pivotCE

Have you ever wanted (or needed) to create your own app for webOS? I did. My aim was to create custom apps to launch websites or local html/css/javascript files. Read on for… What I did: Since I knew nothing about Mojo or Enyo, I went looking for a simple template app that I could customize as required using nothing but a text editor and Jason Robitaille’s IpkPackager. But if such a template exists, I couldn’t find it. So I created one. You can get it over at GitHub. Go explore the template app! The template app contains a set of detailed instructions and the files are commented to make them easy to understand. The app also contains instructions for launching local files rather than a website. The idea is to make it as simple as possible to create apps for webOS using regular html, css, and javascript. If the learning curve isn’t as steep, perhaps more users will be able to help themselves. If you make improvements to the template, please fork the repository and contribute! If you have questions or comments, visit the story thread over at webOS Nation. The post A Template for Web Apps first appeared on pivotCE. Related posts: 6000+ Apps, Abandonware, and More to Come Preserving webOS apps Skype shutting down 3rd-party apps in December View the full article

If you have Forums and/or Communities for the TouchPad, you’ll notice webOS Nation forums aren’t working. The good news is, there’s a fix for it for Forums. The bad news is there’s no fix for it in Communities…yet. webOS Nation forum user, Fred Zyphal, noted the Forums app wasn’t connecting to the webOS Nations forums anymore and others jumped in to confirm and to test some solutions. It turns out Forums just needs the entry for webOS Nation updated from http to https. So swipe away your old entry for it and add a new one with the “s” after http. Communities seems to be more difficult and a fix is still in work. You can load Forums on your TouchPad if you want but it only shows in the phone emulator view. If Communities can’t be saved it may be possible to format the Forums app to take up the whole screen on the TouchPad though. More to come on that. #webOSforever No related posts. View the full article

KarenIf you’re an active member of the webOS community these days, you’ll know we’re a small, tight-knit group of friendly folks. Our three subgroups tend to be mostly free-time developers, advanced users, and those that are hanging on to the form factor/mobile OS despite its limited services and with little regard for the do-it-all-for-you modern devices. The forums on webOS Nation continue to be the primary source for communication and provide the venue for meeting the occasional “newcomer” to our little slice of the web. This is the story of one such friend of webOS. Meet Karen… …a complete stranger swimming in the sea of internet anonymity like us all. I met Karen via twitter. @alan_morford Found you on WebOSNation. I'm using an original Pre as my primary, have a new Veer that I'd love to get up and running. Way above my paygrade. Can I hire you? Also, lifelong Cubs fan. If that helps — Karen T Madden (@karentmadden) November 13, 2017 To read her full backstory check out her first post on the forums but I’ll summarize: she had 3 Sprint Pres since 2009 which all died slow deaths physically, she bought a Veer with intent to switch to a GSM carrier but the setup steps were a bit daunting, so she reached out to the community for help. You may notice the time gap between her post and the tweet above. The Veer sat in the box for about a year and in the meantime she had been using a semi-crippled Sprint Pre and an unnamed Android device to get through her work and home life. She needed assistance with the Veer and I offered to help. But Karen’s story does not end with sending me the Veer nor is this a tale of getting a webOS user back up and running. What I learned from helping her was two-fold because while Karen is a specific person, she represents something bigger. Karen is “every man”…well, as it relates to the quiet masses of unnamed people out there still using webOS. There are more people still using webOS than we in the community realize. The forum may number in the 100s but there are likely 5-10x that still out there plugging away with that tacky keyboard and brittle slider. These folks will find us eventually on the forums. We must be ready and willing to assist. webOS is still impacting people’s lives in the original ways Palm strived to achieve. Connecting everything via synergy, fast task switching, and everything accessible via a “Just type” search among others. But this only encapsulates the “what” in webOS’ draw. I’ll let Karen tell you the “why” in the words she shared upon receiving the Veer back from me (emphasis added). “I’d been telling myself it’s ‘just a phone’ but…using it today, I know that webOS is so much more for me. I powered [the Veer] this morning and, I just don’t have words. It’s that July day back in 2009, all over again. Except…back then I was meeting a new friend, who, I thought, might help me live my life on my terms. The Pre was the first device I carried ubiquitously. Today, though, flipping through cards, running apps, it’s a long lost friend and partner, returning to my life. I hadn’t realized how it had been slipping away, one function at a time, with the Pre. You never know what you have until you’ve lost it. I can’t even express what this means to me. …I drive so hard in life, and depend on a few tools and people to enable my work. Years ago, when I was playing cello professionally, my daughter broke my cello, [I thought] permanently. It was in the shop for over a month, and while I had an exquisite loaner to use, it wasn’t the cello I had used every day for 25 years. Everything was just a tiny bit….off. Everything […] required extra thought, extra awareness. I finally got my cello back, restored. I didn’t have words then either. This feels exactly the same. Having a phone that is intuitive allows me to focus on the big stuff! I will put it succinctly: webOS is a superlative tool that allows me to focus on work and do great good. My contributions to this world would be diminished without it.” Well said, Karen. webOS itself was quite the contribution to the world. And our little community, however small, still makes a big impact not in the market but in the lives of its users. It’s awesome to give back to those that make our little community great especially during the season of giving. Thanks webOS Nation! #webOSforever Related posts: UPDATE: Special Investigations Unit asks webOS Users for Help in Murder Case LuneOS Is All About Users View the full article

Found my old one!! Just no idea how to get past this palm profile screen without having Sprint service on it pic.twitter.com/qC9w5Q1fpb — Tim Schofield (@qbking77) December 11, 2017 Tech-tuber, Tim Schofield, dug out a Palm Pre today to do a comparison video of the iPhone X and the original Palm Pre with equal parts “Apple finally copied webOS” and “this weird device is old, lolz” sprinkled in. Perhaps the video is in response to claims from Qualcomm that Apple went too far in their borrowing (read: theft) of elements that made webOS, well, webOS. He admits this isn’t a serious comparison, of course. New video tonight! Mixing it up a bit and just made this one for fun — Tim Schofield (@qbking77) December 11, 2017 I’m going to let the video speak for itself on this one. He had some help getting that Pre bypassed from our community, by the way (no shout-out in the video, Tim?!). And my favorite comment on the video has got to be this one! Yes. Yes, it does. #webOSforever Related posts: Qualcomm’s Palm Patents used in lawsuit against Apple over iPhone X ACL for webOS pre-release video appears Resurfaced HP Video Shows webOS Device Concepts View the full article

