近来，惠普因其WebOS系统频频出现在各大新闻中。尽管我们是否处于后PC时代仍有争议，但手机应用发展确实仍处在初级阶段，这一点毫无疑问。

身为互动广告公司，我们曾纵观手机平台的发展，比如首次体验Windows Phone，提高iOS平台技术，探索各版本Android系统和设备，在与其他技术的对比中评估黑莓Playbook。撇开平台偏好不谈，如果你不喜欢创新和改变，那就无需涉足手机平台。自惠普开始公开谈论WebOS起，我们就予以关注。此前我们都是Palm的粉丝，然而数年来他们极难获得商业上的成功。作为技术人员，你应该转向正在逐渐露出真面目的新系统。

我不想在本文中预测webOS的成功与否，只是强调某些其他平台可学习的地方。

1、让跨平台应用开发成为可能

设计iOS应用需要Mac系统电脑，设计Windows Phone应用需要Windows系统电脑，设计Blackberry Playbook应用可以选择两种系统。那么，让应用设计与操作系统脱离关联便是接触开发群体的最佳方法。WebOS应用开发只需要你的IDE（游戏邦注：或惠普的Ares开发环境。）和基于WebKit的浏览器。

惠普 pre3

2、让应用开发更容易

无需Java、Objective-C、Silverlight、XNA和Adobe AIR等等，WebOS只需要你知道HTML/JS/CSS便可，其他由Enyo JavaScript框架帮你完成。就个人而言，我喜欢将手机应用开发拓宽到最广泛使用的Web开发技术的战略计划。你仍然可以选择继续深入发掘，构建传统的互动体验。然而，创造这些体验以及在应用使用期内在各种操作系统版本和设备上的维护所耗费的成本仍不得而知。

3、Web应用硬件加速

WebOS应用是基于Web技术的应用程序，可以利用硬件加速。其他平台提供的是原始操作系统、Web浏览器和二者混搭的应用。利用硬件加速的手机浏览器肯定会越来越常见，但原始系统下的Web体验并非如此。惠普为避免各平台间不一致，因而在使用硬件加速应用框架的同时支持CSS3加速转化等标准。

4、使用内置聚合器处理云基础内容

业界正努力让手机调用人们储存在各种云基础储藏处的图片、音乐和文件，惠普继续对此加以发展深入。这是件好事，因为上述目标的实现还需要很长时间的努力。

惠普TouchPad

5、可调整的界面

为iPhone开发的应用在iPad上表现不佳。这是两种相似却存在差异的体验，如果要获取相同的体验便需要编写两个版本的应用。WebOS采用与之不同的方法，设计后将其功能性扩张到其他规格的设备上。你在手机上可以看到应用的小界面版本，而在TouchPad上应用自行根据需求调整大小，体验立时变得更为丰富。惠普webOS就像是各平台的瑞士军刀，可以提供所有想要的东西，其特色降低了应用开发成本。

6、设备社交化

2011年版“beaming”（游戏邦注：通过红外连接传输数据的老式Palm Pilot方法。）重现江湖，webOS让你可以通过Touchstone技术连接设备。这个小特色未来对所有人都有潜在的好处，游戏公司可以让消费者共享游戏，而用户或许能够在试用版过期后迅速购买。零售品牌可以让消费者来回共享优惠券。

除了上述特色外，webOS正悄然潜入媒体、电话、数据中心和电脑。Windows电脑上的webOS应用目录等同于Windows App Store吗？怎样看待这种状况的出现？或许这个话题需要留待将来讨论，尽管现在仍需观察惠普webOS战略会在商业上取得巨大的成功，还是技术失败者，抑或最终完全失败，我认为他们确实做了某些值得其他开发平台学习的事情。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

What WebOS can teach the iPhone, Android and the rest

HP has been in the news a lot lately touting its vision for a WebOS-filled future. While it’s debatable if we’re in the “post-PC” era, there is no doubt that we are indeed still at the early stages of mobile application development.

