Mozilla’s Firefox OS is based on HTML5 and JavaScript, it was initially dubbed as the Boot to Gecko project, before being formally announced as the company’s offering for the global smartphone market. Designed for low-end devices, a preview was shown back at Mobile World Congress on a Dreamfone running this new operating system. Reportedly the first two Firefox OS based smartphones are going on sale tomorrow, developed by a Spanish startup called Geeksphone, these two devices carry the Keon and Peak monikers.
Building on its recent advancements in JavaScript optimization, Mozilla has announced a partnership with Epic Games that will bring the Unreal Engine 3 to Firefox. Unlike the ill-fated InstantAction, this gives developers the opportunity to port high-end titles to the web without the use of plugins. Hardly content with enhancing desktop browser-based games, Mozilla is aiming to bring this experience to mobile devices — but it’s stopping short of providing any details beyond that. The company notes that it’s currently working with major developers such as EA, ZeptoLab and Disney to bring optimizations to their existing titles. Mum’s the word on when 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand will get the chance to soak browsers everywhere, but you can catch a video preview of something slightly less spectacular just after the break.
Today, Firefox‘s Nightly channel received a pick me up in the form of its asm.js optimizer known as OdinMonkey. Baked into June’s stable release of Firefox 22, this subset of Mozilla’s rendering engine lets developers compile C or C++ to JavaScript by using Emscripten. This gives the code the potential to run within 2x its native performance. For those of you who’ve now gone cross-eyed, simply put this should give Firefox a hefty performance boost and open the door to more sophisticated browser-based games as well as faster web apps. For its inaugural offering, OdinMonkey is only available to Windows and Linux users, but the company says that OSX and ARM version are near completion.
Enyo originally came along from HP to help developers create resolution-independent webOS apps, but since version 2.0, it’s become platform agnostic. While support for Windows 8 and WP8 through IE10 has been around for awhile, version 2.2 now brings packaged app creation for those OSes along with Blackberry 10 at the highest Tier 1 support level. The platform still requires native “container” software to package apps, with Enyo advising Visual Studio for Windows 8 and Cordova for WP8 and Blackberry 10. The company’s swatted a few bugs and added contextual popups too, so if you’re looking to get your JavaScript on, hit the source.
Days before CES 2013, a mysterious new tablet computer has emerged, along with a short film that gives us a brief look at the device. Apparently, the enchantMOON is some sort of “hypertext authoring tablet” designed for the creation of HTML5 content.
Specifically, enchantMOON is described as “a digitizer pen-driven tablet device designed to let anyone program and share HTML5 games, applications, and interactive publications without writing code.” Presumably, the tablet renders code using the Open Source enchant.js framework, since it appears they’re both coming from the same company, Ubiquitous Entertainment.
The concept sketches here by designer Yoshitoshi Abe doesn’t really tell us much about the tablet, other than the fact that it doesn’t look like any other tablet out there.
Nor does the early prototype photo taken here with Ubiquitious Entertainment CEO Ryo Shimizu:
Image: AV Watch
It’s got a science-fictiony look to it that makes it look like some sort of gadget out The Matrix, with a built in handle that can be used for carrying or as a stand. From an article over on Japan’s AV Watch [JP], I’ve gleaned that the tablet will have a magnesium alloy body, and a 7-inch screen. It will also have a minimal user white-on-black interface which is centered around the use of handwriting recognition and converting drawn images to vector art. Specs are sketchy at this point, but it appears that it will run on a ARM Cortex A8 CPU with a Mali400 GPU, with Android deep under the hood.
Image: AV Watch
And to go along with the Sci-Fi/Anime theme, they’ve created an enchantMOON short film series, inspired by Alduos Huxley’s Brave New World, and directed by Hiroaki Yuasa. Japanese film director and animator Shinji Higuchi(Evangelion, Gamera, The Floating Castle) is also involved in the project as “CVO” – Chief Visionary Officer. Gee, I’d like a title like that. I guess since I’m the boss, I can do that.
Here’s the first part:
And here’s part two:
Nope, still doesn’t tell us much about the tablet, but they’re definitely going after a part of the market that other tablet makers haven’t been too successful at – content authoring. I think my iPad is a stellar device for content consumption, but I’ll still take my desktop or laptop over it in a heartbeat for web development and authoring. I’m hoping that they’ve got something special up their sleeves, but if nothing else, they’ve piqued my curiosity.
We’ll have to wait a few days until CES starts to find out what all the mystery is about enchantMOON, but I’m definitely intrigued.
The hit parade of Google Driveupdates continues. As of today, account holders can publish web content to their Drive storage in a public folder accessible from any browser; it can even host JavaScript for those who want to run web apps from their personal space. Lest we rush to toss out our existing web hosts, however, Google has some inherent ground rules. Content has to be static, and any links to other pages or files in the folder need a special approach to show web addresses that make sense to mere humans. As such, Google Drive won’t quite relive the glory days of 1998 and simple web tools; at least we can still add a permanent “under construction” GIF.
Jolicloud has portrayed itself as a sort of one-stop shop for cloud services and web apps, where a single sign-in keeps us on top of everything. It’s mostly been limited to big-league content as a result, but that’s changing with the new Jolicloud Open Platform. Developers now just have to build JavaScript-based Node.js components that hook their own apps, media and storage into the same central Jolicloud repository we’d use to manage Instagram and Tumblr. More details and full documentation are forthcoming, although the “open” in Open Platform leads us to think there won’t be many technical (or financial) barriers to entry.
It’s not a real birthday party without a present, so Google has just pulled the wraps off the first stable version of the Dart structured programming language, one year after it was launched. Along with “thousands” of bug fixes, the rejuvenated version will have a faster virtual machine, new JavaScript translator, HTML, server-side I/O and interoperable JavaScript libraries, the Pub package manager and Dartium, a Chromium build with native Dart support. Mountain view promised to keep the improvements coming “while maintaining backward compatibility” for the language, so if you feel frisky enough to jump JavaScript’s ship, check the source below (or video after the break) to see how to grab it.
Mozilla knows how to keep on the fast track. Just weeks after the Firefox 16 beta first showed, the finished version is ready and waiting. Surprises are few if you were an early adopter, although the update still has some welcome changes for the right audiences. Mozilla is most keen to talk about preliminary web app support for the Mozilla Marketplace, but you’ll also find device-specific additions like a Reader Mode for the Android flock and VoiceOver support automatically switched on for Macs. More responsive JavaScript and on-by-default Opus audio playback give existing surfers extra reasons to upgrade. Firefox 16 is immediately available through all the usual channels, so hit the relevant source link if you’re ready to live on the not-quite-bleeding edge.
Google’s fast-track approach to updating Chrome gives a different theme to each update: last time, it was all about visual acuity. For the just launched Chrome 22 stable version, the focus swings to gaming. Web apps can now lock in the mouse control for first-person shooters, simulations and other 3D content that needs the full attention of the pointer during play. Not keen on action games through the browser? There’s still some fine-tuning in place for those who live on the cutting edge, including Windows 8 users and Retina MacBook Pro owners. The update may already be sitting on your computer if you’re running Chrome; if not, you can get your gaming-friendly fix (and the security notes) through the source links.
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