[HN Gopher] Show HN: I restored Palm's webOS App Catalog, SDK an...
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Show HN: I restored Palm's webOS App Catalog, SDK and online help
system
My pandemic project was to find, restore and organize scattered and
archived remnants of Palm/HP's mobile webOS platform to help keep
these delightful little devices alive.
Author : codepoet80
Score : 374 points
Date : 2022-06-03 12:28 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.webosarchive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.webosarchive.com)
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| Thanks for putting this together. webOS was way ahead of its
| time, and I really liked the HP Veer at the time.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| I still use a Veer daily!
| i80and wrote:
| The Veer was such an amazing device. I have no idea how HP got
| that keyboard to work so well! It absolutely sucks that we
| can't have something like the Veer today :(
| BLO716 wrote:
| Had to update wikipedia.org :)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Wow, thank you.
| BLO716 wrote:
| Modesty and all. :) Just picked up my webOS tablet from HP ..
| off we go for a long weekend of fun, my friend. THANK YOU ..
| for the rehashed fun.
| atkailash wrote:
| classichasclass wrote:
| Got a Pre 2 and a Veer here. Sounds like this will make a fun
| weekend.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Yay! The community is still around -- drop us a line if you
| need any help! Link is on the website.
| classichasclass wrote:
| I'm already reading your Classic tips. I loved the PalmOS and
| have a lot of old school devices. Wish we could do something
| about the 7-day timer, but at least it will run on webOS 2!
|
| I should finish that Gopher client I was writing ...
| codepoet80 wrote:
| There's a file you can delete every 7 days to re-arm the
| timer.
| classichasclass wrote:
| No, I got that. It's just kind of a pain is all.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Agreed. Since its Linux under the hood, I was thinking a
| little cron job could fix that. Just haven't got around
| to trying
| xd1936 wrote:
| I wish I could upvote this twice. Long live webOS.
| freshrap6 wrote:
| This is great!! Last week I took out my old Pre 2 and Pixi to
| show my kids. It brought up great memories. I can't wait to spend
| the weekend going through this.
|
| How did you find everything and put it together?
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Lots of time and scraping, and lots and lots of community
| contributions!
| user3939382 wrote:
| I never hear people mention the Palm Treo. Apple gets all the
| credit for inventing smartphones with the iPhone 1st gen, but the
| Treo preceded it by years. Is it not the first smartphone?
|
| One of my first startups was based on Treos, they were awesome
| devices. Very snappy.
| MBCook wrote:
| In many ways the iPhone was the first _modern_ smartphone.
|
| You can pretty easily draw a line and see stuff designed before
| the iPhone largely looked like the Treo or the Blackberry.
| Things designed after largely looked like the iPhone.
|
| The Treo was more of a Palm Pilot with a cell phone built in,
| or the same but Windows Mobile PDA. The Blackberry was a two-
| way pager expanded into a cell phone.
|
| The iPhone was sort of designed from the ground up to be a
| smart phone (the Sidekick may fit this too).
|
| The Treo was nice (never got to have one) but it's kind of a
| different generation. The iPhone generation (along with
| Android) is when smartphones exploded in popularity.
| bombcar wrote:
| There were _tons_ of "smartphones" before Apple - Blackberries
| were very common and famous - Apple, if anything, took the lead
| in designing a workable "touchscreen only" interface.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| I'd argue that Apple's big "innovation" was the capacitive
| touch screen, that made the UI so much more fluid and
| responsive. Palm almost shipped a webOS device with a
| resistive touch screen, but pivoted away after Rubenstein
| took the reigns. The Treo was a great device for its time,
| but suddenly felt old fashioned after the iPhone came out --
| even though iOS was significantly less capable in its initial
| implementation (modal notifications, no copy/paste, no apps,
| etc...)
