February 18th, 2009 | 
Author: 
O’reilly release the first chapter of their new webOS book in the past few days and it has been a welcome island in a sea of tedious rumours. While others may wildly speculate on when the Pre will appear, at least we now have some idea of what it will be running.
So what does this chapter tell us about webOS? Well, a lot of the chapter is spent with the usual overview. I tend to skip these chapters in technical books, but webOS is brand new to me, so I gave it the time. Here’s what I learned:
- webOS is expressly intended to support multiple hardware environments with all sorts over screen sizes, resolutions and orientations – This tells me that a good webOS App will not restrict itself to functioning on a Pre form factor
- webOS will use HTML 5 tags to provide storage functions and some graphic functions (using the canvas) – This tells me that I need to get up to speed on HTML 5 and start playing with it in Firefox
- webOS will give you access to Calendar and Contact data, Location Services, Accelerometer data and XMPP messaging – This tells me that the apps we can make are going to be awwwwesome!
- Mojo will come bundled with the Prototype framework – Since I’m a jQuery fan, this means that I have to learn another JS framework, if I’m going to be able to fully exploit the Pre
- The Core OS will support fat32 for media file partitions (with a mention of mounting via USB) – This suggests that it may be possible to plug a USB drive into the Pre for extra storage and ease of file transfer!
There are some nice pieces about design philosophy and UI considerations in the first chapter and some high level introduction to concepts such as stages and scenes.
All in all, and interesting read; certainly enough to whet my appetite for the Pre. Here’s what I’m going to be doing in preparation:
- Learn HTML 5
- Learn Prototype
I think focusing on those two, for now, will put me in good stead. I recommend the same to you.
Posted in Javascript, Programming, preDevCamp | 
Tags: html, Javascript, mojo, pre, Programming, prototype
Hi there,
I read the first chapter too and I think you should also mention some other small things. First of all, that the Mojo-Framework bases on Prototype – yes and it is also bundled with it BUT that it is not prototype framework. They use it for the magic class inheritance and other cool stuff that is missing in usual JS, but my guess is that their Mojo-Framework will have its own API and ways to do things. For example to do Animations and stuff. So it is probably enough to understand the basics of Prototype, which I guess you do (as you know jQuery
).
The second thing I would like to point out is that it is using GStreamer (gst) for all the cool multimedia stuff. Gst is a great framework and if they base on it I would strongly suggest to also take a look into it (http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/ ), too. Because you’ll need it for everything. I am also very excited about what palm does to make gst accessible from JS.
Greetz
Ben
Ben,
Thanks for your comment.
Thanks for clarifying the point that Mojo is *not* a Prototype framework… it simply comes bundled with it.
Also, I agree; anyone not familiar with GStreamer should take a look at that as well.
The key to being a good Pre programmer is going to be preparation. That’s one of the great things about this SDK… we may not know its contents, but we can hazard some good guess and take some positive action based on those guesses