Smartphone users are probably most familiar with Mozilla for its work on mobile versions of Firefox, but the foundation has much grander ideas in mind for what it could offer mobile devices. We got our first inkling of this project last summer, when Mozilla revealed plans for Boot2Gecko, an ambitious project to offer a new smartphone operating system built on web-based apps. Today we get to see just what the team has been up to for the past seven months, thanks to a whole bunch of new screenshots and some detailed descriptions of how the platform will work.

At its heart, Boot2Gecko runs off a Linux core. Called Gonk, it would offer basic I/O functionality, and provide support for phone-related system services to access web-based software via a new system of API calls. Mainly, though, that system is in place to run the Gecko browser, through which the rest of the platform’s software would execute. Everything from the launcher, to the Gaia UI, to the system’s browser itself would run as a combination of HTML5 and JavaScript in Gecko. In theory, any modern web browser could run this software as well, but without the needed API support, no phone functionality would be included.

Mozilla intends to demonstrate Boot2Gecko at the Mobile World Congress, and may be ready for a release sometime in Q2.

Source: Ars Technica

Via: Mobile Burn