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Jolicloud 1.0 Has an HTML5 UI

Posted by timothy on from the blink-tag-considered-harmful dept.

kai_hiwatari writes "Jolicloud 1.0, a Linux based OS for netbooks, was launched a few days back. In this new release, the developers have completely replaced the old interface based on Ubuntu Netbook Remix in favor of a new one based on HTML5. Jolicloud 1.0 also features a new syncing feature using which you can sync installed applications across all your systems running on Jolicloud. Other interesting features includes new app center, social stream, etc."

2 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. HTML 5 Apps by Toonol · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I worry that this will be like Java apps; a way to make UIs and performance even worse. HTML is great, and HTML 5 is a clear improvement; but it certainly is nowhere near the performance, stability, and ease of use of an application designed a little closer to the hardware.

    I've seen many decent programs ruined as companies tossed the client software they had written in C++ or even VB, and move to web-based UIs. Programming things in HTML 5 that would be best written in any of a dozen other languages will just stigmatize HTML 5, kind of the way you get a sinking feeling in your stomach when you fire up a new program and realize, while it's churning, that it's written in Java.

    1. Re:HTML 5 Apps by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      it certainly is nowhere near the performance, stability, and ease of use of an application designed a little closer to the hardware.

      That depends what you're looking for. There are certain things I use Web applications for that I don't want anywhere near my hardware, or even my OS -- HTML makes a nice sandbox.

      In that sense -- in the sense of, hey, here's a cool toy I want to try out for a few minutes (which covers 99% of the apps in any of these newfangled "app stores") -- HTML actually wins for all of these. With a decent browser, performance comes close enough, and the speed with which the application is "installed" is unmatched. Similarly, it's much easier to just try it out for a few seconds and come back later -- and since it's sandboxed for me, it makes my machine much more stable than if I'd been using native equivalents.

      Even where native apps win, they are losing ground.

      Stability? That's a joke -- when was the last time a website segfaulted? Then again, native apps work without an Internet connection -- but HTML5 lets web apps do that, too.

      Ease of use? Everyone knows how to use a website, and websites provide things like tabs, bookmarks, history, keyboard shortcuts, extensions, even user scripts. Often, apps have a requirement for functionality like this, and they end up rebuilding something a browser is already very good at -- for example, JDeveloper's online documentation seems to emulate a web browser full of tabs, with back and forward buttons, hyperlinks, etc, but I can't open a new link in a new tab at all, and I can't use keyboard shortcuts to switch tabs, close tabs, or go back/forward. I certainly can't bookmark things.

      These are all solved problems on the Web, and what's more, by using a standard Web interface, you no longer have to get this right yourself -- if a user doesn't like how tabs work in your "application", they can simply download a new browser.

      Performance? You gave Java as an example -- I have few complaints about the performance of Java itself. The main places Java loses are boot time (waiting for a JVM to fire up) and poorly-written apps. I've been forced to develop Java in school and now for an internship, using Eclipse and JDeveloper, and the difference between the performance of those IDEs, as applications, is like night and day -- Eclipse launches quickly and I've never had it lag or crash, while JDeveloper takes forever to start, the UI lags constantly, and after extended use, it almost inevitably grinds to a halt or outright crashes.

      Similarly, Chrome, Konqueror, and Firefox seem to all be written in C/C++, and of these, Chrome launches faster than Konqueror, and every single website I visit seems faster in Chrome than in Konqueror, even though both have common roots in KHTML/WebKit -- even though Konqueror uses Qt, which is already loaded all over my system, and Chrome uses gtk.

      The difference isn't the language, it's the developer.

      I've seen many decent programs ruined as companies tossed the client software they had written in C++ or even VB, and move to web-based UIs.

      There are many possible reasons for this. Probably the top two are throwing away their existing codebase (and thus, their competitive advantage), and trying to take something fundamentally non-Web and push it into the Web, instead of trying to re-think the application from the ground up as a web application.

      It could also be that you had a kneejerk reaction to an otherwise decent interface. It could even be that your browser sucks. Which applications are we talking about?

      But of course...

      Programming things in HTML 5 that would be best written in any of a dozen other languages will just stigmatize HTML 5...

      Maybe at first, the way VB, PHP, and Ruby are all stigmatized because there are so many novice programmers flocking to them. Java, perhaps even more so, as universities seem to have largely embraced either Java o

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