Pre
wow that browser looks like crap on there. look at all that inefficient use of screen real estate. and if it's anything like the desktop firefox browser, it will be a memory hog, slow, and crash a lot. webkit based browsers for me
You got that right, girlfriend. Well, I used Chrome for about a year, until recently Chrome allowed malicious scripts to run automatically... So I switched back to FireFox and got No-Script =D.
@Luffy
The point of firefox mobile was never to look pretty but to have access to the add-ons that the desktop browser uses which would make it the best browser hands down. Even engadget agreed the firefox mobile on the n900 beats the current mobile webkit safari hands down
@DefPoet
Did Engadget tell you N900 users think Firefox Mobile sux compared to the default N900 browser?
@christexaport
It's true that Firefox sucks compared to MicroB(defaukt browser), but the MicroB is Firefox based.
@christexaport
did anyone bother to tell you that the default broswer is based off of firefox
@christexaport Use the nightly build, its amazingly fast and for me keeps up with MicroB.
@defpoet Just because its based off firefox doesn't mean its the same. Normal add ons wont work on it.
@Pdexter
MicroB, N900's browser, isn't Firefox based. It just uses the same rendering engine from Mozilla, Gecko. Its no more the same than the iPhone and S60 browsers are. They, too, share a rendering engine, this time Webkit, but they share little else.
@Forphucsake
I do, but still not impressed...
@Luffy
you can't argue with the screen estate argument, I mean, look at it, you loose 30% of your screen.
@ROFL
if you don't like chrome, use opera, dude
it blows firefox out of the water
Yeah, that looks incredibly usable. Tiny scrollbars, menus cut off, and an toolbar that can't even show "http://", let alone the web address or google search box.
Getting it to merely compile isn't that big of an accomplishment. Making it usable is.
I hope Palm doesn't sell out so soon. They have one hell of a platform..
@Snake - no they dont.
@Snake - no they dont
This was made using the PDK. Holy crap
http://www.oxymoronical.com/blog/2010/04/Firefox-running-on-the-Palm-Pre-mostly
I guess... Powerful in what aspect? I'm only guessing, but I bet they are adding parts to the Linux kernel of WebOS to support full Linux apps. Why do that when there is a full mobile Linux distro for mobiles in Maemo/MeeGo, with all of the expected app frameworks and parts already there? If WebOS needs added app frameworks from Linux to make things happen, it needs to die a painful death. UI design is one thing, but what evidence is there under the hood as far as cross platform technologies, app frameworks, graphics frameworks, resource and energy management, and cross application data sharing? I'm willing to bet, for all of its snazzy UI magic, its far to inadequate at this stage.
Symbian, while more staid in its UI, is a much better ecosystem architecture, and the new UI just makes WebOS too late. iPhone and Android got all of the UI love from consumers. That fad will be fading, and internal OS infrastructure will be more apparent and important going forward. WinPho7 will recreate a UI buzz, and WebOS won't be so fresh and pretty anymore. WebOS must do more.
If you look closely, this is a port of the desktop version, not Fennec. So there is no finger friendliness, and the UI will want a right mouse button, etc. So this won't be elegant in the least. I'd say wait for the real thing...
@christexaport
actually this uses no modifications the the linux kernel. it was built using the PDK kit that Palm just released
http://www.oxymoronical.com/blog/2010/04/Firefox-running-on-the-Palm-Pre-mostly
@christexaport
actually this is a port of the android version that was compiled. And this is running natively on the device and was made through the PDK kit
@DefPoet
thanks for the tip. I just read that myself. So maybe WebOS and Android should link up. Because they can't make it alone without someone with a services arm to support them. I say RIM or Yahoo, but really, why must we save WebOS? We could mimic the UI if cute is what you like.
@christexaport
Who needs android when you could port the dalvik engine to WebOS?
@christexaport why do you think that it's WebOS UI that has people impressed with it? I'm not tech guru, but what impresses me the most about this phone is what hackers have been able to do with it. Maybe you're right and it behind what nokia offers. Maybe
you're right and consumers don't see it as very capable, but I think their have been enough developments on it in the past year for it to be considered one of the most advanced smartphone options available, UI aside. It sounds to be like you're just butt-hurt that Nokia has no traction in the US.
Firefox is really a desktop browser, ports like this are only good for extreme browser loyalty or showing it off. It's just not built for a handheld like most default browsers, Opera Mini, and Fennec
Isn't it more to show off the PDK? I want to see a video.
he's still workibg on it, he's going to change the whole ui around....and its not meant to replace the default browser, its meant to complement it. Run the ad-ons you may need,but the default one won't run!
I keep hearing how great WebOS is, but haven't seen any proof. This could be done on any major smartphone OS save RIM's, especially if they're *nix kernel based OSes.
It has a native environment. So does everyone else but RIM. But are the supported toolkits part of another larger, complimentary OS/ecosystem? It has a pretty multitasking UI, but it only allows you to see card at a time, meaning you must shuffle through them just to find the one you need. Pretty inefficient from a more experienced multitasker that would prefer seeing more cards at a glance.
So WebOS is still much the nascent OS, and while its UI is elegant, and it is on the right track, it needs mounds of help. It needs at least one cross platform framework, like Silverlight, Qt, or something else like it. It needs layers to support the common services available today plumbed into the OS. It needs a better app switching UI, like an Expose view. With such a small market share, they'll have to defray alot of the extra time and cost of developing for the platform by creating some form of cross platform synergy. Hello, Nokia/Qt, Adobe/Air, Microsoft/Silverlight and .net?
@christexaport You're so negative. You've clearly never used a WebOS device or attempted developing for one..
It's not completely open source but it feels open because of the way it was made and the tools Palm gives you.
It IS a great platform. None of your qualms with it actually have any bearing in real life. You're looking for hypothetical issues and blowing them out of proportion.
The facts are that WebOS is young but still has the fastest growing App depository. And the happiest user base.
The Pre and Pixi haven't sold well, but any Palm owner will wholeheartedly defend the device because they've used it. They see the potential, and they love it. And that speaks volumes more than your several comments of complaints.
@christexaport
If you tap under the card in cardview then you get to see multiple cards at once.