Wow, if BlackBerry really thinks a better browser will help them retain more customers they really don't get why people prefer iPhone and Android phones. And consulting with the HTML5 team at Facebook which just rushed to quickly rewrite their mobile apps to 100% native apps after failing to leverage an HTML5/Native hybrid approach they are just digging the hole that much more.
The reason the iPhone is so popular is because 1) people are excited about it 2) great native apps make people excited because they do useful or fun things quickly 3) the iPhone is part of a rich ecosystem with services for music and apps. The iPhone ecosystem includes cloud and desktop integration along with support from the top rated e-commerce site as well as local support with award winner retail stores. That great customer service matters a lot to mobile phone customers who often expect a lot from their phones. With BlackBerry you get a phone from a carrier which has a poorly trained sales staff which cannot help you and often does not care. If I have an issue with my iPhone I can go into a nearby Apple Store and have my issues resolved quickly, and if necessary, they give me replacement hardware. And BlackBerry is putting out a better web browser? Better than what? Better than the poor browser they had previously I suppose. Apple has had a great browser from the beginning. BlackBerry does not get it. And if they want to catch up they need to do more than tweak their system. There should be an entire ecosystem built around it, but it is already too late. Android is already eating up all the space which Apple has not and Windows Phone is scrounging for scraps. Very little will be left for BlackBerry. They never innovated after they reached their peak. That's how the mighty fall. I hope Apple keeps innovating. I think they are due to push it this coming year. More integration between the iPhone with other aspects of our lives from TV to our cars would be great and we've already seen rumors that is coming.
Converting a mobile webapp to BB10 to native app takes merely few hours. BB10 supports Phonegap out of the box (their dev tools have simulator for it). They have their own version of something very similar to Phonegap but a little richer. You can port any Phonegap app to BB10 and use their JS API's for deeper integration.
BB10 is RIM betting on HTML5 for native apps as well. If they can optimize the experience nearly as good as native Java apps - this could be the next tide. You gotta look at the future where developing for 5-6 platforms would be a pain. Microsoft is betting on similar approach for Windows 8.
Win is at the next tide - not the one that Apple rode 5 years ago.
In five years, native apps will be much better too. So it would require HTML5 apps to not only be better than native apps from now but also native apps from the future to be considered as cool. I dont think this a very good bet since in the end the browser itself is a native app!
This argument has been made in every generation of thin-client vs. fat-client technology for the past few decades. We still have both, and probably always will: each has its strengths.
Having just finished writing a phonegap app (or Cordova as it is now known), this makes me much less likely to want to use BB10. I've only used Cordova on ios and android (simply because blackberry has such as small percentage of the target it is not worth the investment).
Native apps are much nicer and easier to code, regardless of the platform. And don't even get me started on the mess that is trying to use JS frameworks such as Jquery mobile to actually do something useful. Such as facebook or twitter integration.
Cross platform app development is a good ideal but none of the current platforms can do it in a way that isn't a horrendous pain.
> Wow, if BlackBerry really thinks a better browser will help them retain more customers they really don't get why people prefer iPhone and Android phones.
Blackberry doesn't have a choice. They're in a tough spot. They need to "skip" a generation, if they have any hope of survival.
Things are moving toward web/html5 tech and that is the future. Not now, but in a few years. All of the direct-hardware-access stuff is being worked on right now.
Even now, you can build metro/Windows 8 apps using html5. There's Firefox OS. WebOS is barely alive, but still kicking.
And, of course, there's the simple argument that the most important and popular app on both iOS and Android is the web browser.
This is a great example of how RIM is "doing it wrong". No one really cares about things like Flash, "Best HTML 5! OMG! like. EVER!", or "Most Secure E-Mail, Like, EVER!".
People care about the user experience, the ecosystem (read: apps, for now), integration, trust, and the "wow" factor.
I think the strategy is to let the browser be a platform for application development. The better the foundation, the more robust and varied apps developers can build, the stronger the ecosystem.
Looking at it from the perspective of "so what if the browser is standards compliant, users don't care about benchmarks" is a bit short sighted since it's not just about the browser, it's about the foundation of the phone's ecosystem.
If your ecosystem is "the entire Internet", I'd say it's a pretty good ecosystem to start with for BB10. I'm not particularly excited about BlackBerry, and never have been their target audience, but a good browser is absolutely one of the most important factors in my phone decision.
I still believe in the power of the open web over closed ecosystems, despite the billions Apple makes from their App Store. I'm hopeful that the open web will win on the phone, just as it has begun to win on the desktop. And in that world, it won't matter what OS you run, as long as your phone has a competent browser. Sounds like BB10 will have a very competent browser.