Does webOS Quick Install look like this on your computer? Well, if you have a high resolution display (QHD+, 4k, etc.) on your Windows PC, there’s a fix for that. Over at superuser, someone having a similar issue posed the “how do I fix it” question because holy cow, that’s hard to read. I’d been struggling with it myself for about a year and never had much luck fixing it. This fix however, fixed not only my Java app issues (specific to webOS Quick Install and Nova Device Installer) but also fixed other apps that don’t scale well like 7zip (by making the change to the 7zip exe). Here’s the fix: Find java.exe and/or javaw.exe likely found in C:\Program Files\Java\jre(version#)\bin. Right click on it and select -> Properties Go to Compatibility tab Check Override high DPI scaling behavior. Choose System for Scaling performed by: Click OK Launch your java app and tada! #webOSforever Thanks to webOS friend, FastbootOEM for the tip! Related posts: TIP: preware.net solutions for WOSQI, Preware v1.9.13 View the full article

Just like an older car, with any webOS device these days, you have to perform some maintenance to keep it running smoothly. And one of those maintenance items you have to do on your webOS device is cleaning out the “var” (variable data) partition. If your webOS device has any of the following symptoms, the trouble could be that your “var” partition is full, or nearly full: Unable to download files, or play streaming media. Can’t install or update webOS apps. Trouble downloading new e-mails. Generally sluggish, or very slow to respond to gestures. The “var” partition is an area of the disk used behind-the-scenes by the the webOS operating system. You don’t really notice it or interact with it on a day-to-day basis. This is a standard directory location on almost all Unix and Linux-based operating systems, which webOS of course, is. What usually goes here are files used internally by webOS during the course of its operation, such as log files, temporary and not-so-temporary database files, and other files that webOS needs to just keep track of what it’s doing from minute-to-minute. Now as you could guess, things like operating system log files could just get bigger and bigger over time, and without any user intervention, they could eventually take up the disk on a regular PC, or flash storage partition on a mobile device. There are already utilities built-in to webOS that automatically run once in a while to delete old log files to keep this from happening. Normally, on more recent desktop Linux operating systems, the var partition is just a part of the root partition, and can usually take up the whole hard drive. On our webOS devices, most (but not all) of our available storage is taken up by our media partition. When you have a TouchPad with 16GB of storage, only about 15GB is available for your own use, to store music, videos, photos, documents, and other files. The other 1GB or less is so that webOS itself can have some filespace for its own needs. Out of that less-than-1GB, only 62MB (megabytes) is set aside for the var partition. Yeah, that’s not a lot, but it’s just a consequence of trying to give as much storage is feasible to you for your own files on your webOS device. So besides the log files that webOS automatically trims once in a while there are other directories and files that webOS does not keep in check, that can grow over time and fill up the var partition. Over the years, different people have discovered that it is safe to remove files from the following directories: 1. Browser cache and cookies Your web browser has to save files somewhere, and you guessed it – they go in the var partition. 2. /var/luna/data/downloadhistory.db This file is just a listing of all of the different files that have been downloaded through your browser. On the TouchPad, you can clear this list using the browser. But on phones, you don’t have that option to clear this from the browser. 3. /var/minicores Files that go in here are stack traces of applications that have crashed. These are the kind of files that would have been useful to the folks developing webOS. 4. /var/context/pending This directory would contain files that would get uploaded to Palm periodically, to help them spot operating system errors on devices already released. The files also controversially contain things like location data. 5. /var/palm/data/localstorage – http*.localstorage Some websites use javascript features that create a little database on the users computer. Those database files go in this directory on webOS. Now, if your webOS device is in a state where you cannot even launch a new app because the var partition is full, you will have to use novaterm or a similar utility to access the command line of your webOS device, and delete files from the var partition manually. But if you have the Internalz file management app, and you can start it successfully, you can use that to navigate to each of these locations and take the following steps. 1. For browser cache and cookie files, open your webOS browser app, and access the Preferences from the menu. Press the buttons to Clear History, Clear Cookies and Clear Cache. Please note that clearing cookies will erase any passwords you may have saved for websites you might have to login to from the browser, such as Facebook or the webOSNation forums. You’ll just have to re-enter and re-save your login info the next time you visit those sites. 2. For /var/luna/data/downloadhistory.db, just navigate to this directory in Internalz and delete it there. The webOS browser will re-create it for you next time you start the browser. Even if this file is 1MB or so, remember that is 1MB out of 62MB total, so it will definitely help. 3. For /var/minicores, navigate to this directory in Internalz, and delete any and all files found there. You may not find any files here. If you don’t, no problem. 4. For /var/context/pending, navigate to this directory in Internalz, and delete any and all files found there. You may not find any files here. If you don’t, no problem. 5. For /var/palm/data/localstorage, you don’t want to delete all files here – only consider ones that start with “http”. Even those, maybe don’t delete files of websites that you visit a lot, or you may lose features saved by the website on your webOS device. There may be A LOT of files here, so here is a trick in Internalz: tap the “Size” column so that the largest files appear at the top. The display will go from this: …to this: Now you can easily delete the first few files beginning with “http” that will make the biggest impact in freeing up space for you. Keep deleting these files until you can’t stand it any more. Now that you have freed up that precious space in your var partition, there is one final thing you need to do, if you haven’t already done it: If you had a ton of files in /var/context/pending, this means you probably haven’t installed the “EOM Overlord Monitor” from Preware. This is a patch/application that will prevent the scripts that fill up this directory from running. These scripts or background apps also try to send these files to Palm servers that no longer exist, so it makes sense to turn off these features on your device. Just install the app from Preware, and it will care of turning those things off. With your routine maintenance complete, your classic model is ready for the road again! Discussion thread here. Related posts: Guide: How to Fix YouTube for webOS 2.x Guide: Pebble Smartwatches for webOS 2.x Guide: Saving Apps From The App Catalog Part 2: HP Takeout View the full article

First, no this is not my auction nor do I or pivotCE know the seller in any way! This crazy deal is just too good NOT to tell you about. Every once in a while a Palm Foleo pops up on eBay with a price tag to match its rareness…usually around $1000 USD (or $2300 like the New in the Box one there right now)! But these? A paltry $179 and $11.65 in shipping (only to the USA though) and that’s the Buy It Now price. You can make an offer and possibly get one or both of them for less. For the PalmOS nostalgic, it doesn’t get any better than the Foleo. The auction has 27 days left at the time of this writing so they’re up there to sell. See the video below for an idea of what the Foleo could have done since it was never officially released. Hit the eBay listing! #PalmOSforever Related posts: HP is to Palm as Lenovo is to Motorola…Not Good TCL, Blackberry & Palm HP attempts to sell Palm patents – again. View the full article

