A new project tentatively named Boot To Gecko has been announced by Mozilla which is aimed at developing a platform which focuses on web technology based standards. The early emphasis will be laid on the development of a software environment meant for handheld devices like smartphones. The mobile landscape is currently largely fragmented owing to the lack of inter-compatibility between platforms which are popular with device makers.
However, according to Mozilla, B2G (the platform’s acronym) has been created specifically to demonstrate the potential of the standards-based open Web to provide a credible and competitive alternative to the existing prevalent system of application development stacks meant for single vendors which the dominant mobile OS companies currently offer. The project currently lies at its earliest planning stages. It appears that Mozilla has created an outline of its intended path with the project; however many decisions about where it needs to start and the technologies which should be incorporated need to be finalized. The project was declared by Mozilla even as the course to be taken remains unclear in order to have contributors participate in the process of planning.
Mozilla has also planned to publish the platform’s source code at its current development level rather than having to wait until a mature product can be released. If the company sticks to these strategies, the development process of this platform can be much more open and all inclusive than the path taken by Google in development of its Android OS. Mozilla has tentatively planned to use a small layer of the code that exists in the form of the lower level Android operating system for the purposes of hardware enablement.
It will then proceed to create a totally new and custom UI and application development stack around the Gecko project which is based on the rendering engine of Firefox HTML. It chose Android because the platform theoretically provides compatibility with the existing hardware on devices; however it has said that it will use the least possible part of the Google operating system.
The B2G project has a basic goal to discover and mend the areas where the current standards of the Web are deemed insufficient for the creation of modern application for mobiles. Rather than a haphazard grafting of markup from vendors into the runtime of the application, Mozilla will look to come up with new standards for addressing the emerging challenges of application development.