That's not to say I believe RIM can pull out of this nosedive, but at least they're making moves in the right directions, for the first time in years (I think; I haven't seen anything else from them that makes me think they understand the new reality of the mobile landscape).
I would agree on passing standard compliance, but a great browser should allow fluid swipes, many tabs, syncing between phones or devices, and render things accurately and quickly. The look of the chrome is just as important as the look of the page, and the feel of navigation is the most important of all.
The big problem here is that the browser test was developed by Facebook so it probably only passes the test if all kinds of creepy tracking features are ON.
Predictably there are a lot of haters on the thread, but can't we look at this as a good thing? A great browser won't be anywhere near enough to win, but a crappy browser is game over. I, for one, would like more competing platforms rather than fewer.
I would buy one, and so would pretty much any company.
A vibrant developer community is a big minus for big companies with no need for custom software, because that means there will be people figuring out how to root the devices (and worms, ect). If blackberry fails in the consumer market, the commercial market will save it.
As for the consumer market, who doesn't love seeing new ways to do things? Andriod and Iphone are old and boring now, and Windows Phone 8 is not my cup of tea. (Oh, just remembered firefox OS. Is that a thing still?)
> If blackberry fails in the consumer market, the commercial market will save it.
Why? Blackberry's grip on the corporate market was destroyed by execs coming to work with their iPhones and demanding that IT depts connect them to the corporate infrastructure.
Remember, IT works for the business - not the other way around.
True in most cases - but, in some organizations, IT has ludicrous amounts of policy power that surpass what any rational person would think should be allocated to it.
In particular, Yahoo!'s IT organization kept Blackberry's as the Mobile Platform of choice, for a company whose major future growth is going to come from Mobile Consumer usage - far longer than it ever should have.
Eventually, though, somebody gets around to knocking heads, and IT typically falls in line...
Well BB10 devices might not be for sale, but the browser has been shown off and it is part of the dev devices that developers got at BBJam in September. If you want to see a little preview of it in action checkout this preview video taken at BBJam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onNTDUncA44 If you follow the link in the article to Matt's post on the RIM developer blog there are more articles on the browser and what it has: http://devblog.blackberry.com/2012/11/blackberry-10-browser-...
As mentioned in the video one of the neatest aspects of the browser is the fact that the chrome itself is written in HTML/JS. So the animations, transitions etc are all done by WebKit. The BlackBerry browser includes support for remote inspecting which meant not only could we host the chrome on our desktop while developing, but we could debug it from a WebKit browser on our desktop, all while it was running on the device. When you make a web application for BlackBerry10 it will be on top of the WebWorks platform which sits on top of the same HTML Runtime that the browser is using which aligned rim's interests to make sure that web applications work well.
Have you guys managed to avoid the sluggishness issues similar to the ones Mozilla team encountered years ago when the decided to also build the chrome via XUL (HTML/JS/CSS)?
One thing to remember is that when the Mozilla team originally created XUL browser engines were a different beast. At the top you have JavaScript which is _significantly_ faster on many different levels. Combine that we current html features supported (and or optimized) by some WebKit ports such as hardware accelerated CSS transitions and you get a much a strong base to create applications on top of. Also writing large JavaScript applications were new back then. These days we have several years of lessons about what works and what doesn't. Lastly the tool situation is much better. Simply what you can get if you limit yourself to inspector is pretty crazy. Remember Firebug didn't even come out until 2006 if I recall. And if all that isn't good enough the HTMLRuntime is multi-process so you absolutely wont run into the contention for the JavaScript engine between the chrome and the pages. To see some animations in action checkout the above video links.
Disclaimer: I am part of the WebKit team at RIM these opinions are my own
> As mentioned in the video one of the neatest aspects of the browser is the fact that the chrome itself is written in HTML/JS.
Why, as an end user, would I ever care about this? All this says to me is that the part of the browser which should be fast and get out of the way is written in an abstraction layer with significant overhead (compared to the alternative, native code), which - to me - means using more RAM and CPU, increasing the cost or decreasing the performance of the device.
As a tech demo, I think it's a neat idea. But as a "one of the neatest aspects" of a commercial product, I'm not inclined to be interested in the rest of the app.
I highlighting this feature for this particular crowd because the same bits that make the html web applications work on BlackBerry10 is what drives the new Chrome. This means that the guys making the chrome _really_ do care that html applications work well.
As for overhead the browser team has always concerned itself with keeping its footprint down both in memory and cpu and by using JS+HTML our total overhead was actually reduced compared to running another framework along side WebKit just for the Chrome. Checkout the above second video for more in depth presentation on this.