Do you speak Russian? Do you have have an LG webOS TV? Do you want to root it? For that tiny fraction of a percentage of you out there, do I have a video for you! We talked about root on LG webOS TVs a while back but the instructions were a bit…daunting, though not being a Russian speaker myself I can’t say if the video is much better. So, if someone wants to translate and overdub this in English for the community that’d be great! Also, if someone can please explain why you’d want root access on a TV, that would be good to know too. Talk about it! #webOSforever Related posts: It seems a webOS TV has been rooted. ACL for webOS pre-release video appears Resurfaced HP Video Shows webOS Device Concepts View the full article

Bing Maps has been patched for their latest API change for webOS. webOS Nation forums user, Misj’, has developed two patches to cover both the Pre and TouchPad bases. Microsoft has switched over to v8 of the maps API and left our old v7 in the dust. Misj’ discovered the issue and wrote a simple patch to change the URL the app points to. Before and after on a Pre.It’s not 100% perfect since this change doesn’t fix a couple things: – Birds-eye view does not work any more and results in a blank screen. – Even though the locale is set to PalmSystem.locale, you may have to add your country to your search criteria to make sure you don’t get a random country result. Before and after on a TouchPad.There’s also a little bit of confusion about which patch to use since some have reported that the TouchPad version of the patch doesn’t work on all TouchPads. For some reason, some TouchPads have the Pre version of Bing Maps or so it would seem. Basically, if you try to install the TouchPad patch and it fails, try the Pre3 version and you should be fine. You can get the patches and talk about it in the post of the forum. Personally I use Google Maps by 72ka found in Preware which generally speaking works perfectly. But I’m always happy when a developer takes the time to restore functionality to webOS. Thanks Misj’! #webOSforever Related posts: The Tenth day of webOS-mas – Tweaks. All-clear for webOS devices with Google accounts TIP – YouTube Search/Quality fix for webOS 1.x/2.x View the full article

Instant messaging on webOS has just about been reduced to Google Chat (2.x and up) and SMS here in 2017. Trying to solve the “what to use for instant messaging” question, developer Gan Theng Hwee, ported an app he wrote for BlackBerry 10 to webOS. The app is Dianbao for Telegram and (duh) is a Telegram client. Gan actually won $5000 for his work on porting the Telegram desktop client to BlackBerry 10. We actually talked about Dianbao for webOS when it was released in our News Crumbs but the app was updated a couple times after that and developed what can best be described as a necessity to make a judgement call. A judgement call The judgement call stems from the app source code. The Telegram desktop client is based on GPL source code which is open source software. Since Gan wrote the BlackBerry 10 app from that source code he can’t distribute it without releasing the source code upon request. Unfortunately, he also wrote a significant portion of the app in proprietary code that he does not wish to share. The result is he pulled the app from his personal website but left it in Preware. So…if you want it, it’s there. This dilemma was pointed out by pcworld on the forums. pcworld went on later to divulge he had begun reverse engineering the application to convert it to open source code. But like all side projects, real life tends to get in the way so until it’s completed to a state pcworld is comfortable with, you can feel free to make the judgement call. How well does the app work? Pretty well actually IF you have a Pre 3 or a TouchPad with a bluetooth keyboard attached. The Veer tries its little heart out to work but you just can’t see anything on that tiny screen thanks to the app not scaling well. The app will not function at all on a Pre 2 or earlier device even with webOS 2.2.4. I was able to setup an account using my Pre 3 and get started chatting right away. Check out the gallery below. Click to view slideshow. You can read about it and discuss it here. #webOSforever Related posts: Christmas News Crumbs, 2016 YouTube Client Released for webOS/LuneOS: LuneTube News Crumbs – 14th February 2015 View the full article

Qualcomm’s at it again. Renowned for being a world-class patent troll, it’s once again suing Apple over…get this…using Palm Inc. patents it bought in 2014 in the iPhone X. Their big hangup is that the iPhone X borrowed Palm’s user interface or more specifically the interface found on webOS phones like the Palm Pre. Who hasn’t been saying the cards interface was stolen from webOS years ago when we first saw it popping up on Android devices? EVERYONE uses it. From Ubuntu Touch, iOS, Sailfish, BlackBerry 10, Windows Phone, and of course Android, they all use some styling of the cards for multitasking or rather task switching. Their demands? Ban the iPhone X in the US among other things. Yeah….right. Good luck with that. Whatever it is, Palm did it first and did it better. — DΞRΞK KΞSSLΞR (@derekakessler) May 20, 2015 #webOSforever Related posts: HP attempts to sell Palm patents – again. Forty Years of Tech Exhibit Showcases first Palm PDA HP is to Palm as Lenovo is to Motorola…Not Good View the full article

It’s over. Skype is dead for webOS. We reported on the likely eventual death of this many many many times. But this time, it’s for real. It worked in early June of this year but not long after I got another message from Skype. PSA Reminder: Skype for #webOS will likely die in 11 days. https://t.co/qgB4t0PvKf — Alan Morford (@alan_morford) June 20, 2017 But 12 days later it still worked. Skype still works for #webOS users after the 1 July warning date. It will communicate to older clients but not new ones. Be advised. — Alan Morford (@alan_morford) July 2, 2017 But by working I only meant that legacy clients like ours and to include Android, Linux, and Apple clients that used their older protocol could still talk to each other but not with the newer clients. Then in the middle of August, webOS forum user, mazzinia, noted the connect and disconnect issue. I only noticed it in September… Skype for #webOS appears dead. It connects then disconnects. — Alan Morford (@alan_morford) September 7, 2017 You can see some rather confusing entries in LumberJack when trying to login. It doesn’t amount to any good sadly. If you have a Skype account already added to webOS then your log will look something like this but for those that don’t have a Skype account added to Synergy then you won’t be able to add it anymore. Farewell, Skype for webOS. #webOSforever Related posts: Skype shutting down 3rd-party apps in December Skype is likely on the chopping block…again Are we dreaming? Skype still works! View the full article

So @ProjectMacaw V1.7.0 is out for all of your 280 character glory. Go get it from Preware. #webOS — Dave Cole (@baldric555) November 8, 2017 Everyone’s favorite webOS Twitter client (ok there aren’t many left to choose from), Project Macaw, is of the last remaining consistently updated apps for our beloved platform. And the updates just keep on coming. Micah Gorrell first took up the challenge of expounding upon the beautiful and fast webOS Twitter client, Phnx. Like so many others though, Micah moved on from the platform and along came Dave Cole. Dave has published many updates to Project Macaw (ie., Macaw or PM) in the last couple years and today released his latest iteration which adds Twitter’s new 280 character limit. Love or hate the double 140 character change, it strikes a chord amongst all Twitter users. Stephen King doesn’t seem to like it… 280 characters? — Stephen King (@StephenKing) November 8, 2017 At any rate, get on your soap box, be obnoxious, or wax poetic in twice the space as before on your favorite webOS device. Update your Preware feeds and grab the latest version of Project Macaw! #webOSforever Related posts: The Eighth day of webOS-mas – Project Macaw. C+Dav Synergy Connector Updated for webOS Lunetube updated, brings reply comments, bug fixes View the full article

