![]() As you'll see in the video, Mozilla has finally axed the custom Firefox UI in favor of native Android widgets to make the browser more responsive - but whether JavaScript will ever be executed at native-like speeds is still unknown. Of course, WebAPI is meaningless without a browser, rendering engine, and JavaScript engine that are comparable to natively-executed code. It's important to note that the WebAPI spec (Opens in a new window) includes a contacts/address book API, too, which plays perfectly into Mozilla's plans to keep your sensitive data on your local device, rather than in the cloud. The end goal - and WebAPI is far from complete - is to have a full set of APIs that HTML5 web apps can leverage to create seamless, native-like experiences on Android devices - or Boot 2 Gecko devices, when or if that eventually ships (it's a year or two away, I expect). You can imagine HTML5 web apps that communicate via SMS when 3G or WiFi aren't available, or perhaps Google could detect when you're running low on battery and point you towards the nearest charging point. ![]() ![]() It's still an exciting hint of the things to come, though. If you watch our hands-on video below, the camera API is a bit iffy, and the vibration API didn't work - but that's probably because ICS on the Nexus S isn't supported yet. As of the latest Nightly, Firefox 11 for Android can now read the battery state, capture images from the camera, send SMSes, and trigger the vibrator motor. Dubbed "WebAPI," these recent additions allow Firefox to access an Android device's hardware through a JavaScript API. The first fruits of Mozilla's attempt to make a Chrome OS-like Firefox operating system - Boot 2 Gecko - are now beginning to take shape in the Nightly builds of Firefox for Android.
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