Disclaimer: I am part of the WebKit team at RIM these opinions are my own
Techvibes is probably one of the most anti-RIM blogs I've ever read, practically every day they have a negative RIM spin story, even if it's supposed to be positive news for RIM, it's like their main money maker is writing anti-RIM stuff. I'm surprised they actually wrote this. So if you think RIM paid them to write this, I would be surprised.
As impressive as this sounds, what I want to know is whether I'll be able to use their super-standards-compliant browser as a WebView in a "hybrid" app without re-implementing arcane APIs.
They had a nice web browser in their Playbooks, but it was impossible to use if you wanted to provide an "app" to wrap your spiffy "HTML5" website.
I assume you meant that sarcastically, as in "look how BlackBerry are killing off developer interest in their own platform"? Regardless of sarcasm or not, this is the best play RIM has - to use an existing platform and not rely on people developing specifically for them. That's the only hope for the underdog platforms (i.e., everyone except for Android and iOS).
This is ridiculous. Let's look at the iPhone for example. There are several browsers available, all which are highly compliant. I use Chrome, however, not because of its compliance, but because at the moment, it's the fastest, allows for more tabs, and just feels more fun to use. Blackberry will lose this game because they don't know how to do good UI. And this nonsense about working with Facebook is just laughable.
In case joenathan's comment isn't obvious, all iOS apps use the same core WebKit library to provide for their "browser" experiences. It's an embedded UIWebView I believe. All "browsers" have to use this because Apple. [1]
[1] That's not fair, it's a JIT thing but then again you can have full other engines on Android if you like (see: Chrome for Android).
As much as I would love to stop even pretending to care about dealing with blackberry's brutal web browser, I still think that this title is way to bold and extremely unlikely...
...the only thing that could motivate me nowadays to write a BB version of a mobile app would be the ability to use HTML5 and javascript and just have the same app on both Android and BB... so if the browser is better than what 90% of Android users have, I wouldn't care, because I'd be targeting the Android webkit browser... Android won, so they should first strive for compatibility first (and HTML5 apps seems the only way for them) and then show off any superior features their OS may have on top of this...
...it seems that they are running through the woods without a map (AGAIN!) right now, and it really doesn't matter how fast they can run or climb trees if they don't know where they're going
[EDIT: added what's next]
my 2 cents for RIM: throw some money at Xamarin (http://xamarin.com) to make BB a target for their app development platform... putting your eggs in the multiplatform basket would seem like the only sensible decision now that your basket is hosed / on fire, and enterprise devs that would be more inclined to target BB will probably prefer C#...
43 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 90.0 ms ] threadThe reason the iPhone is so popular is because 1) people are excited about it 2) great native apps make people excited because they do useful or fun things quickly 3) the iPhone is part of a rich ecosystem with services for music and apps. The iPhone ecosystem includes cloud and desktop integration along with support from the top rated e-commerce site as well as local support with award winner retail stores. That great customer service matters a lot to mobile phone customers who often expect a lot from their phones. With BlackBerry you get a phone from a carrier which has a poorly trained sales staff which cannot help you and often does not care. If I have an issue with my iPhone I can go into a nearby Apple Store and have my issues resolved quickly, and if necessary, they give me replacement hardware. And BlackBerry is putting out a better web browser? Better than what? Better than the poor browser they had previously I suppose. Apple has had a great browser from the beginning. BlackBerry does not get it. And if they want to catch up they need to do more than tweak their system. There should be an entire ecosystem built around it, but it is already too late. Android is already eating up all the space which Apple has not and Windows Phone is scrounging for scraps. Very little will be left for BlackBerry. They never innovated after they reached their peak. That's how the mighty fall. I hope Apple keeps innovating. I think they are due to push it this coming year. More integration between the iPhone with other aspects of our lives from TV to our cars would be great and we've already seen rumors that is coming.
Converting a mobile webapp to BB10 to native app takes merely few hours. BB10 supports Phonegap out of the box (their dev tools have simulator for it). They have their own version of something very similar to Phonegap but a little richer. You can port any Phonegap app to BB10 and use their JS API's for deeper integration.
BB10 is RIM betting on HTML5 for native apps as well. If they can optimize the experience nearly as good as native Java apps - this could be the next tide. You gotta look at the future where developing for 5-6 platforms would be a pain. Microsoft is betting on similar approach for Windows 8.
Win is at the next tide - not the one that Apple rode 5 years ago.
Native apps are much nicer and easier to code, regardless of the platform. And don't even get me started on the mess that is trying to use JS frameworks such as Jquery mobile to actually do something useful. Such as facebook or twitter integration.
Cross platform app development is a good ideal but none of the current platforms can do it in a way that isn't a horrendous pain.
Blackberry doesn't have a choice. They're in a tough spot. They need to "skip" a generation, if they have any hope of survival.