Anyone who could help me with a source to get an unlock code for a SIM-locked #webOS #HPTouchpad 4G #LuneOS locked to AT&T? — Herrie (@Herrie1982) October 18, 2017 webOS friend and LuneOS project aficionado, Herrie, recently embarked on an unlocking adventure. His HP TouchPad 4G gave up the ghost and passed away quietly. So he did what anyone would do and got a new one! That’s what you’d do if your TouchPad died too, right? His TouchPad was special though. In fact, you probably read his article right here on pivotCE about getting true LTE speeds on it with an unlocked Sierra 7710 card in it. Why not just crack open the new one and pop in the 7710 and throw away that crappy “3.5G” Ericcson card? Well, the TouchPad pretty much breaks when you open it. The little clips that keep the back connected weren’t designed to be opened once engaged. After Herrie contacted, paid for, and was reimbursed by several unlocking services over the course of about a month he finally stumbled upon UnlockFusion which was able to get him an unlock code. The catch? It took 2 weeks but it only cost him about $10.50 USD. Not bad! Need your TouchPad 4G unlocked? Head over to www.unlockfusion.com and I’m certain they can help you. Or crack yours open and pop in a Sierra 7710 (EU) or a Sierra 7700 (NA). #webOSforever Related posts: HP TouchPad meets KitKat The search for real 4G on the TouchPad The Pre 3 and HP TouchPad in 2014 View the full article

Since the most recent release of LuneOS called “Decaf” which includes Qt 5.9.2, support for 3rd party browser plugins (such as Adobe Flash and Google’s WideVine CDM) has been added to the Browser App and has been enabled by default. However the source code of these plugin binaries is not available and therefore these binaries cannot be compiled and provided in the LuneOS images. The users would therefore need to manually install (sideload) the required plugin files from a source that has them available. Luckily there are ChromeOS recovery images available for the ARMv7 instruction set which is the same instruction set used by our HP Touchpad, Nexus 4 and Nexus 5. Looking at the list of ChromeOS devices located here and checking their specifications I believe that the Samsung Chomebook from 2012 with Codename “Snow” is a suitable candidate for example. Others that might work are: Samsung Chromebook 2 – 11″, codename “Pit” Samsung Chromebook 2 – 13″, codename “Pi” HP Chromebook 11 G1, codename “Spring” HP Chromebook 11 G2, codename “Skate” ASUS Chromebook Flip C100PA, codename “Minnie” ASUS Chromebook C201, codename “Speedy” AOpen Chromebase Mini, codename “tiger” Asus Chromebit CS10, codename “Mickey” AOpen Chromebox Mini, codename “fievel” In order to get Adobe Flash & WideVine CDM support you need to do the following: Download a ChromeOS ARM Recovery image, the best would be the one using the same Chrome/Chromium version, so 56. For example for the Samsung Chromebook codename “Snow” mentioned above as per this link. Extract the “chromeos_9000.91.0_daisy_recovery_stable-channel_snow-mp-v4.bin.zip” file. Once done, open “chromeos_9000.91.0_daisy_recovery_stable-channel_snow-mp-v4.bin” with a file archiver (for example 7-Zip on Windows). Open the ROOT-A.img file. Go to “/opt/google/chrome/” Extract “libwidevinecdm.so” and “libwidevinecdmadapter.so” into a separate folder. Go to “/opt/google/chrome/pepper/” Extract “libpepflashplayer.so” to the same folder as under 6. You will now have 3 files in this folder: “libwidevinecdm.so”, “libwidevinecdmadapter.so” and “libpepflashplayer.so”. Open a command prompt and go to folder with the 3 files. Now push each of the 3 files to “/usr/lib/chromium/” by means of “adb push libwidevinecdm.so /usr/lib/chromium/”, “adb push libwidevinecdmadapter.so /usr/lib/chromium/” and “adb push libpepflashplayer.so /usr/lib/chromium/” Restart your LuneOS device! Now go http://get.adobe.com/nl/flashplayer/about/ to see if Adobe Flash works. It will display you the supported version of Flash as per screenshot here: Now go to https://shaka-player-demo.appspot.com/demo/ to see if WideVine works. It will show you the WideVine options in the dropdown in black instead of grey. When they show in black the WideVine plugin is properly installed and working. Without WideVine PluginWith working WideVine PluginNetflix on the HP Touchpad (It’s a bit slow, but works!) Related posts: Two weeks with LuneOS: An app sideload test YouTube Client Released for webOS/LuneOS: LuneTube LuneOS December Stable Release: Caffè Marocchino View the full article

