My pandemic project was to find, restore and organize scattered and archived remnants of Palm/HP's mobile webOS platform to help keep these delightful little devices alive.
This is amazing, thank you.<p>Seems like several others, my actual development career began on WebOS. In high school, I was intrigued by the idea of a web-based, multitasking capable smartphone and begged my parents to buy me one.<p>Ultimately I learned a ton and have great stories such as staying up all night re-architecting Weatherman (<a href="https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?&app=247" rel="nofollow">https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?&a...</a>) because of the popularity (and this was before it was on the WebOS store, at this time it was invite-only so I had to post it on a forum!). Weatherman was just a hack on top of a hack on top of a hack. There was no Canvas API on the device so I had to generate the weather images on a server and then send them to the device, for example.<p>The highlight for me was winning one of the top spots in the Palm Hot Apps competition for the "free apps" category with Pixi Dust (<a href="https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?category=Games&count=1009&app=4196" rel="nofollow">https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?ca...</a>). The physics weren't accurate by any means, but it was the first time I had seriously used C++ (I think it was, it was so long ago!).<p>I miss having platforms like these with innovative ideas and small communities. I learned so much by having to hack my way around the limitations of the operating system, and really miss WebOS overall. I think I might still have an old Palm Pre sitting a drawer somewhere.
Wow! The Pre was the reason I got into development, because I wanted to be able to run through flashcards on the bus to school. So I built Study Buddy[1]. The joke is by the time I figured out how to really build it, I had a car so it wasn't quite as personally useful as it could have been. It was a small community but there was a decent amount of teenage developers, maybe 8 or so of us, and I think 10 years later we're all still in the engineering space, basically because of webOS.<p>[1]: <a href="https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?category=Education&count=111&app=5033" rel="nofollow">https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?ca...</a>
This makes me so, so happy! I put so much work into WebOS apps, and your site lists five of them. Sadly it's missing a few, like "My WebOS Apps", the developer dashboard app I wrote for WebOS app developers that let developers see their download stats on the phone, get notifications of when their app was accepted or rejected and more - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U4bVq_VIhs&list=PL792FA4594BC99B4D" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U4bVq_VIhs&list=PL792FA4594...</a><p>I'm getting so nostalgic, even tearing up a little :-)<p>Flickr Mundo - <a href="https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?search=Flickr&safe=on&app=5027" rel="nofollow">https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?se...</a><p>Mazer - <a href="https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?search=Mazer&safe=on&app=1508" rel="nofollow">https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?se...</a><p>Irish Rain - <a href="https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?&app=509" rel="nofollow">https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?&a...</a>
There was a thread this week about calendars, and it made me miss the unified calendar that webOS gave us. I'm excited (and slightly paranoid) to see this now, and can't wait to play with it! I wonder if I still have my old Pre lying around anywhere, and if it still boots. I love my iPhone, but I sure loved that Pre when it was new.<p>As a random second anecdote, I really miss the hacker community around it. I can't remember the name of the forum, but there was a super active thread the day we got root on the device, and it was unbelievably cool to see some Palm employees show up in it and pointing folks in the right direction. Such a fun device.
I worked at Palm during the development of webOS, both before the Pre was launched, then again in developer relations and framework development after it came out. I'm very happy to see this archive of the great work the community created around these devices.<p>If you want to archive my old Twitter feed, <a href="https://twitter.com/webostips" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/webostips</a>, that might be useful for the help section. It really only ran in 2009-2010, as I got too busy after returning to Palm from my stint at Mozilla.
Wow.. you've done a lot thanks for resurrecting this!<p>Like many of the others, WebOS kicked off my career into software development and was my first endeavor building software larger then a simple website.<p>I created GetMeVino as a simple wine resource for myself as there were similar apps on IOS and I wanted one to use on WebOS. I remember posting it on precentral forums and actually got interest from Palm themselves to build it out further and release it on their catalog. I was blown away, inspired by the possibilities and that really lit a fire in me to want to continue creating even outside WebOS.<p>Definitely wouldn't have been here today without WebOS.<p>Some other highlights, the browser based IDE Ares way ahead of its time, WebOS at CES2010 and the Palm developer relations, getting invited to Mozilla for Firefox OS.<p>I am going to need to find my old devices now!
Hi there! I'm working on a platform/framework for making retro-compatible websites, and was wondering if you'd have a few minutes to test it with webOS?<p>I've already tested with older BlackBerry, IE3, and as far back as Netscape 2.x, but I don't have a webOS device.<p>Is it possible you could spend just a few minutes on it and send me some feedback? Ideally, you should be able to register in one click (no email), write a post, and vote and reply to your own post.<p>The URL is in my profile...
Wow what a throwback, amazing work. Those WebOS times were really a unique little slice of history sort of nestled after blackberry was cemented and the dawn of iPhone era and social media but before those had really really taken off. The influence of WebOS via concepts maybe ahead of its time, and moreso the people who worked on it that went out into industry in many areas, was large.
I never hear people mention the Palm Treo. Apple gets all the credit for inventing smartphones with the iPhone 1st gen, but the Treo preceded it by years. Is it not the first smartphone?<p>One of my first startups was based on Treos, they were awesome devices. Very snappy.