A quick glance at the mobile platform landscape has my company, the interactive agency POP, learning from our first Windows Phone experiences, continuing to sharpen our skills on iOS, chasing down Android and all of its versions and devices, and assessing Blackberry’s Playbook amongst other technologies. Platform preferences aside, if you don’t like innovation and change, stay away from mobile. We have been watching HP carefully since they started talking more publicly about WebOS. We were all fans of Palm back in the day, right? While consistent commercial success has been hard for them to achieve over the years, as a technologist, you have to tip your hat to the innovative ecosystem that is just now beginning to be holistically unveiled.

I’m not here to predict the success or failure of webOS, but rather to highlight some things the other platforms can learn from it:

1. Enable application development across all platforms

If you want to build an iOS app, you need a Mac. If you want to build a Windows Phone app, you need a PC. If you want to build a Blackberry Playbook app, you can be on either (Windows for other Blackberry devices though). So, what’s the best way to reach the development masses? Make the OS irrelevant. WebOS application development only requires your IDE of choice (or HP’s Ares development environment) and a WebKit-based browser.

2. Make application development more accessible

Java, Objective-C, Silverlight, XNA, Adobe AIR, …. WebOS only requires that you know HTML/JS/CSS. The Enyo JavaScript framework does the heavy lifting for you. Personally, I like the strategy of widening mobile application development to the most widely used Web development technologies. You still have the option to dive in deeper and build a truly custom interactive experience. However, at what cost do those experiences come at and how much does it cost to maintain over the lifespan of an app and over various OS versions and devices?

3. Hardware acceleration for Web apps

WebOS apps are Web-based technology applications that can take advantage of hardware acceleration. Other platforms offer native OS, Web (browser), or hybrid (mix of both) application styles. Hardware acceleration for mobile browsers is definitely starting to become more commonplace but Web experiences within native shells generally are not. HP avoids these variances in performance altogether by supporting standards like CSS3 accelerated transforms and by also having a hardware accelerated application framework.

4. Ship with built-in aggregators for cloud-based content

HP is continuing the industry’s efforts of improving mobile access to people’s pictures, music, and documents that are stored in various cloud-based repositories. This is a good thing because there is still a long ways to go.

5. Resizeable interfaces

Apps built for iPhones don’t look all that great on iPads. They are two similar but distinctly different experiences and thus we need to write two versions of apps to create form-factor aware experiences. WebOS takes a very different approach: Design once and scale the functionality to the form factor. On a mobile device? No problem. You see a smaller, lighter version of the app. On a TouchPad? No sweat. The app resizes, panels expand or collapse as needed, and the experience is instantly richer. HP’s webOS is like the Swiss Army Knife of platforms – whatever you need, it’s built-in which makes our application development budgets stretch farther.

6. Devices are social

Welcome back “beaming” (the old Palm Pilot method of sending data over infra-red connections)…well, kinda. The 2011 version of beaming is “touching,” and webOS lets you “touch” links (for now) from one device to another using their Touchstone technology. This nifty little feature has potential for just about everyone – in the future, gaming companies could have consumers sharing games with each other and when the trial runs out, you (hopefully) have a rapid purchase path waiting for you. Retail brands could have customers sharing coupons back and forth. My mind is racing…social networking, information worker multi-device productivity improvements, and what’s a business card?

Beyond the list above, webOS is sneaking its way onto printers, phones, into data centers, and onto Windows desktops. Does the webOS App Catalog on Windows equate to a Windows App Store? Interesting. What to make of this? That’s probably a topic for another day so while it remains to be seen if HP’s webOS strategy will be an overwhelming commercial success, an also-ran technology, or an eventual high-profile failure (ok…maybe I’ve oversimplified the options), I do think they are doing some nice things the other development platforms can learn from (checkout how they handle notifications too). Nice work HP and we’ll see you at the TouchPad’s launch. (Source: Mobile Beat)