The long wait is over #LuneOS and #webOS fans! We’re back with a new release called “Decaf” which we believe will be a milestone in terms of developments and the way forward! So you’re wondering what we’ve been up to the past 2+ months? Well, actually a whole lot when you look at our changelog! We’ve been able to migrate from Qt 5.7 via 5.8 to 5.9.2 which is a long term support (LTS) release of Qt. This brings our web capabilities a lot more up to date! We’re on Chromium 56 based release now which dates back to January this year. This brings a lot of interesting new and modern HTML5 features such as Web Components that are used by Google’s Polymer framework, for example. It also offers us better plugin support. It’s now technically possible to sideload Flash & WideVine plugins and the sites using these can see and use the plugins. The plugins cannot be distributed in the image due to licensing issues, but users are free to sideload them . This opens up the possibility to watch DRM protected content on sites like Netflix, YouTube etc. The migration to Chromium 56 caused a lot of layout issues for all Enyo 1.0 apps which needed to be addressed at the same time as we made sure that the Enyo 1.0 apps we’re using can be run and debugged in Chrome on the desktop. The new version of Qt also brings a simplified API for Wayland. Work has been done on the stability issues with the Touchpad and it’s a lot more stable now. The backlight being always on for Hammerhead (Nexus 5) has been solved too and the VirtualBox image is working properly again! We have been able to migrate our Mako (Nexus 4) and Hammerhead (Nexus 5) to use Project Halium. This means that all our Android & webOS based targets are now using Project Halium as a basis. In the near future we plan to work more closely together with Project Halium and use their kernels with our patches instead of maintaining the kernels by ourselves. This is expected to be completed by the next release. Using Halium kernels will also allow LuneOS ports for supported Halium devices to become a lot more easy and straightforward. Quite a number of the UI bits in various QML apps have been reworked to use QtQuickControls2 styling for LuneOS. This will allow to have unified components to be used across various QML apps. It will also allow a better experience on HiDPI and retina screens. The following items on our to-do list will be where we focus next: Various UI tweaks Messaging improvements Camera improvements Fix known issues on the various targets Bring back official support for Touchpad 4G (current build works on Touchpad 4G but only WiFi). Known issues: Nexus 5 (Hammerhead) / Nexus 4 (Mako): Issue with sensors causing rotation to not work for example. Node-SQLite3 is currently not working. Components using Node-SQLite3 have switched to an alternative storage method for now. Focus bug on input fields. You can work around this by hiding the virtual keyboard and pressing the input again. Changelog Applications: FirstUse (org.webosports.app.firstuse): Use QtQuickControls 2.0 and LuneOS styling; Change LuneOSStyle to LuneOS; NetworkConnectPage: fix Connect button; Convert WifiPage and NetworkConnectPage to QtQuickControls 2; NetworkConnectpage: fix focus handling; FeedsPage: improve layout. Testr (org.webosports.app.testr): Adds Web Components platform tests. Browser (org.webosports.app.browser): Add precompiled files to gitignore; BrowserWebView: begin adaptation for Qt 5.8; BrowserWebView: fix for contextual menu; Migrate to QtQuickControls2 and simplify code; BrowserWebView: improve handling of load errors; appjson: Activate LuneOS style for QtQuickControls2; Quit when a main QNL file can’t be loaded; AppMenu: use LuneOSMenu attached property; Fix SearchSuggestion appearance; Fix dialogs sizes; SettingsPage.qml: Fix undefined errors; NavigationBar.qml: Fix UserAgent overrides again; NavigationBar.qml: Make sure we override useragent for history & bookmark items too. Core-apps: Add initial missing bits for running & debugging properly; Add mock account templates and point to right path; com.palm.app.notes: Add mock data; com.palm.app.calendar: Add mock for new events; com.palm.app.calendar: Make -webkit-border-image work with Chromium 51 and higher; com.palm.app.clock: Various minor fixes & mock data; com.palm.app.clock: Make -webkit-border-image work with Chromium 51 and higher; com.palm.app.contacts: Make -webkit-border-image work with Chromium 51 and higher; com.palm.app.notes: Make -webkit-border-image work with Chromium 51 and higher; com.palm.app.email: Make -webkit-border-image work with Chromium 51 and higher; com.palm.app.email: Remove duplicated code in 2-folder; com.palm.app.accounts: Add mock data for desktop debugging User Interface: luna-systemui: Adjust the PowerOffAlert popup height to 30 units. luna-next-cardshell: Adapt for Qt 5.8; LunaSysAPI: fix displayOn/Off; CardView: simplify pinch-to-zoom. luneos-components: QtQuickControls2: fix .pro module for QML files; QtQuickControls2: change style name to LuneOS; QtQuickControls2: add images to qmake’s project; QtQuickControls2: HighDPI compatible Button and Switch; QtQuickControls2: prepare Hi-DPI tests; TabButton: add possibility to put an image as content; LuneOSWindow: now inherits ApplicationWindow from QuickControls2; QtQuickControls2: improve layout for some components; QtQuickControls2: add appMenuStyle for Menu; LuneOS.Components: merge deployment.pro and add missing qml file; QtQuickControls2: TextField: improve background; UserAgent.qml: Update QtWebEngine & Chrome version; UserAgent.qml: Make sure all urls are lowercase before we start to do anything. Enyo-1.0: Make -webkit-border-image work with Chromium 51 and higher; Revert back to original Enyo 1.0 spinner; util.js: Fix libPath for testing on desktop System Level: luna-webappmanager: Migrate to Qt 5.8; main: add options for disabling advanced sandboxing; Fix WebEngine UserScript includes; Option to disable OpenGL ES3 in Chromium; WebApplicationWindow: remove mLaunchedHidden; Revert “Option to disable OpenGL ES3 in Chromium”; Revert “main: add options for disabling advanced sandboxing”. luna-appmanager: Add dummy logCrashRegisterContext for aarch64. luna-sysmgr: DisplayManager: always turn off backlight before blanking hwc; DisplayManager: shorten the powermenu timeout to 1.5s; Add dummy logCrashRegisterContext for aarch64 nyx-modules: keys: treat KEY_HOMEPAGE as HOME key; nyx-modules: Add cmake file for qemux86-64; nyx-modules: Add cmake file for qemux86-64; Remove machine specific cmake files; Remove machine specific cmake files II. db8: MojConfig.h: allow to build for aarch64 (raspberrypi3-64) android_luneos_hal: Switch to Halium 5.1; tenderloin: fix vendor patch; Apply_patches: abort previous git am in case of failure; hardware/libhardware: revert patch for QCOM_BSP android: First commit based on Halium-5.1, with support for TP and N5; Add mako and simplify remotes; Fix mako repo; Add luneos-hal repo, to patch the vendor trees; wop_targets.xml: Update repos to webos-ports; wop_targets.xml: Update branch from wop-12.1 to halium-5.1; wop_targets.xml; Fix comment for luneos-hal meta-rpi-luneos: raspberrypi2: prefer linux-raspberrypi 4.9.