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah the touchscreen was the first that "worked" like you
| expected it to - before the best screens were the ones with
| styluses which could work well, but was a piece to
| lose/harder to use at a glance.
| hamburglar wrote:
| They also had the first browser that wasn't severely
| crippled by compromises based on d-pad and extremely
| inaccurate touch input. Before iphone, the mobile web was
| a sad joke.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| Opera Mobile (not Mini) for Symbian S60 with its d-pad
| bag of tricks was surprisingly usable with desktop
| websites, just crippled by a very low-res screen. Too bad
| it seems to have fallen off the face of the Earth even
| before Presto was abandoned.
| hamburglar wrote:
| I had some amazingly expensive Nokia 900 series phone
| that had WebKit on it for testing something for work (no
| way I was going to carry that monstrosity) and I remember
| it being impressive that it could actually faithfully
| render real pages. Still had garbage d-pad interaction.
| bombcar wrote:
| I remember that - a huge advantage of the original Safari
| is it would show _desktop_ versions of many websites;
| back then mobile sites were absolute trash. And it was
| usable because you could pinch + zoom.
| autoconfig wrote:
| The capacitive touch screen was necessary but alone
| wouldn't have meant much without the revolutionizing
| software stack. You may think "revolutionizing" seems
| hyperbolic here but a lot of people forget or don't realize
| how truly far behind the competition was.
|
| Software keyboards were considered a complete no-go, even
| by folks within Apple (Ken Kocienda's "Creative Selection"
| is a great read on the development of the keyboard).
| Dragging / flinging / pinch to zoom didn't exist anywhere
| else or if it did, only in prototype or proof-of-concept
| form. The capacitive screen unlocked these features but no
| one else knew how to build them.
|
| I was working at Sony Ericsson when the first iPhone was
| released. I distinctly remember holding it in my hand and
| using mobile Safari for the first time and thinking...
| "we're fucked". The company simply didn't have the
| engineering chops needed to catch up. Later on Android
| would provide a possible solution but we managed to screw
| things up even with a full OS handed to us.
| robin_reala wrote:
| LG Prada had a big capacitive screen pre-iPhone.[1] What
| Apple did well was bring everything together.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Yeah, the touchscreen was the biggest innovation. But the
| mobile web experience was also head-and-shoulders above
| anything that came before it, and it was also able to
| leverage the success it had with iPod and iTunes to make
| things smoother on the software/syncing side.
| meremortals wrote:
| long live webOS!!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Wow what a throwback, amazing work. Those WebOS times were really
| a unique little slice of history sort of nestled after blackberry
| was cemented and the dawn of iPhone era and social media but
| before those had really really taken off. The influence of WebOS
| via concepts maybe ahead of its time, and moreso the people who
| worked on it that went out into industry in many areas, was
| large.
| pcdoodle wrote:
| I was still on the palm centro when this was released so I never
| got any hands on with WebOS. I do miss the software and hardware
| design language used by the palm team. What was under the hood?
| Linux?
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Yes, a real Linux with a web-based UI on top. They added a PDK
| for running Linux apps later, and it still works. I (fairly)
| recently compiled SCUMMVM for webOS, and it "just works"
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Very Cool!
| qball wrote:
| It was Linux to the point where you could run a full X11 server
| (and LXDE desktop) as an app: it was what Windows 8 could have
| been, if it was done right.
| StillBored wrote:
| I sure would like to know where this came from.
|
| Because I'm fairly certain it has to be some internal database,
| or someone scraped it and there were fields HP was providing in
| the API that weren't visible publicly.
|
| Which means there its possible that the actual author's emails
| shared with HP during app submission are in there too. In which
| case, it would be nice if someone made an attempt to contact the
| authors and get their permission.
|
| In my case I would give it, and maybe provide a few things that
| appear to be missing. Along with maybe cleaning up the code a bit
| and posting it on github/etc. My touchpad did the whole battery
| to rundown refuse to boot when plugged in thing a few years ago,
| and its been on my list of things to recover, but.. sigh.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Fair questions! Long before my time, but just before the
| shutdown, the community scraped the catalog metadata -- its
| been available in a well-known IPK since at least 2012. Because
| of how apps were built for webOS, and the amazing community
| around it, lots of sources are on GitHub or SourceForge. Many
| of the IPKs similarly came from community archives. Most of the
| media and SDK material came from the Wayback Machine, although
| some is still available on HP's servers. In the end, I drew
| from multiple sources, then had to write tools to compile it
| all together into a usable fashion.