Things are moving toward web/html5 tech and that is the future. Not now, but in a few years. All of the direct-hardware-access stuff is being worked on right now.
Even now, you can build metro/Windows 8 apps using html5. There's Firefox OS. WebOS is barely alive, but still kicking.
And, of course, there's the simple argument that the most important and popular app on both iOS and Android is the web browser.
People care about the user experience, the ecosystem (read: apps, for now), integration, trust, and the "wow" factor.
Spitting in the wind, though, I suppose.
Looking at it from the perspective of "so what if the browser is standards compliant, users don't care about benchmarks" is a bit short sighted since it's not just about the browser, it's about the foundation of the phone's ecosystem.
I don't think having the best web browser is going to do much beyond making life a little easier for early adpoters.
I still believe in the power of the open web over closed ecosystems, despite the billions Apple makes from their App Store. I'm hopeful that the open web will win on the phone, just as it has begun to win on the desktop. And in that world, it won't matter what OS you run, as long as your phone has a competent browser. Sounds like BB10 will have a very competent browser.
That's not to say I believe RIM can pull out of this nosedive, but at least they're making moves in the right directions, for the first time in years (I think; I haven't seen anything else from them that makes me think they understand the new reality of the mobile landscape).
It's over for them.
As for the consumer market, who doesn't love seeing new ways to do things? Andriod and Iphone are old and boring now, and Windows Phone 8 is not my cup of tea. (Oh, just remembered firefox OS. Is that a thing still?)
Why? Blackberry's grip on the corporate market was destroyed by execs coming to work with their iPhones and demanding that IT depts connect them to the corporate infrastructure.
Remember, IT works for the business - not the other way around.
In particular, Yahoo!'s IT organization kept Blackberry's as the Mobile Platform of choice, for a company whose major future growth is going to come from Mobile Consumer usage - far longer than it ever should have.
Eventually, though, somebody gets around to knocking heads, and IT typically falls in line...
But it's all hot air, or more precisely, vaporware. It's not even on the market. And with RIM's track record, I'm not holding out for hope.
* By proxy of Techvibes, which appears to be one of those tech "journalism" outfits that writes articles per what their hiring vendors tell them to.
As mentioned in the video one of the neatest aspects of the browser is the fact that the chrome itself is written in HTML/JS. So the animations, transitions etc are all done by WebKit. The BlackBerry browser includes support for remote inspecting which meant not only could we host the chrome on our desktop while developing, but we could debug it from a WebKit browser on our desktop, all while it was running on the device. When you make a web application for BlackBerry10 it will be on top of the WebWorks platform which sits on top of the same HTML Runtime that the browser is using which aligned rim's interests to make sure that web applications work well.
For the curious a much more in depth look at the browser and how it was made was shown at this BlackBerryJam session: http://hosting.desire2learncapture.com/RIM/1/watch/50.aspx
Disclaimer: I am part of the WebKit team at RIM.
Disclaimer: I am part of the WebKit team at RIM these opinions are my own
Why, as an end user, would I ever care about this? All this says to me is that the part of the browser which should be fast and get out of the way is written in an abstraction layer with significant overhead (compared to the alternative, native code), which - to me - means using more RAM and CPU, increasing the cost or decreasing the performance of the device.
As a tech demo, I think it's a neat idea. But as a "one of the neatest aspects" of a commercial product, I'm not inclined to be interested in the rest of the app.
As for overhead the browser team has always concerned itself with keeping its footprint down both in memory and cpu and by using JS+HTML our total overhead was actually reduced compared to running another framework along side WebKit just for the Chrome. Checkout the above second video for more in depth presentation on this.
Disclaimer: I am part of the WebKit team at RIM these opinions are my own
They had a nice web browser in their Playbooks, but it was impossible to use if you wanted to provide an "app" to wrap your spiffy "HTML5" website.
I assume you meant that sarcastically, as in "look how BlackBerry are killing off developer interest in their own platform"? Regardless of sarcasm or not, this is the best play RIM has - to use an existing platform and not rely on people developing specifically for them. That's the only hope for the underdog platforms (i.e., everyone except for Android and iOS).
[1] That's not fair, it's a JIT thing but then again you can have full other engines on Android if you like (see: Chrome for Android).
I really hope their work lasts much longer than RIM.
...it seems that they are running through the woods without a map (AGAIN!) right now, and it really doesn't matter how fast they can run or climb trees if they don't know where they're going
[EDIT: added what's next] my 2 cents for RIM: throw some money at Xamarin (http://xamarin.com) to make BB a target for their app development platform... putting your eggs in the multiplatform basket would seem like the only sensible decision now that your basket is hosed / on fire, and enterprise devs that would be more inclined to target BB will probably prefer C#...