%; raspberrypi3: add config for raspberrypi3 and raspberrypi3-64 from meta-raspberrypi; systemd: Don’t override whole USERADD_PARAM luna-next: Migrate code to Qt 5.8; CompositorWindow: focusOnClick=false for overlays; Fix window deletion; Compositor: make hasProcessMultipleWindows more robust; Compositor: make window deletion more robust; Don’t use unimplemented SendFullKeyEvent; CompositorWindow: wait for window type to be set; Compositor: remove Qt’s version from includes; compositor: add a default output mode; compositor: use QtKeyExtensionGlobal android_hardware_qcom_display-caf: ionalloc: if alloc failed, don’t trust errno qtsensors-sensorfw-plugin: Update to latest 5.8 code meta-smartphone: mako, hammerhead, tenderloin: use kernel sources from shr-distribution/linux.git and fix build with gcc-7; hammerhead kernel: delay wifi init; android-system-image-*: skip already-stripped QA; mako,hammerhead,tenderloin: use our Halium image; android-system-image-mako: fix install script; android-system-image-tenderloin: fix checksums; hammerhead, mako, tenderloin: Use Halium image built with Ports repos; libhybris: fix tenderloin build flags; android-system-image-tenderloin: bump PV; android-system-image: Add symbolic link for wifi; android-system-image-mako: fix typo meta-qt5: Update to Qt 5.9.2 including QtWebEngine based on Chromium 56. meta-webos-ports: qtscenegraph-adaptation: Adapt for 5.8 and use mer-project repo; qtwebengine: adapt to Qt 5.8; qtwayland: adapt to Qt 5.8; packagegroup-luneos-extended: disable camera bits; libconnman-qt5: bump to version 1.2.3; luna-next: switch to Qt 5.8 version; luna-next-cardshell: switch to Qt 5.8 version; luna-webappmanager: switch to Qt 5.8 version; luneos-components: switch to Qt 5.8 version; qtwebengine: remove a patch harmful for Qt 5.8 version; qtwebengine: Fix a crash in PalmServiceBridge; leveldb-tl: fix build with gcc7; pidgin-sipe: Update to 1.22.1; pidgin: Update to 2.12.0; libotr: Update to 4.1.1; pidgin: Add patches to local build pending upstream upgrade; libotr: Add patches pending update in upstream; qtwebengine: add patch to disable some sandboxing; luneos-components: add qtquickcontrols2 dependency; qtwayland: fix window mask; qtsensors-sensorfw-plugin: Update to QT 5.8; qtsensors: correct path for sensors config file; luneos-components: add QtQuickControls2 support; libpng: Add to meta-webos-ports layer since oe-core version is broken; qtwebengine(-chromium): Migrate to QT 5.9 and Chromium 56; qtwayland: Upgrade to QT 5.9; nyx-conf: add event0 to the keys managed by nyx.; luna-webappmanager: Updates for QT 5.9; luna-sysmgr-conf: Add luna-platform.conf for qemux86-64; presage: fix build with gcc-7; packagegroup-luneos-development: drop mdbus2; lxc=v2.0.8; nyx-modules: Add qemux86-64 file; qtwebengine: Add -embedded configuration; qtubuntu-camera: fix and re-enable camera related recipes; luneos.inc: don’t restrict QEMU_TARGETS; sdl2-opengles-test: build only gles2 version for rpi; qtwebengine: add LuneOS specific switches; ofono: fix QA issue; qtubuntu-camera: fix few issues; nyx-modules: add cmake file also for raspberrypi3-64; luneos.inc: fix UVESA_MODE; qtwebengine: fix crash with WebGL2 textures; luna-next-conf: qemu*: workaround for mouse pointer; luneos-emulator-appliance: use virtio-net for Ethernet; jemalloc: fix build for aarch64 (raspberrpi3-64); nyx-modules: bump SRCREV and fix build for MACHINEs with dash in name; db8: bump SRCREV to fix build for aarch64 (raspberrypi3-64); node-gyp-native: fix incorrect symlink; pmcertificatemgr: fix u-a config; crash-handler: fix ldflags QA issue; sdl2-opengles-test: fix ldflags QA issue; luneos-emulator.ovf: Fix Adapter Type to virtio; qtscenegraph-adaptation: Drop patch & bump SRCREV; qtscenegraph-adaptation: fix URI; mako: avoid loading conflicting Alsa driver; environment.conf: Add QT_QPA_EGLFS_INTEGRATION=none; pulseaudio-distro-conf: use MACHINE_ARCH; pmcertificatemgr: drop webos_machine_impl_dep inherit; meta-luneos: exclude ofono-conf from signatures as abi safe; core-apps: drop allarch; org.webosports.service.update: drop allarch; loadable-frameworks: drop allarch; cordova: inherit allarch; luneos.inc: apply uvesafb config and vboxvideo blacklist also to qemux86-64; qtwayland: Fix QtKeyExtensionGlobal’s export; qtubuntu-camera: fix missing .qmake.conf; qtsensors: From Qt 5.9, settings follow XDG standard paths.;ofono-conf: Make sure we don’t use RIL on qemu; systemd: Add patch to disable “Failed to set invocation ID on controlgroup”;qtwebengine: Add /usr/lib/chromium already bitbake: cooker: add BB_CMDLINE to enable access to UI command line with memres; cooker.py: Fix layer priority processing; toaster: recipe links broken for default layers; toaster: edit column list not sorted; toaster: set default pokydirname if no external layers; toaster: debug message for lists layers missing separators; toaster: Order column in Tasks selectable; toaster: display error when the fstype select is empty; cooker: ensure monkey-patching in collect_bbfiles() gets undone on error; cooker: fix watching empty directories; cooker: Track directories searched for bbappend/bb files; toaster: noweb should init database; toaster: get_last_build_id not called correctly; toaster: add getMessage to MockEvent; toaster: fail on layers with sub-layer; toaster: add ID’s to build menu links; toaster: add ID’s to navigation links openembedded-core: image.bbclass: Sorted ctypes to avoid basehash error; gcc-6.3.inc: Use ucontext_t not struct ucontext; linuux-yocto/4.1: update to 4.1.43 plus bluetooth CVE-2017-1000251; libproxy: use stable download URL; linux-yocto/4.9: bluetooth: CVE-2017-1000251; linux-yocto/4.4: bluetooth: CVE-2017-1000251; linux-yocto/4.10: bluetooth: CVE-2017-1000251; linux-yocto/4.9: update to v4.9.49; linux-yocto/4.4: update to v4.4.87; (PRE)MIRRORS: fix pattern for npm:// without slash; waffle: fix REQUIRED_DISTRO_FEATURES and PACKAGECONFIG virtual/libgl dependencies; rootfs-postcommands: add test for unsatisfied RRECOMMENDS; rootfs-postcommands: remove empty line; rootfs-postcommands.bbclass: Filter out dangling symlinks in ssh_allow_empty_password(); alsa-utils: Do not hardcode path to /lib/udev; package_rpm.bbclass: disable generation of .build-id links; package_rpm.bbclass: use multithreaded xz compression; rpm: allow arch-dependent binaries in noarch packages; bitbake.conf: add bzr to HOSTTOOLS_NONFATAL; glibc-locale: add runtime dependency on glibc; Revert “expat: Don’t use getrandom() in the -native case”; grub: Fix build with gcc7; staging: Fix a logic error which caused dependency removal; staging: Ensure dependencies are removed before being added; staging: Avoid sysroot removal races; classes/license: drop erroneous sha256 parameter in LIC_FILES_CHKSUM; linux-yocto/4.4: update to v4.4.85. The usual 1. Sign up for the bug tracker 2. Get involved and 3. Join the mailing list Download and Install Feel free to download the updated builds to get started. Tenderloin, Mako and Hammerhead remain our focus for now, but the emulator & Grouper work too. Please note that in order to use the latest stable builds Nexus 4 (Mako) and Nexus 5 (Hammerhead) you need to flash the CM 12.1 images first using CWM/TWRP. In order to do so, you might be required to do a “factory reset” or at least “wipe cache”. CWM/TWRP will indicate when this is needed. After successfully flashing CM 12.1, make sure to boot it at least once before going back to CWM/TWRP to flash the latest LuneOS image! We have provided links to CM 12.1 for these 3 images on our device pages below. Installation instructions for TouchPad (Tenderloin), Nexus 4 (Mako), Nexus 5 (Hammerhead) and Emulator are on the wiki. And remember we don’t do timelines. Don’t forget to contact us with any questions and feel free to join the discussion on the webOS Nation forums. Catch us on Twitter @webosports on IRC: Freenode:#webos-ports or email [email protected]. We will see you shortly again with a new release! Picture Credit: Decaf……is like kissing your brother? ©Angie Born. (CC BY 2.0) Cropped for article. Related posts: LuneOS May Stable Release: Café mocha LuneOS October Stable Release: Ca phe sua da LuneOS October Stable Release: Caffè Latte View the full article