|
| I did reach out to some of the big name publishers, but was
| generally ignored. Because the content is for archival
| purposes, and there are some provisions for this in US
| copyright law, I decided to take the approach of removing
| content upon request, rather than trying to get affirmative
| responses from people who are either unreachable, or
| uninterested. To date, I've had one (very polite) take-down
| request, which I responded to immediately, and removed their
| content entirely from the archive. Today's post blew up a
| little more than I expected, so I may get more -- I'll respond
| to each appropriately.
|
| Everything I've published is on GitHub or archive.org, and
| while I don't have as much spare time for it now, I'll do my
| best to keep it curated and within fair use. If you'd like to
| add some of your content to the archive (or have some of your
| content removed) I've posted my email a couple of times in this
| thread, or you can find it on the website.
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| This is amazing, thank you.
|
| Seems like several others, my actual development career began on
| WebOS. In high school, I was intrigued by the idea of a web-
| based, multitasking capable smartphone and begged my parents to
| buy me one.
|
| Ultimately I learned a ton and have great stories such as staying
| up all night re-architecting Weatherman
| (https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?&a...)
| because of the popularity (and this was before it was on the
| WebOS store, at this time it was invite-only so I had to post it
| on a forum!). Weatherman was just a hack on top of a hack on top
| of a hack. There was no Canvas API on the device so I had to
| generate the weather images on a server and then send them to the
| device, for example.
|
| The highlight for me was winning one of the top spots in the Palm
| Hot Apps competition for the "free apps" category with Pixi Dust
| (https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?ca...)
| . The physics weren't accurate by any means, but it was the first
| time I had seriously used C++ (I think it was, it was so long
| ago!).
|
| I miss having platforms like these with innovative ideas and
| small communities. I learned so much by having to hack my way
| around the limitations of the operating system, and really miss
| WebOS overall. I think I might still have an old Palm Pre sitting
| a drawer somewhere.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| Hey! I ran the Hot Apps competition when I was the lead
| developer advocate. I remember Pixi Dust. I was amazed you
| could get it so fast.
|
| Fun story: there was no internal API for app stats so every
| morning I had to manually extract data via Excel, then run
| scripts to generate the JSON that powered the Hot Apps
| dashboard. Fun times.
| shaneos wrote:
| I remember you well!! I think my app Mazer came in second in
| the free category. Such happy, simpler times
|
| https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?se.
| ..
| zoover2020 wrote:
| And now kiss! Classic HN :)
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| The webOS dev community was amazing. I have such happy
| memories of that time. It made me happy that I got into
| this field. You all rock!
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| That's so cool! Of course with so many prizes on the line, I
| spent quite a bit of time (when I was visiting my
| grandparents in California none the less) over a weekend
| hacking together all of the ideas I could think of. It was a
| really great experience overall, and I'm glad you still
| remember Pixi Dust :)
| codepoet80 wrote:
| If you've still got your back-end code, it'd be fun to restore
| your app -- I could help host it!
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| I do have a zip archive of (I think all) my source code.
| Maybe I'll try and post it on Github this weekend and send
| you a link!
|
| Edit: Yep, I just checked and have both the app client and
| backend code. I will post everything I can this weekend and
| ping you via email if I can find it in your profiles or I see
| you have your Discord alias.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| If you can't get me there, I have an email alias:
| curator@<the website posted in this story>
| zymhan wrote:
| I'd love to dig out my Pixi to give this a try
| jianshen wrote:
| I see an old Sudoku game I wrote in here and it brings back some
| great memories but now I'm also scared to look at my old code
| now. O_O
|
| Curious how did you back all this up?
| codepoet80 wrote:
| I think this mostly answers your question:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31611208
|
| The other part is the community. People who had backed up their
| libraries. Devices found on eBay that still had a bunch of apps
| on them. People who had hoarded IPKs and had them saved on hard
| drives and were willing to share. That and lots of scraping
| Google by filename...
| Linda703 wrote:
| qiller wrote:
| This is awesome, found all of my apps. Ah the nostalgia. Mojo and
| Enyo were great platforms for their time
| codezero wrote:
| I don't see my old app in there but it was for a now defunct
| social network so not too surprising. Great work putting this all
| together. I still boot up my Palm Pre for some nostalgia kicks
| from time to time.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| If you still have the IPK (or source code) I'd love to add to
| the Museum! I'll message you over on Twitter.
