In a press release, HP has announced its latest webOS component release for the month in the Isis web browser which is shipped with the operating system as well as the ancillary components in Qt WebKit and the Netscape Plug-in API for third-party plugin support, such as Adobe’s now deprecated Mobile Flash plugin.
The crux of the new announcement centers on the governance model for the Open webOS project going forward, with select project members being assigned specific parts of the project in order to best manage the project going forward and to avoid the organizational chaos common to such large scale open source projects.
The webOS browser known as Isis features full support for HTML 5 and CSS3 standards and is meant to be paired with both the Netscape plugin API along with the webOS System Manager which is based on WebKit and the interrelated QtWebKit implementation used in Isis to support Enyo.
With the above additions to the Open webOS project, the project is moving along on schedule, though the System Manager will be open-sourced later this year, while the Isis browser and QtWebKit are available now for the developer community to experiment with along with the release of both the JavaScript core and Enyo user interface widgets ahead of next month’s component releases.
The current state of the project also suggests that HP is putting the infrastructure in place for Open webOS to function as a semi-autonomous project with HP providing support where necessary, but otherwise allowing for the community at large to contribute the majority of the development work, with the goal of expanding the finished product across different devices and platforms.
With the addition of Isis as an open source web browser, QtWebKit as the framework and the Netscape plugin API for additional functionality, the web browsing capabilities for webOS are set to improve greatly over previous implementations found in previous versions of the operating system that were shipped on dedicated hardware. More information on today’s announcement will be available in the coming days as well as tutorials and more information for developers.
