The way we spend our time online is changing fast. While the browser still reigns supreme, more and more people are getting their online fix using apps. Mozilla, the folks behind the popular Firefox browser, has now announced the start of a new project to develop an app-centric, completely open, web-based phone and tablet operating system called Boot to Gecko (B2G).
There are, of course, a good many tried and tested mobile operating systems already out there already but useful apps created for one operating environment are not going to work on another. As a developer, if you want your killer app on an iPhone and a Samsung Galaxy S then you'll need to effectively create your innovation twice, or more, using different SDK's.
Rather than confine application development to vendor-specific operating environments like iOS, Android, WP7, webOS, the much-maligned Symbian and so on, the B2G project is looking to develop a complete, standalone operating system that will give developers the tools they need to create locally-cached apps at least as capable as native device applications but that will work across mobile platforms.