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| Thank you for doing this. Is it possible to use the dev tools to
| setup a phone that's been reset? My original Pre is stuck waiting
| for auth from an HP server that no longer exists.
|
| Who are you, BTW? Were you on the webOS engineering team? I was
| in devrel.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Yes, everything you need to setup your phone is here:
| http://www.webosarchive.com/docs/activate/
|
| I actually didn't work on webOS, but for a competing mobile
| platform, but was always a huge fan of webOS, and ended up
| licensing its printing subsystem from HP for our platform
| (after HP gave up!)
|
| I love connecting with its original community, and I think I
| found you on Twitter. Drop me a line if you'd like to swap war
| stories!
| alexk307 wrote:
| I loved my Palm Pre, still have it lying around, and it still
| powers up just fine. A lot of the features that were innovative
| and new at the time were quickly co-opted into Android and iOS
| platforms.
| haubey wrote:
| Wow! The Pre was the reason I got into development, because I
| wanted to be able to run through flashcards on the bus to school.
| So I built Study Buddy[1]. The joke is by the time I figured out
| how to really build it, I had a car so it wasn't quite as
| personally useful as it could have been. It was a small community
| but there was a decent amount of teenage developers, maybe 8 or
| so of us, and I think 10 years later we're all still in the
| engineering space, basically because of webOS.
|
| [1]:
| https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?ca...
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Well you did good -- Study Buddy still works, all these years
| later!
| oogabooga13 wrote:
| It's crazy to me that WebOS is still the future all these years
| later. Love ios but it still doesn't come close to webos in
| actual functionality. Who could forget notifications? Still the
| best way I have seen them handled in a mobile UI to date.
| notjustanymike wrote:
| Holy moly, this has the Newsweek RSS app I built a long time ago.
| It was the first time I had access to localStorage and other
| HTML5 features. PalmOS was really revolutionary at release, such
| a shame it didn't succeed.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Yay! I'm so glad I was able to preserve it -- and nice job on
| the app ;-)
| lostgame wrote:
| WebOS is still; to this day, my favourite mobile OS. When it was
| open sourced - I'd actually hoped it could be a serious open
| source competitor in the field. Quite a sad disappointment.
| hajile wrote:
| Now if we could just get LG to introduce a new WebOS phone. Add
| android support and native Qt in addition to web apps while
| switching to the proposed Mochi style would make for a very nice
| device.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| I'd buy that in a heartbeat!
| pcdoodle wrote:
| Same!
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| 99k users to go
| Morieris wrote:
| oh snap! I made this one
| https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?ca...
|
| It's nice to see it again. I always thought webOS and the palm
| pre were pretty rad, I really thought it catch on.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| nice job!
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Hi there! I'm working on a platform/framework for making retro-
| compatible websites, and was wondering if you'd have a few
| minutes to test it with webOS?
|
| I've already tested with older BlackBerry, IE3, and as far back
| as Netscape 2.x, but I don't have a webOS device.
|
| Is it possible you could spend just a few minutes on it and send
| me some feedback? Ideally, you should be able to register in one
| click (no email), write a post, and vote and reply to your own
| post.
|
| The URL is in my profile...
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Edit: tried it out. When I posted, I got a message that said
| "No Cookie" It wasn't obvious what to do next... I tried
| registering and a message posted, but seemed to disappear.
| Anyway, I appreciate the effort -- the more retro-friendly web
| platforms, the better!
