14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most important announcements set for next week’s Mobile World Congress involves the launch of a developer device for Mozilla’s Boot 2 Gecko mobile platform.
Whether the device will actually be released or not, it remains to be seen; one thing that is certain at the moment, however, is the fact that it will be showcased to the world.
Rumor has it that this phone would arrive from LG, yet nothing has been confirmed on the matter for the time being.
However, Mozilla did offer details on how things were moving forth with the development of its mobile platform, and a better view of the mobile Web APIs used for the building of Boot 2 Gecko.
The main idea behind B2G was to use open web standards to build compelling apps and OS components that could be put on mobile devices.
In the last eight months, the company has registered great response from the industry, and it has just listed a series of emerging APIs to help their project come to life.
“In citing Mozillans I do not mean to minimize the efforts of standardization colleagues at Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Opera, the W3C and elsewhere,” Brendan Eich, Mozilla CTO, explains in a blog post.
“Standards are a multi-vendor effort (although excluding WebGL [see UPDATE below] one shiny name is conspicuously absent from this list).”
Mozilla does not yet have a native application stack with such APIs on offer, he also notes, adding that the company’s only goal is to improve the Web in order to offer users a better experience.
Below, you will find a list of mobile Web APIs that make B2G reality (A lot of HTML5 and Web API work aimed at Desktop Firefox was not included, since the main focus here is on the mobile platform):
Geolocation, with Google contributing the editor and Firefox (thanks to Jay Sullivan leading the charge) implementing early. WebGL (UPDATE: Chris Marrin of Apple edited) and typed arrays. Gamepad API. Co-editor: Ted Mielczarek. Mozillans are also contributing to Pointer Lock. Screen Orientation. Editor: Mounir Lamouri. navigator.getUserMedia. Co-editor: Anant Narayanan Battery Status (in Last Call). From the Acknowledgements: Big thanks to the Mozilla WebAPI team for their invaluable feedback based on prototype implementations. Media Capture. Fabrice Desré prototype-implemented in Gecko. Network API. Editor: Mounir Lamouri. Web Telephony. Ben Turner, Jonas Sicking, Philipp von Weitershausen. Web SMS. Mounir Lamouri, Jonas Sicking. Vibration. From the Acknowledgements: The group is deeply indebted to Mounir Lamouri, Jonas Sicking, and the Mozilla WebAPI team in general for providing the WebVibrator prototype as an initial input. File API. Editors: Arun Ranganathan, Jonas Sicking. IndexedDB. Editors includes Jonas Sicking.
Soon, we’ll learn more on what Boot to Gecko will have to offer to its users, so stay tuned. Hopefully, details on when we might see the first devices powered by this platform on shelves will also be offered.