{"id":394,"date":"2011-07-25T11:58:03","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T19:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/?p=394"},"modified":"2011-07-25T11:58:03","modified_gmt":"2011-07-25T19:58:03","slug":"b2g-from-browser-to-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/posts\/394","title":{"rendered":"B2G:  From Browser to Platform"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In my post, <a title=\"The Browser is a Transitonal Technology\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/posts\/115\" target=\"_self\">The Browser is a Transitional Technology,<\/a> I wrote that I thought\u00a0 web browsers were really Personal Computing Era applications and that browsers were unlikely to continue to exist as such as we move deeply into the <a title=\"3rd Era of Computing\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/posts\/74\" target=\"_self\">Ambient Computing Era.<\/a> However,\u00a0 I expect browser technologies to have a key role in the Ambient Computing Era. In <a title=\"Why Mozilla\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/posts\/210\" target=\"_self\">Why Mozilla<\/a>, I talked about the inevitable emergence of a universal application platform for the Ambient Era and how open web technologies could serve that role. Last month I gave a talk where I tried to pull some of these ideas together:<\/p>\n<div style=\"width:425px\" id=\"__ss_8402770\"> <strong style=\"display:block;margin:12px 0 4px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/allenwb\/is-the-browser-a-transitional-technology\" title=\"Is the Browser a Transitional Technology?\" target=\"_blank\">Is the Browser a Transitional Technology?<\/a><\/strong> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/slideshow\/embed_code\/8402770\" width=\"425\" height=\"355\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe> <\/p>\n<div style=\"padding:5px 0 12px\">  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>For slides, 14-19 I talked about how when you remove that PC application facade from a modern browser you have essentially an open web-based application platform that is appropriate for all classes of ambient computing devices.<\/p>\n<p>Today Mozilla announced an embryonic project that is directed towards that goal.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<a title=\"B2G Project Page\" href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/B2G\" target=\"_blank\">B2G<\/a> or (Booting to the Web) is about showing that the open the web application platform can be the primarily platform for running native-grade applications.\u00a0 As the project page says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mozilla believes that the web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application development. To make open web technologies a better basis for future applications on mobile and desktop alike, we need to keep pushing the envelope of the web to include &#8212; and in places exceed &#8212; the capabilities of the competing stacks in question.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One of the first steps is to directly boot devices into running <a title=\"Gecko on Wikipedia\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gecko_%28layout_engine%29\" target=\"_blank\">Gecko<\/a>, Mozilla\u2019s core browser engine.\u00a0 Essentially the devices will boot directly into the browser platform, but without the baggage and overhead of a traditional PC based web browser.\u00a0 This is essentially the vision of slide 17 of my presentation. \u00a0The \u201cG\u201d in B2G comes from the use of Gecko, but the project is really about the open web. Any other set of browser technologies could potentially be used in the same way.\u00a0 As the <a title=\"B2G Project Page\" href=\"https:\/\/wiki.mozilla.org\/B2G\" target=\"_blank\">project web site<\/a> says: \u201cWe aren&#8217;t trying to have these native-grade apps just run on Firefox, we&#8217;re trying to have them run on the web.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This project is just starting, so nobody yet knows all the details or how successful it will be.\u00a0 But, like all Mozilla projects it will take place in the <a title=\"B2G on Github\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/andreasgal\/B2G\" target=\"_blank\">open<\/a> and with an open invitation for you involvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my post, The Browser is a Transitional Technology, I wrote that I thought\u00a0 web browsers were really Personal Computing Era applications and that browsers were unlikely to continue to exist as such as we move deeply into the Ambient Computing Era. However,\u00a0 I expect browser technologies to have a key role in the Ambient [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,37],"tags":[28,55,46,30,35,27,61,54,24,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":402,"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394\/revisions\/402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wirfs-brock.com\/allen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}