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| Those two issues are resolved for now.
|
| The first one is due to a feature designed to reduce the
| impact of crawler bots, which I'm still testing, so it's off
| for now.
|
| The second is due to a caching issue, so I've reduced the
| window for that until cache-invalidation is solved :D
|
| I did see the message you posted, which says:
|
| >checking in from a webOS Touchpad!
|
| I was also able to recover the message you first sent,
| reading:
|
| >Quickly checking in from a webOS Touchpad. Looks good from
| here!
|
| Thank you again for testing!
| Milner08 wrote:
| The Palm Pre was always a phone I lusted after but never got to
| actually use. Is there a good emulator or way to experience what
| WebOS used to be like?
| codepoet80 wrote:
| It takes a little work, but the restored SDK has info on
| getting the official emulator up and running on VirtualBox
| (you'll need an older version to create the VM, which is
| linked)
| shaneos wrote:
| This makes me so, so happy! I put so much work into WebOS apps,
| and your site lists five of them. Sadly it's missing a few, like
| "My WebOS Apps", the developer dashboard app I wrote for WebOS
| app developers that let developers see their download stats on
| the phone, get notifications of when their app was accepted or
| rejected and more -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U4bVq_VIhs&list=PL792FA4594...
|
| I'm getting so nostalgic, even tearing up a little :-)
|
| Flickr Mundo -
| https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?se...
|
| Mazer -
| https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?se...
|
| Irish Rain -
| https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?&a...
| codepoet80 wrote:
| If you have the source or IPK anywhere for your missing apps,
| I'd love to add to the archive! Drop me a line at
| curator@<website listed in article>
| nkotov wrote:
| I think the Palm Pre was one of the prettiest designs and I
| really liked how webOS looked back then. It's a shame that it
| died in the mobile space.
| larrywright wrote:
| My LG television runs WebOS and it's easily the best of the
| television OSes.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| The newer versions apparently got very heavily ad-laden, but
| I agree - my webOS 4 TV is great!
| bni wrote:
| I still have my webOS Palm Pre, this was the last version that
| was round like a stone pebble. It still starts up. It is a very
| nice design that is satisfying to hold.
|
| Version after the switched to a more flat with a little larger
| screen. Not as nice but I guess they had to compete with Android.
|
| I made an app and its satisfying to see it in the Museum catalog.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| Oh that's awesome. Need to see if I can find my old Palm.
| soganess wrote:
| I wrote one of those apps (I'm not going to say which one for
| anon reasons)! It was the first (and last) JS app I ever wrote.
| Its been over a decade, but I remember liking the SDK.
|
| Thanks for bringing this back to life, memory lane and all. I
| miss my Pre and Touchpad. That mirror on the back of the Pre was
| such a delightful little touch.
|
| I also love the idea that a screenshot I took on my computer
| years ago is still kicking around on the internet.
|
| Anyway thanks again!
| pisspiss wrote:
| DeathArrow wrote:
| webOS still lives on LG's TV sets, fridges and smart watches.
| wincy wrote:
| Wow I was about to ask if they licensed the name similar to how
| Apple licenses the iOS/IOS name from Cisco. That's an
| interesting bit of trivia that LG is actually using the same OS
| as Palm!
| protomyth wrote:
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/webos-lives-lg-to-
| resurrect...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5278015
| codepoet80 wrote:
| There are still many remnants of Palm in LG's TV OS -- but like
| many smart TVs, they're getting cluttered with ads. There's an
| open source re-implementation of mobile webOS using LG bits
| called LuneOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuneOS
| pjmlp wrote:
| So much better than Android TV crap.
| yuhong wrote:
| codyogden wrote:
| Incredible! I'm a big fan this type of archival work. Great job!
| mt3ck wrote:
| Wow.. you've done a lot thanks for resurrecting this!
|
| Like many of the others, WebOS kicked off my career into software
| development and was my first endeavor building software larger
| then a simple website.
|
| I created GetMeVino as a simple wine resource for myself as there
| were similar apps on IOS and I wanted one to use on WebOS. I
| remember posting it on precentral forums and actually got
| interest from Palm themselves to build it out further and release
| it on their catalog. I was blown away, inspired by the
| possibilities and that really lit a fire in me to want to
| continue creating even outside WebOS.
|
| Definitely wouldn't have been here today without WebOS.
|
| Some other highlights, the browser based IDE Ares way ahead of
| its time, WebOS at CES2010 and the Palm developer relations,
| getting invited to Mozilla for Firefox OS.
|
| I am going to need to find my old devices now!
