Open Web Device

Re:Open Web Device by AndrewDucker on Monday February 27, 2012 @06:45AM (#3638626)

It looks like all "apps" are web pages. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they can make it run things like Angry Birds.

And how well they deal with background tasks. On Android I can upload my photos in the background, or play music through Spotify (or my MP3 app) while I'm doing other things. Will I be able to do similar things here?

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Re:Open Web Device by wazoox on Monday February 27, 2012 @09:08AM (#3638980)

> It looks like all "apps" are web pages.

This was already this way on WebOS. It didn't prevent any of the thing you mentioned.

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Re:Open Web Device by toyg on Monday February 27, 2012 @08:17AM (#3638828)

And how well they deal with security. I look forward to the day when a malware-distributing webpage can pwn millions of phones without being detected...

EDIT: uh, downvotes?

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Re:Open Web Device by azakai on Monday February 27, 2012 @11:28AM (#3639475)

> And how well they deal with security. I look forward to the day when a malware-distributing webpage can pwn millions of phones without being detected...

Exploits are always possible on any platform, of course, but the web is sandboxed by design and has been hardened against attacks for many years. It's as secure or more than other platforms like Java or the iOS app model.

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Re:Open Web Device by runjake on Monday February 27, 2012 @11:34AM (#3639505)

I didn't down/upvote you, but you were likely downvoted because there was a perceived lack of anything of value in your comment.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Re:Open Web Device by flpmor on Monday February 27, 2012 @09:23AM (#3639038)

MY first reaction was about security as well. This change of paradigm is a recipe for disaster if security is not considered from the beginning because most of the assumptions change. If it's not done carefully (things like segregation between apps, access control to privileged JavaScript, etc)... it is going to pretty painful.

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Re:Open Web Device by icebraining on Monday February 27, 2012 @10:02AM (#3639163)

Firefox already has all that. A good part of the browser is written in JS which runs with high privileges (full filesystem access, full network access, etc) while the code on websites doesn't. It already has systems for unprivileged JS to request access to certain privileged APIs (location, localStorage, etc). "Apps" - websites - are already segregated and run in their own sandbox.

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Re:Open Web Device by flpmor on Monday February 27, 2012 @10:21AM (#3639241)

I know, and we have constantly lived along the edge of the cliff because of that. From a perspective of security it was a very poor design decision. By making those decisions you create a big security burden, the attack surface is very large, the impact of bugs is very large. These are the types of security consideration that have to happen at design time. In this case I would like to know more about, maybe it's being considered but not being discussed.

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Re:Open Web Device by zobzu on Monday February 27, 2012 @03:51PM (#3640580)

So you're saying sandboxing webapps are a bad design decision. What is your proposal then?

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Re:Open Web Device by drivebyacct2 on Monday February 27, 2012 @01:38PM (#3640033)

How is this any different than a popular app on the Android Market or an exploit in the same webpage affecting Mobile Webkit. This seems like a really random absurd scenario.

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Re:Open Web Device by nailer on Monday February 27, 2012 @06:48AM (#3638633)

On a web browser now you can already play music through an app (eg Google music) while you do other things. Don't see why they'd change it.

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Re:Open Web Device by AndrewDucker on Monday February 27, 2012 @06:56AM (#3638649)

I guess the question is how they highlight things so I can easily switch back to the app that's playing the music, so I can pause it when necessary, how much space they make available to individual apps (I have about 5GB of music on my phone at the moment for Spotify), and what the model is for apps sharing data (so I can download a photo in one app, change it in a second one, and upload it with a third one).

I'm looking forward to seeing what their equivalent of "intents" is.

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Re:Open Web Device by icebraining on Monday February 27, 2012 @06:59AM (#3638658)

I'm looking forward to seeing what their equivalent of "intents" is.

Google and Mozilla are already collaborating on Web Intents[1], and Mozilla already has a proof of concept[2].

[1]: http://www.webintents.org/

[2]: https://mozillalabs.com/blog/2011/07/web-apps-update-experim...

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Re:Open Web Device by Tichy on Monday February 27, 2012 @06:56AM (#3638647)

"HTML 5" has the web workers API for background tasks. They don't work while you visit other pages, though. I guess they'll have to introduce a new API for that.

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Re:Open Web Device by bergie on Monday February 27, 2012 @07:03AM (#3638666)

webOS solved this by enabling apps to also ship Node.js code that would be able to run as background services.

https://developer.palm.com/content/api/dev-guide/js-services...

Given that Mozilla already made their JS engine emulate Node.js (http://blog.zpao.com/post/4620873765/about-that-hybrid-v8mon...), it might not be so far-fetched to think that something similar could be done with B2G.

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Re:Open Web Device by azakai on Monday February 27, 2012 @11:33AM (#3639495)

> "HTML 5" has the web workers API for background tasks. They don't work while you visit other pages, though.

Web workers should continue to work while you visit other tabs. But not if you browse away from the page with the worker.

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Re:Open Web Device by Sami_Lehtinen on Monday February 27, 2012 @01:00PM (#3639858)

Well, Angry Birds runs as HTML5 app already perfectly well. http://chrome.angrybirds.com/

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Re:Open Web Device by AndrewDucker on Monday February 27, 2012 @01:18PM (#3639947)

I thought that it used Flash for the sound.

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Re:Open Web Device by mbrubeck on Monday February 27, 2012 @02:40PM (#3640318)

Angry Birds uses the Web Audio API for sound, with Flash as a fallback for browsers that don't support that API:

http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2012/01/angry-birds-chr...

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