Palm WebOS 2.0: Now Here’s Multitasking [Palm]

WebOS 2.0 . It’s really happening, and it’s coming soon. Amidst the turmoil and the headlines and the doom-dropping, Palm’s been busy: WebOS 2.0 appears like it’ll be better than the original in basically every way.

Right now, Palm’s only talking in regards to the new developer features, but you certainly can start to get a sense of what the brand new user features are. It’s clear they’ve thought deeply about tips on how to extend the OS and make it more powerful, that is the focus of the recent developer tools and lines. So, here’s what’s new, in a nutshell.

• Stacks
Take Palm’s fantastic card metaphor-that can be the good multitasking UI on any phone-and bump it to a higher logical level. Stacks automatically sorts cards into groups, so it’s easier to control a dozen open apps. Working example, in case you click a link in an email, it’ll open the browser in a card in that same stack. And you’ll arrange and re-arrange cards into stacks however you would like. The online effect feels like it’ll be a good more elegant and usable method to multitask, if stacks is implemented right.

• Just Type
Palm’s renamed universal search, so now it’s called ” Just Type.” That’s dandy and all, but what’s really new is that developers can plug into it-so it could actually search within apps, locally or online (think looking for music in Spotify, that’s either cached locally or on the interwebs). And there’s something new called Quick Actions, which allows you to do things without even launching an app, like update your status on Twitter or Facebook; search through a fave website; or start writing an email or text. Plus, you would ” define your individual Quick Actions,” which Palm says permit you to do stuff like create shopping lists or set reminders. We’ll see how powerful the feature really is, but the prospective seems pretty fantastic.

• Developers can tap Synergy
Developers might be ready to connect with Synergy, Palm’s cloud-y service that stored your entire contacts and calendars and made the complete integrated social networking stuff work. What which means that they’ll be capable to tap your Synergy-stored contacts, calendars and messages, and in a while, be capable of use Synergy to connect with an app’s services, like an IM network or online contact list.

• Exhibition
Basically, apps might be in a position to display stuff on the phone when it’s connected to a Touchstone charger, like stocks or news or whatever, turning it into slightly widget machine, like a Chumby. Clever, and logical.

• HTML5, Javascript Services and PDK Plug-ins
All of these things is admittedly for developers, but whenever you wanna base line it, it means much more powerful apps.

The new PDK architecture means devs might be ready to use Palm’s PDK like a true plug-in , so apps can mix web technologies and C/C++, which’ll let an app be written with mostly lightweight web stuff but still run heavy duty graphics (also, Palm says, it’ll be easier for devs to port apps, like from iOS).

HTML5 support is a giant deal for WebOS, since most apps are written with web technologies. What Palm’s bringing to the table is enhanced Canvas support (including image data and gradients), web storage support (local and session storage) and geolocation support and application cache, so websites can cache stuff on the phone for offline use.

Finally, Node.js is built into webOS 2.0, so devs can develop services in JavaScript, which makes the net technologies side of webOS 2.0 stronger. As component of the most recent webOS 2.0 APIs, it adds more background processing and other capabilities, like low-level networking and filesystem access, so even sticking with web languages to develop a webOS app, developers could have more firepower at their fingertips.

Palm isn’t entering into the patron side of webOS 2.0 yet, but based on the developer stuff, which looks pretty good, it is usually interesting, to claim the least. It’s coming out by the top of the year for current devices-now Palm just needs a pair of ass-beating new phones to ship this on. [ Palm ]

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This post is tagged: Heres, multitasking, palm, WebOs