| shitshitshit wrote:
| eddieroger wrote:
| There was a thread this week about calendars, and it made me miss
| the unified calendar that webOS gave us. I'm excited (and
| slightly paranoid) to see this now, and can't wait to play with
| it! I wonder if I still have my old Pre lying around anywhere,
| and if it still boots. I love my iPhone, but I sure loved that
| Pre when it was new.
|
| As a random second anecdote, I really miss the hacker community
| around it. I can't remember the name of the forum, but there was
| a super active thread the day we got root on the device, and it
| was unbelievably cool to see some Palm employees show up in it
| and pointing folks in the right direction. Such a fun device.
| avel wrote:
| FWIW you can have a unified calendar today with Google
| Calendar. Ever since the Sunrise Calendar app [1] was
| discontinued, I switched to a workflow where I have everything
| centralized in my personal Google Calendar. How it works:
| * I have a personal gmail account with my events and
| apointments. * Shared a URL from my work calendar (it
| helps that they use google workspace), and added that to my
| personal calendar. Especially useful if you don't want to add a
| work profile in your personal device. Personally the work
| calendar is all I need to check on my phone when I'm not on my
| work laptop. * Added the Facebook Events calendar URL.
| * Added the Songkick Events calendar URL for keeping track of
| concert dates. * You can also subcribe to anything else
| you need, e.g. TV shows feed, Garmin's calendar feed, Formula
| One or other sports' calendars, holidays calendar...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Calendar
| pimlottc wrote:
| I thought FB no longer let you share your personal events
| calendar? I know I used to have mine shared to Google
| Calendar a long time ago but haven't looked into it since it
| stopped working.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it made me miss the unified calendar that webOS gave us_
|
| What did it do that CalDAV doesn't permit?
| filmor wrote:
| webOS had something called "Synergy" which was essentially a
| set of databases/schemas/services to provide a unified view
| on things. I don't fully remember whether this was actually
| supported, but an app like Facebook could have "its" calendar
| events (birthdays, events, etc.) stored in one of these and
| they would seamlessly show up in the main calendar app,
| without additional setup or sync required. Same held for
| messaging (SMS, gtalk, Facebook, all in the one app) and
| probably a few other things.
| eddieroger wrote:
| It wasn't competing with CalDAV, so there is no answer to
| this question. What it did was present multiple sources, like
| CalDAV, in a single view.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I never saw webOS's calendar. I'm familiar with CalDAV. Was
| trying to understand what made it memorably fun to you.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Probably forums.webosnation.com -- its still there, although
| its slowed down a lot. The last of us diehard users are on
| Discord now: webosarchive.com/discord
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| It was originally called PreCentral :)
| zwaps wrote:
| Palm Pre was the best phone I ever owned
|
| edit: like, by a lot.
| shortformblog wrote:
| The HP TouchPad that I use as a digital clock was very happy to
| see this. The page loaded up right away!
| codepoet80 wrote:
| If you have Hue lights, you might want to check out my One
| Night Stand app for webOS, which lets you control them from
| your digital clock...
| http://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/app/OneNightStand
| shortformblog wrote:
| Awesome--will look into it!
| qiller wrote:
| I've built Flixi dashboard while back (https://appcatalog.webos
| archive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?ap...). My last TouchPad died
| some time ago, and then I couldn't get the SDK going on a new
| workstation but a few users were running that thing still even
| not that long ago!
| als0 wrote:
| Enyo was a very cool framework for WebOS and it had a web based
| IDE, which was crazy innovative at the time. Nothing like it. A
| shame it was gutted by HP.
| hyperdimension wrote:
| Thank you! This means a lot to me. I collect Palm and Pocket PC
| handhelds, and remember how it seemed every independent developer
| had their own website with fun little creations on them and how
| easy it was to get software.
|
| It's just not as much fun to use the devices without it being
| loaded with all sorts of fun programs.
|
| I also recently scored a HP Laserjet 2200, which has an IrDA port
| on the front, which was a nice bonus for me in particular. I
| remember dreaming of being able to print from them and thinking
| how cool that would be. Funny how you only appreciate something
| when it's not possible.
