[Sugar-devel] Firefox and html activities

[Daniel Narvaez]

Duh, s/aurora/gaia. I keep mixing those up.

On 6 February 2013 11:47, Daniel Narvaez <dwnarvaez at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I just realized that the current Firefox OS architecture looks perfect
> for our purpouses. It's pretty well documented here
>
> https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/Architecture
>
> In short
>
> * gonk. The base OS. Kernel, network management...
> * b2g. Analogous to a web browser, A single window which can run
> multiple webapps, each in it's own process.
> * aurora. The UX, as a collection of webapps. There is also an
> extension used only for debugging, but it proves that extensions works
> there which is important for us.
>
> I can think of two main ways we could base our webapps on this. One
> blue sky the other more realistic and useful in the short time.
>
> # Common
>
> We don't need gonk. Our base system is just a normal Linux
> distribution, with a few sugar specific services, datastore and
> collaboration comes to mind.
>
> We use b2g as provided by upstream. If we need to make changes they
> have to be submitted to mozilla. This ensures we don't have to fork
> anything with the associated maintenance costs. Note that b2g already
> runs on a desktop just fine.
>
> We load an extension which interacts with our own system services.
>
> # Blue sky
>
> We replace aurora completely with out own set of web apps,
> specifically written for sugar, using the sugar-html js (graphics,
> datastore, collaboration...). The shell UI components (home, frame...)
> are also part of a webapp, as is window management.  Native apps are
> not supported.
>
> # Realistic
>
> We run b2g inside sugar. The shell talks with the extension to get a
> list of installed and running web activities to display in the home,
> to launch them, to switch to them as required. It brings up the b2g
> window when activating one of the webapps and so on.
> Most of sugar is still made of native apps, but it's possible to start
> writing web activities.
>
> # From realistic to blue sky
>
> There are possible variations in middle.
>
> * Native activities might be wrapped into webapps using GDK Broadway
>
> http://developer.gnome.org/gtk3/3.3/gtk-broadway.html
>
> This would allow to get rid of the native sugar shell without
> completely preventing native activities (of course non-gtk activities
> would not work). It could be an intermediate step or could be the
> final target if we decide providing some kind of native activities
> support is important.
>
> * Web applications which are not designed for sugar could be part of
> our set of core activities.
>
> * Parts of the shell could start to be ported to webapps gradually.
>
>
> I'm pretty excited about this, I don't see particular roadblocks. I
> have not investigated very deeply yet though, I might find them (or
> you might!), let's see :)
> It's nice because in principle it doesn't require any heavy or non
> upstreamable mozilla patching. It gives us access to all the stuff
> mozilla is developing for webapps. And it allows a smooth transition
> from the current architecture.



-- 
Daniel Narvaez