Jolicloud 1.0 Has an HTML5 UI

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."

Comments

having tried...

[mewshi_nya]

having tried jolicloud beta, I wholeheartedly look forward to the finished product. The UNR-based GUI was nice, but if i wanted UNR, I'd freakin' run UNR on it.

Synergy Syncopy

[Spazntwich]

Cloud html5 app syncing is great, but I'm curious if they've got 4g back compatible web 3.0 blueface interballs technology for the kind of futureproof idevice demands the superuser of yestermorrow is sure to be told he needs.

Now the kicker, does it run beowulf? Last time I tried to stync my grendel module .99x was torn to pieces before the crowdsourced beta swarm could move to India.

Re:Synergy Syncopy

[noidentity]

Meh, when they make the whole UI in Adobe Flash, it will be truely synergistically interfaced.

Re:Synergy Syncopy

[AnttiV]

I'd also have a blue face, if my balls were suddenly internal...

Re:Synergy Syncopy

[yelvington]

Cloud html5 app syncing

They call it syncing but isn't it just centralisation?

Perhaps you were asking a serious question -- and the answer is: No, it isn't JUST centralization.

Syncing isn't just between a device and cloud storage. It can accommodate multiple devices of multiple types, and "current state" information, not just files.

Fully implemented, you should be able to stop reading a book on your tablet, open it on your phone, and automatically pick up the same paragraph. Or stop writing midsentence, go home, and continue.

Data can be backed up into cloud storage but reside wherever it makes sense, so disconnected operations should Just Work. HTML5 supports local storage, and there are other tools than HTML 5 at your disposal.

We already have parts of this. For example Google Chrome syncs all bookmarks across multiple devices via the Google mothership. Tomboy on Ubuntu syncs notes through Ubuntu One. Google Docs have had offline functionality through Gears for years now (you can even write/edit while on an airplane without wifi) and will be moving to HTML5 soon. All my contacts sync between work and home and phone and laptops. My calendaring is still a frakking mess, but that's because Microsoft is both evil and incompetent, and we use Exchange, but that too shall pass.

You stop thinking about "where did I leave that document" because all your documents are always available on all your devices, and you can leave your thumb drive on your dresser without being rendered helpless.

Over the next five years there's going to be a huge push for this sort of thing.

Things to worry about include privacy and stability (including financial) of the cloud service provider. Things to not worry about include blowing a hard disk and losing all your stuff, because there's lots of redundancy in the system.

Re:Headline

[Spazntwich]

This is truly an historic post.

Re:Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You're wrong. Read the note at the bottom of your source:

Note: The choice of article is actually based upon the phonetic (sound) quality of the first letter in a word, not on the orthographic (written) representation of the letter.

Because HTML is an abbreviation, you say the name of the letter 'H', and not the 'H' sound itself. Because the name of the letter H begins with a long 'A' sound, "Jolicloud 1.0 Has an HTML5 UI" is correct, and "Jolicloud 1.0 Has a HTML5 UI" is not.

Re:Cloud?

[PopeRatzo]

But I was more drawing attention to overuse of the cloud term.

"Jolicloud" is not a good high-tech name.

It makes me think of the scene in an old B-movie (Flashdance) where a very creepy and perverted character coos "It's tres jolie, Coco! Tres jolie!" to a young woman he hires for what she thinks is a photo shoot but is really an excuse for him to masturbate.

Well, maybe it's not such a bad name for a Linux distro, after all.

Launched a few days back?

[Aladrin]

You can't really call it 'launched' when only select people have it. You can't DL it yet (it's still the pre-release available for DL) and if you already have it, you have to wait for them to allow you to upgrade.

It's not launched. It's in preview.

HTML 5 Apps

[Toonol]

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.

Re:HTML 5 Apps

[SanityInAnarchy]

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

Re:HTML 5 Apps

[Nursie]

It doesn't matter too much to me whether it's java that's slow or if it's that 90% of java developers suck. The end result is the same, a lot of people will deliberately avoid using it. Hell, if 90% of java developers suck badly enough to make slow, bad programs then perhaps that's a flaw in the JVM/Java too.

Probably not though, it's likely more reflective of Java being the default language these days.

Oh, and FYI, websites cause browsers to fault relatively frequently, unfortunately, because you can't avoid having native code *somewhere*, and browsers are not written perfectly.

Re:Headline

[R.Mo_Robert]

I don't do prescriptivist "grammar" (I'm a linguist and value language as it is actually used, and many prescriptivists "rules" don't even make sense), but even if you do follow their advice, note:

Note: The choice of article is actually based upon the phonetic (sound) quality of the first letter in a word, not on the orthographic (written) representation of the letter.

Therefore, "an HTML5," as in the original headline, is correct, unless you really pronounce the letter "H" as something other than "aitch" (which, in all fairness, a minority of speakers in Britain and other places do). But note also the status of the sound /h/ itself isn't readily identifiable as a consonant or vowel--in fact, some consider it only a breathy version of the vowel it precedes or to be a segment marked only for phonation type and not place or manner (as with "real" consonants). I'll refer you to Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) or any of Ladefoged's other phonetics books for more.

Re:Cloud?

[dangitman]

It makes me think of the scene in an old B-movie (Flashdance)

You don't seem to understand what a B-movie is. Flashdance is certainly not one. In fact, Flashdance was released in an era when the B-movie was basically extinct.

A B-movie is a formulaic low-budget film that is intended to accompany the A-movie in a double-feature screening. Flashdance was not low budget, and was not intended to be seen as part of a double-feature screening. In fact, it was a huge box-office success.

Re:Cloud?

[dangitman]

Not to drift off topic, but B-movies never died, they just became "Direct-To-Video" in the '80s....

No to belabor the point, but I think that is a fairly different realm. The B-movie is a relic of an era when people didn't have TVs, and would go to the cinema for a whole evening's entertainment. And they would go regularly. There would be newsreels and short films in addition to the feature films. The B-movie exists in this context, where it is a companion to other films.

The direct-to-video low budget movie is a different phenomenon, that caters to individual viewers in their homes. They are not intended to complement other films, and they are often very niche in their targeted audience.

I think we need to draw this distinction, because what is happening now (YouTube, etc) is very different to the B-movie phenomenon. B-movies were made industrially, as a part of the studio system. Much like tins of processed food. The direct-to-video and Youtube phenomenon are more about smaller (and individual) producers doing their own thing, not something that's made-to-spec by the studios to act as filler.

Looks promising

[Great Big Bird]

Based on the video, it looks like it has potential. But there are many things that are just a poor user interface. An example would be the speed that it takes to start up. GIMP just looks out of place. Note that I am comparing this to an iPad – and for good reason – this resembles the same target market to me.

Re:Cloud?

[the_womble]

Having cloud in the name synergisticaly enhances perceived brand value.

Re:Why ChromeOS is gonna change everything

[icebraining]

Why is a web interface better?

They're *not* richer, nor they can possibly be: all the web interfaces are drawn by desktop apps, called browsers! Any restriction that affect desktop GUIs also invariably affect web GUIs.

The opposite happens: slim, fast desktop GUIs have to be transformed into a mess of HTML+CSS+JS which are much less efficient. Nothing is faster than a simple ncurses GUI, which is more than enough for most of my apps (IM, email, network manager, text editor, etc).

I prefer normal servers, allowing me to use a nice, slim desktop app in my computer, and a web GUI on other PCs. Like email: IMAP for most uses, webmail for the occasional external access.