|
| Edit: I just realized this isn't about _that_ Palm era, but yes,
| for the same reason I of course had to get a Palm Pre the second
| it came out. It was my first smartphone, and I remember it
| fondly.
| incidentist wrote:
| Nice to see this project on HN, and nice so many familiar webOS
| names on this board. I worked on Word Ace and the Card Ace games
| back in the day, and got back into playing around with my Pre and
| TouchPad a few years ago, thanks in part to codepoet80's work.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| Nice to see you here, incidentist. Your work on novacom for
| modern macOS has been invaluable!
| prmoustache wrote:
| As underpowered as it was I somehow miss my pixi. It was just so
| tiny and the keyboard was surprisingly practical. The convex
| shape of the keys made sure you wouldn't press 2 keys at the same
| time. I did much less typing errors than I do know.
| unwiredben wrote:
| I worked at Palm during the development of webOS, both before the
| Pre was launched, then again in developer relations and framework
| development after it came out. I'm very happy to see this archive
| of the great work the community created around these devices.
|
| If you want to archive my old Twitter feed,
| https://twitter.com/webostips, that might be useful for the help
| section. It really only ran in 2009-2010, as I got too busy after
| returning to Palm from my stint at Mozilla.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| I see Roku too, from your Profile. That means you've worked on
| three of my favorite platforms!
| molbioguy wrote:
| Great work and many thanks! I was just ranting recently about
| abandoned hardware and what a waste it is (gTar, Glass, Aibo,
| iPods, and more). I still have a couple of TPs (new!) in the
| basement that will benefit from this archive. I really liked
| WebOS - it seemed ahead of its time.
| vincentleeuwen wrote:
| Very cool!
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| Is it crazy that I still think webOS is the best mobile OS of all
| time? The pre and pixi were just... underpowered
| zeroego wrote:
| Not crazy in my opinion. So many of the things webOS did back
| in like 2008 the iPhone just recently implemented. It was way
| ahead of its time. I really wish it was still around.
| hajile wrote:
| We're getting close to 13 years since webOS launched and we
| still don't have anything that comes close to the UI
| functionality it offered.
| justusthane wrote:
| As someone who never used it, what made it better than
| today's mobile OSs?
| hajile wrote:
| It was revolutionary in how it was just the modern OSX UI
| on your phone.
|
| App menu was always on the upper-left side. Settings were
| on the upper-left. There was a dock at the bottom for most-
| used applications and an app drawer to hold the rest sorted
| into tabs.
|
| CMD+Space to search your system was "Just Type" from the
| "home screen". Their unified notification feed is something
| I haven't really seen iOS or Android even attempt.
|
| I once heard the iOS app paradigm was the equivalent of
| having a house with only doors facing to the outside. Going
| from your master bedroom to the master bath requires
| leaving the bedroom entirely, walking around the outside
| until you find the master bath and then going in.
|
| When you multitask on OSX, do you switch applications by
| minimizing your app and opening it again from a desktop
| icon or from the app drawer? Nope. You use expose/mission
| control to see what's open on your current screen. You can
| also swipe left/right to view other virtual desktops. Your
| running applications (rather than your desktop) is your
| default view.
|
| Same thing with webOS. Swipe up for expose where you'd see
| your current fanned out set of cards (one per app). Swiping
| left/right would show different sets of cards that you
| could create/rearrange based on whatever task. Just like
| OSX, those tabs would be LIVE rather than paused background
| stuff.
|
| The default view with webOS was also application-first
| rather than desktop first. iOS and Android encourage having
| EVERYTHING "open" even though anything past the last
| handful of apps will probably have to reload anyway. The
| result is that finding anything useful in that deck of
| cards is _very_ hard. webOS encouraged sorting that list
| and keeping it limited to what you were actually using.
|
| While all the differences may seem small, but together, the
| overall experience feels much different.
|
| HP's second (third?) CEO of the year killed the whole palm
| division when an investment and licensing webOS could have
| made HP/webOS into what Google/Android is today. They were
| finally coming out with decent hardware designs with bigger
| screens and without the dedicated keyboard.
|
| Their in-progress Mochi design would be around a decade old
| today, but when you look at it, it has an aesthetic that I
| think most people would find very refreshing today.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/5/5585216/team-behind-
| webos-...
