Description :
Bringing the Open Web to Mobile Devices
I saw this and couldn't resist having a little sneaky play around with it.
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* ATTENTION *
This is NOT a daily driver and it's NOT stable, it's Pre-Alpha. If you want something to use as a phone, this isn't it. If you just want to use your phone as a phone, you need a custom Android ROM, so, be careful with your experiments.
Download the file here >>
So what is this?
An Open Source project from Mozilla (the lovely people behind the Firefox Browser) that aims to support HTML5 apps written using "Open Web" technologies rather than platform-specific Native APIs.
The idea is essentially to have all user-accessible software running on the phone be a Web app that uses advanced HTML5 techniques and device APIs, to access the phone's hardware directly via JavaScript.
It initially targets Android-compatible smartphones.
The company hopes to get onto smartphones and tablets to rival the likes of Android and iOS. B2G is based on the Linux kernel and includes drivers from Android, but on top of that is the same Gecko layout engine that powers the Firefox Browser.
The main advantage of the OS being powered by Gecko is that developers can write apps using noting more than HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
Boot to Gecko (B2G) Simulator in Firefox
Want to see B2G in action?
Well, fire up your copy of Firefox (preferably a Nightly Build) and head over to Mozilla engineer Paul Rouget's website where you will find the simulator.
Actually, the simulator is pretty nifty. Of course, it's quite limited in places and you can't do everything with it, but on the whole it's very neat. If nothing else, it gives you a feel for where the B2G project is headed.
It requires work in a number of areas, so I won't go into more details. I suggest you read a lot over at their wiki - start off at: https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G and work your way through the pages.
You'll get suprised at how fast it boots. Can't wait to see the development for this, looks like it's going well already!
Overview:
Running on Galaxy S2:
We hope you enjoyed this article. Here are some resources / references for extra reading time.
Wikipedia, Mozilla Wiki
*by andreascy*