A source informs us that instructions have been published on gaining root access to a webOS TV. This is much harder than on the old phones and tablets. When this was done on legacy webOS, there was a wave of enhancements and tweaks made available to phone users from webOS Internals and other developers. The instructions can be found on the Russian webOS forums here: How to get Root rights on webOS 1.0-3.0: webOS TVs – Discussion (English Translation via Google). As the thread itself notes, this creates the possibility of fiddling with your TV in a way that may turn it into a large, thin brick and will almost certainly invalidate your warranty. The general user should stay well clear of this. At pivotCE we publish this for information only and recommend leaving investigations to those who know what they are doing or who can afford to wreck expensive television sets. We will watch to see if anything interesting emerges from this development. Discussion thread on webOS Nation. Image Credits: McZusatz & George Hodan. Related posts: Enyo 2.7 released, with next generation plans Enyo Next-Gen enters private beta testing Introduction to Enyo, Minneapolis, 2nd May. View the full article

That took a while, but lots of ground has been covered! We’re finally back with a new release called “Cortado”. We have been working very hard behind the scenes during the past couple of months! So you’re asking what we have done? Most importantly we now have all our supported targets on at least a 3.4 kernel which was a critical requirement in order to update Yocto to Pyro. Both glibc and systemd required this. So the Touchpad, Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 are now all on a 3.4 kernel and on an Android 5.1-based build! For the Touchpad we were able to already use the work done by the Halium project and we’re now mainly using Halium 5.1 as a source for building the required Android bits! This release is a bit of an intermediary release, so it’s not as stable as we would like it to be and as you are used to. We expect to address the remaining issues with the next release. We wanted to get this release out since it marks quite a milestone with all the underlying updates to the system. We have also updated some of the UI bits and there is now a tablet layout similar to what was available on webOS 3.x with notifications at the top of the screen! Preware is now also working properly on targets with a landscape orientation like the Touchpad & VirtualBox (qemux86). Due to the fact there’s no suitable 3.4 kernel available for the Galaxy Nexus (Maguro) we were forced to drop this as a porting target. We have also dropped support for Nexus 7 WiFi 2012 version (Grouper) due to the fact that none of the devs actually had this device and therefore we couldn’t test any updates. We’re already full speed ahead with the update of QT from 5.6 to 5.8. This brings quite some challenges and requires quite some rework in various bits, but it seems things are progressing well. Once the 5.8 upgrade has been completed we’ll be looking into updating to 5.9.1 in the near future as well since this will be a LTS (Long Term Support) release of QT. The upgrade from 5.8 to 5.9.x should be fairly straight forward since the changes aren’t that major. We have the following items on our to-do list to focus on: QT 5.7/5.8/5.9.1 Upgrade Various UI tweaks Messaging improvements Camera improvements Fix known issues on the various targets Bring back official support for Touchpad 4G (current build works on Touchpad 4G but only WiFi). Known issues: Nexus 4 (Mako): Sound is broken on current build. Nexus 5 (Hammerhead): Vibration doesn’t seem to work, backlight doesn’t turn off. Qemux86: Mouse input doesn’t seem to work. Touchpad (Tenderloin): Screen doesn’t always turn off, bug with switching between input fields leading to screen turning off or not responding. No official support for the 4G Touchpad yet, but the build should work. Node-SQLite3 is currently not working. Components using Node-SQLite3 have switched to an alternative storage method for now. Focus bug on input fields. You can work around this by hiding the virtual keyboard and pressing the input again. Changelog Applications: Preware (org.webosinternals.preware): Fix Panel behavior in landscape orientation. User Interface: luna-next-cardshell: Notifications: separate view and model, Initial work on tablet style statusbar, Fix NotificationAreaTablet height, StatusBar: fix tablet TweaksClock visibility. System Level: meta-smartphone: linux-lg-hammerhead: fix some minor defconfig values, android-system: only start after main partitions are mounted, android-system-image: make “symbols” directory optional, android-headers-tenderloin: use API 22, patched to match tenderloin specific content, linux-hp-tenderloin: use a 3.4 kernel, android-system-image-tenderloin: use a Halium 5.1 based Android build, android-system-image-tenderloin: Fix checksums, linux-hp-tenderloin: bump SRCREV, android-system-image-tenderloin: update Android image pulseaudio-modules-droid: migrate to PulseAudio 10.0 systemd: Disable ProtectHome and ProtectSystem for old kernels ofono: Use Mer’s 1.19 and include fix libhybris: test_hwcomposer: add support for newer hwcomposer versions pulseaudio-modules-droid: match build flag for audio.h header libhybris: bump SRCREV and remove unneeded patches pulseaudio-modules-droid: define QCOM_HARDWARE pulseaudio-distro-conf: for tenderloin, avoid loading the alsa module purple-skypeweb: Update to 1.4 release yocto: Update from Krogoth to Pyro Release bitbake: Update from 1.30 to 1.34 The usual 1. Sign up for the bug tracker 2. Get involved and 3. Join the mailing list Download and Install Feel free to download the updated builds to get started. Tenderloin, Mako and Hammerhead remain our focus for now, but the emulator works too. Please note that in order to use the latest stable builds on the Nexus 4 (Mako) and Nexus 5 (Hammerhead) you need to flash the CM 12.1 images first using CWM/TWRP. In order to do so, you might be required to do a “factory reset” or at least “wipe cache”. CWM/TWRP will indicate when this is needed. After successfully flashing CM 12.1, make sure to boot it at least once before going back to CWM/TWRP to flash the latest LuneOS image! We have provided links to CM 12.1 for these 2 images on our device pages below. Installation instructions for TouchPad (Tenderloin), Nexus 4 (Mako), Nexus 5 (Hammerhead) and Emulator are on the wiki. And remember we don’t do timelines. Don’t forget to contact us with any questions and feel free to join the discussion on the webOS Nation forums. Catch us on Twitter @webosports on IRC: Freenode:#webos-ports or email [email protected]. We will see you shortly with a new release! Related posts: Next LuneOS Stable Release Available: Black Tie LuneOS April Stable Release: Cold Brew Next LuneOS Stable Release Available: Black Eye View the full article

