[Sugar-devel] Meeting about HTML activities

[Simon Schampijer]

On 04/17/2013 10:58 AM, Daniel Narvaez wrote:
> Hello,
>
> we are going to kick off the work on HTML activities for 0.100 with a
> meeting.
>
> Time: 22 April 2013 (14:00 UTC)
> Place: #sugar-meeting (freenode)
>
> It would be really useful to know how many people are interested to
> contribute, so please try to participate or, if you can't, let us know that
> you intend to work on it with us. While the discussion is pretty technical
> at the moment,. I expect everyone with a bit of html/javascript experience
> will be able to participate to development down the road.
>
> Here is a summary of the approaches that has been investigated so far
>
> * WebKitGtk based activities. The activity structure would remain pretty
> similar to the current one, with the HTML loaded in a WebView. We would
> provide HTML/javascript libraries to implement UI controls and interact
> with system services, like datastore and collaboration. It's not clear how
> communication with the native side of the activity will be implemented,
> there are a few alternatives that should be discussed further.
>
> * Chromium integration. We would integrate the web apps framework provided
> by the Chromium browser inside the Sugar shell, using a custom extension
> and special casing home icons and window management. The advantage of this
> approach is that it allows to make use of the Chromium web apps API,
> http://developer.chrome.com/trunk/apps/about_apps.html.
>
> * Firefox OS derivative. Basically we would take Firefox OS (which is based
> on Android but can run on Linux, OS X and Windows too) and replace Gaia,
> which is completely written in HTML/javascript and provides the user
> experience. The advantage is that we would able to run on the top of most
> popular OS system layers. The disadvantage is that all the activities and
> the shell would need to be rewritten in HTML for this to be possible.
>
> Other topics that should be discussed
>
> * How much integration with other OSes user experience do we require? For
> example on Android it might be possible to use only the system layers, or
> to run alongside Android native applications.
>
> So I suggest this agenda
>
> * Discuss the three approaches summarized above.
> * Decide which approach to take for 0.100.
> * Write up a TODO for the first milestone.
>
> Please let us know if you have any item to add!

I am interested in performance of the HTML5 native apps. There are 
quotes like [1] that states that HTML5 sucks for a system and the fact 
that Facebook switched to a native Android app instead of their HTML5 
one because of performance issues [2][3], I think those do not directly 
implicate that HTML5 in general is slow: it sounds merely to the facts 
of bad coding [4] or because on relying on connectivity for the app 
(turning a web site into an app).

The HTML5 activities we are talking about should be native activities, 
self contained, that do not rely on connectivity, or if de-couple the 
activity in a way that does not block the UI.

But we should compare the performance of the underlying backends and 
check which technologies can be used for the tasks at hand, e.g. a 
drawing activity like Paint [5], do we need acceleration to get good 
results for drawing curves for example.

Regards,
    Simon

[1]http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/01/firefox-os-is-repeating-the-mistakes-of-others/ 


[2] 
http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/23/facebook-updates-ios-app-says-its-now-twice-as-fast/

[3] 
http://www.engadget.com/2012/09/11/zuckerberg-html-5-facebook-mobile-app-mistake/

[4] http://www.sencha.com/blog/the-making-of-fastbook-an-html5-love-story

[5] Sketchpad: http://mudcu.be/sketchpad/
     Muro: http://sta.sh/muro/ 
http://heidi.deviantart.com/journal/deviantART-Muro-It-s-Time-to-Draw-214232006
     drawing curves: 
http://www.sitepoint.com/html5-canvas-draw-bezier-curves/