Now if we could just get LG to introduce a new WebOS phone. Add android support and native Qt in addition to web apps while switching to the proposed Mochi style would make for a very nice device.
I wrote one of those apps (I'm not going to say which one for anon reasons)! It was the first (and last) JS app I ever wrote. Its been over a decade, but I remember liking the SDK.<p>Thanks for bringing this back to life, memory lane and all. I miss my Pre and Touchpad. That mirror on the back of the Pre was such a delightful little touch.<p>I also love the idea that a screenshot I took on my computer years ago is still kicking around on the internet.<p>Anyway thanks again!
Enyo was a very cool framework for WebOS and it had a web based IDE, which was crazy innovative at the time. Nothing like it. A shame it was gutted by HP.
Had to update wikipedia.org :)<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebOS</a>
I loved my Palm Pre, still have it lying around, and it still powers up just fine. A lot of the features that were innovative and new at the time were quickly co-opted into Android and iOS platforms.
Thank you! This means a lot to me. I collect Palm and Pocket PC handhelds, and remember how it seemed every independent developer had their own website with fun little creations on them and how easy it was to get software.<p>It's just not as much fun to use the devices without it being loaded with all sorts of fun programs.<p>I also recently scored a HP Laserjet 2200, which has an IrDA port on the front, which was a nice bonus for me in particular. I remember dreaming of being able to print from them and thinking how cool that would be. Funny how you only appreciate something when it's not possible.<p>Edit: I just realized this isn't about <i>that</i> Palm era, but yes, for the same reason I of course had to get a Palm Pre the second it came out. It was my first smartphone, and I remember it fondly.
I think the Palm Pre was one of the prettiest designs and I really liked how webOS looked back then. It's a shame that it died in the mobile space.
I sure would like to know where this came from.<p>Because I'm fairly certain it has to be some internal database, or someone scraped it and there were fields HP was providing in the API that weren't visible publicly.<p>Which means there its possible that the actual author's emails shared with HP during app submission are in there too. In which case, it would be nice if someone made an attempt to contact the authors and get their permission.<p>In my case I would give it, and maybe provide a few things that appear to be missing. Along with maybe cleaning up the code a bit and posting it on github/etc. My touchpad did the whole battery to rundown refuse to boot when plugged in thing a few years ago, and its been on my list of things to recover, but.. sigh.
Thank you for doing this. Is it possible to use the dev tools to setup a phone that’s been reset? My original Pre is stuck waiting for auth from an HP server that no longer exists.<p>Who are you, BTW? Were you on the webOS engineering team? I was in devrel.
Holy moly, this has the Newsweek RSS app I built a long time ago. It was the first time I had access to localStorage and other HTML5 features. PalmOS was really revolutionary at release, such a shame it didn't succeed.
WebOS is still; to this day, my favourite mobile OS. When it was open sourced - I’d actually hoped it could be a serious open source competitor in the field. Quite a sad disappointment.
The Palm Pre was always a phone I lusted after but never got to actually use. Is there a good emulator or way to experience what WebOS used to be like?
I still have my webOS Palm Pre, this was the last version that was round like a stone pebble. It still starts up. It is a very nice design that is satisfying to hold.<p>Version after the switched to a more flat with a little larger screen. Not as nice but I guess they had to compete with Android.<p>I made an app and its satisfying to see it in the Museum catalog.
Great work and many thanks! I was just ranting recently about abandoned hardware and what a waste it is (gTar, Glass, Aibo, iPods, and more). I still have a couple of TPs (new!) in the basement that will benefit from this archive. I really liked WebOS - it seemed ahead of its time.
Nice to see this project on HN, and nice so many familiar webOS names on this board. I worked on Word Ace and the Card Ace games back in the day, and got back into playing around with my Pre and TouchPad a few years ago, thanks in part to codepoet80's work.
As underpowered as it was I somehow miss my pixi. It was just so tiny and the keyboard was surprisingly practical. The convex shape of the keys made sure you wouldn't press 2 keys at the same time. I did much less typing errors than I do know.
It’s crazy to me that WebOS is still the future all these years later. Love ios but it still doesn’t come close to webos in actual functionality. Who could forget notifications? Still the best way I have seen them handled in a mobile UI to date.
I was still on the palm centro when this was released so I never got any hands on with WebOS. I do miss the software and hardware design language used by the palm team. What was under the hood? Linux?
This is great!! Last week I took out my old Pre 2 and Pixi to show my kids. It brought up great memories. I can’t wait to spend the weekend going through this.<p>How did you find everything and put it together?
oh snap! I made this one <a href="https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?category=Games&count=1009&app=471" rel="nofollow">https://appcatalog.webosarchive.com/showMuseumDetails.php?ca...</a><p>It's nice to see it again. I always thought webOS and the palm pre were pretty rad, I really thought it catch on.
I don’t see my old app in there but it was for a now defunct social network so not too surprising. Great work putting this all together. I still boot up my Palm Pre for some nostalgia kicks from time to time.
I see an old Sudoku game I wrote in here and it brings back some great memories but now I'm also scared to look at my old code now. O_O<p>Curious how did you back all this up?
I remember when the plug on developer.palm.com was pulled:
<a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1135561" rel="nofollow">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1135561</a>