| elzbardico wrote:
| HP is the quintessential example of death by Harvard
| Business School thinking.
| scrlk wrote:
| To think that HP was once a well respected company making
| quality products (test equipment, ICs, medical devices
| etc.) & known for good management ("HP Way").
|
| All flushed down the toilet in a span of ~10 years in the
| 00s, now known as a purveyor of subpar laptops and
| printers.
|
| A shame that the HP brand didn't stay with what turned in
| to Agilent and Keysight.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| A lot of what's in today's mobile OSes came from webOS.
| Cards for multi-tasking. The full-screen gestures
| introduced with the iPhone X basically came exactly from
| webOS. Samsung copied its Touch2Share years later. It even
| had some advanced sync features that no one has yet to
| properly copy. Now-a-days, Android and iOS kinda take turns
| copying each other and mobile webOS is mostly a relic --
| but it was from a time when phones didn't exist to suck up
| your data for advertisers, so it remains charming and
| delightful.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| A lot of the WebOS UI/UX DNA ended up in Android
| generally and in Material Design specifically because
| Matias Duarte went to Google as Palm imploded. He was a
| VP at Palm and is now VP of design at Google.
| dylan-m wrote:
| Or that was the _hope_ , but unfortunately a lot of what
| made WebOS good was the synergy between his team's
| excellent design thinking and the clean, practical, well
| designed platform underlying it. Android is a mess
| because it tried to reinvent the wheel _everywhere_ from
| day one, and then Google took over. Which means barely 15
| years later it carries multiple Windows ' worth of legacy
| garbage. They've done some lovely UI design, but they
| have been unsuccessful making that type of work anything
| more than skin deep.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Oh sure, I agree in general. Though I think I'd have a
| hard time going back to WebOS now. The memory is likely
| better than the reality.
| explorigin wrote:
| In design, they paid a lot of attention to making common
| actions available with your free thumb so you could
| navigate most apps with one hand. App-switching, context
| menus, device operations were all swipe operations.
|
| Having a hardware keyboard made it a bit chunky but didn't
| feel bad in your pocket because it was so smooth. Also the
| hardware keyboard provided a true tactile feel so you could
| even type out some messages without looking at your screen
| nearly as much as you need to with on-screen keyboards.
| rozap wrote:
| Man, I miss phones that were designed for human hands.
| Everything now is way too big to use one handed.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I really thought it would be the future... Just goes to show
| that the best doesn't always win.
| elteto wrote:
| I bought a pixi the moment it came out... the OS was incredible
| for the time. And it was so pretty. Unfortunately, the battery
| lasted less than half a day and it almost burn a hole in my
| pocket with how hot it constantly was. The hardware was
| absolute crap.
|
| I returned it after a few days.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| The Pixi was poorly spec'ed. The Pixi Plus was a winner (for
| the time)
| lhball wrote:
| To this day nobody does notifications as well as WebOS did.
|
| IMO the hard-headed refusal to make a touch keyboard even
| optionally available also contributed to their demise.
| unwiredben wrote:
| It was coming... the WindsorNot design was just a slab with
| no keyboard, IIRC. https://www.webosnation.com/windsornot-
| webos-slate-smartphon...
| hajile wrote:
| I picked up an HP Touchpad during the fire sale and
| remember being surprised by how good the keyboard was at
| the time compared to an ipad or android tablet --
| especially given how those had been on the market so much
| longer.
| qiller wrote:
| In the phone land at least, TouchPad was a nice tablet
| hajile wrote:
| That dual-core 1.2/1.5GHz Scorpio was blazing fast and the
| 128-bit NEON unit kept them going quite a bit longer than
| the competing A8 systems.
| brundolf wrote:
| Is there a webOS emulator out there for Android devices, to
| complete the circle?
| mempko wrote:
| It makes me so sad we got stuck with Android and iOS instead of
| the amazing WebOS. I will never forgive you HP and what you did
| to my love.
| codepoet80 wrote:
| There's an app for that!
| http://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/app/leodarts
| mempko wrote:
| OMG thank you! This made my day.
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