No release this month folks! We’re in the middle of a major upgrade op the underlying Yocto project from Krogoth (2.1) right away to Pyro (2.3) while skipping Morty (2.2) which means we need to update all our kernels to at least 3.4 in order to be able to use the latest upgrades to systemd and glibc. So far this has been successful for the Nexus 4 (Mako), Nexus 5 (Hammerhead) and we’re now in the process of doing the same for the Touchpad (4G) (Tenderloin). All these targets have a 3.4 kernel available, so the process is relatively straight forward. However it seems that the Galaxy Nexus (Maguro) doesn’t have a working 3.4 kernel available (only 3.0) and it’s therefore likely we’ll be forced to drop support for the Galaxy Nexus going forward. In the meanwhile the Halium project is making solid progress as well! This starts to look like a very promising start for an united Android base for various alternative operating systems like LuneOS, SailfishOS, Ubuntu Touch, AsteroidOS, Plasma Mobile etc! We’re always looking for energetic volunteers to join the LuneOS team. See you with the next release! Related posts: LuneOS Update Script LuneOS Update for November LuneOS Update for November View the full article

A bit later than expected but we’re back! Over 2 months passed since the last release and we’re finally back with a new release called “Cold Brew”. We have been working very hard behind the scenes in the past 2 months! So you’re asking what we have done? Most importantly we now have an initial setup for camera working on both the N4 and N5 with an initial version of the app written in Qt (QML). It’s still pretty rough, but it will do basics for now. Further improvements will come once we upgrade Qt to 5.7/5.8. Behind the scenes we’ve been working on getting our Yocto updated to Pyro. This brings quite some challenges due to glibc (2.24) not being compatible with linux kernels < 3.2. Also the newer systemd version (232) brings some challenges in terms of kernel requirements, but we’ve been able to work around those for now. For Mako (N4), Hammerhead (N5) this isn’t really a problem because we have a 3.4 based kernel, for the Tenderloin (Touchpad) there are 3.4 based kernels available as well, so we’ll be aiming to migrate to a 3.4 based kernel for Tenderloin. For Maguro (Galaxy Nexus) the situation is unfortunately more problematic because there’s no real working 3.4 based kernel available currently. It’s therefore likely that as of next release we will be forced to drop support for the Galaxy Nexus. We’re also taking part in in the Halium Project that was announced last week. There are already a lot of synergies between the various OS-es based on Android and also still quite some minor tweaks for each OS. By joining forces in the project we aim to have a common base for the various Android based OS-es. We have the following items on our to-do list to focus on: Work on Yocto Pyro upgrade QT 5.7/5.8 Upgrade Various UI tweaks Messaging improvements Camera improvements Known issues: Node-SQLite3 is currently not working. Components using Node-SQLite3 have switched to an alternative storage method for now. Focus bug on input fields. You can work around this by hiding the virtual keyboard and pressing the input again. Changelog Applications: Testr (org.webosports.app.testr): Adds test of HTML5 camera API (navigator.mediaDevices); Removes erroneous component from HTML5 camera test; Camera test works correctly with portrait video; HTML5 camera test: adds list of user media devices & requests rear camera. Camera (org.webosports.app.camera): Initial app writen from scratch in QT. System Level: qtubuntu-camera: add missing dependencies for Qt. packagegroup-luneos-extended: put the camera recipes in LIBHYBRIS_RDEPENDS. mobile-broadband-provider-info: Add LIC_FILES_CHKSUM. qtbase_git.bbappend: Use = for PACKAGECONFIG_DISTRO. hunspell: remove – it is in meta-oe. mesa: do not move around libGLESv2.so. qtvideo-node: Use webOS-ports repository. meta-webos-ports: Add org.webosports.app.camera and the camera infrastructure packages. The usual 1. Sign up for the bug tracker 2. Get involved and 3. Join the mailing list Download and Install Feel free to download the updated builds to get started. Tenderloin, Mako, Hammerhead and Maguro remain our focus for now, but the emulator & Grouper work too. Please note that in order to use the latest stable builds on the Galaxy Nexus (Maguro), Nexus 4 (Mako) and Nexus 5 (Hammerhead) you need to flash the CM 12.1 images first using CWM/TWRP. In order to do so, you might be required to do a “factory reset” or at least “wipe cache”. CWM/TWRP will indicate when this is needed. After successfully flashing CM 12.1, make sure to boot it at least once before going back to CWM/TWRP to flash the latest LuneOS image! We have provided links to CM 12.1 for these 3 images on our device pages below. Installation instructions for TouchPad (Tenderloin), Galaxy Nexus (Maguro), Nexus 4 (Mako), Nexus 5 (Hammerhead), Emulator, and Nexus7 (Grouper) are on the wiki. And remember we don’t do timelines. Don’t forget to contact us with any questions and feel free to join the discussion on the webOS Nation forums. Catch us on Twitter @webosports on IRC: Freenode:#webos-ports or email [email protected]. We will see you shortly with a new release! Related posts: LuneOS April Stable Release: Café au lait LuneOS February Stable Release: Chai Latte Next LuneOS stable release available: Antoccino View the full article

EnyoJS is the javascript frame work used by webOS developers to create applications for both the legacy OS, LuneOS and LG’s TV OS. Those following along will recall that the development team had moved onto a new version based on React.js and that this had potential implications for LuneOS. The Enyo team have just begun a private beta of the next generation Enyo. What we know is that with LG’s TV arm as their main customer, the focus remains on TV sized apps. Though increased support for mobile is planned, it is currently limited. Also, the framework will have a new name when publicly released. This next generation of Enyo will be of interest to those currently building apps with the platform, but may also attract developers already experienced with ReactJS. For those engaging with this testing phase, we’d be interested in any comments. The webOS Ports team will no doubt also be interested in any app demos built with it too. You can comment at webOS Nation. Related posts: Introduction to Enyo, Minneapolis, 2nd May. More Enyo in Minneapolis, June 20th. Enyo 2.7 released, with next generation plans View the full article

So that’s been a long while already! 2 months passed since the last release and we’re finally back with a new release called “Chai Latte”. We have been working very hard behind the scenes in the past 2 months upgrading our various builds & build infrastructure! So you’re asking what we have done? We have been doing lots of work to make our build & porting process more stable and straightforward. It’s now easier to create a new port for devices having a CM 12.1 (Android 5.1) based build available. Also initial work has been done in order to be able to use CM 13.0 (Android 6.0) based builds. We have updated our Galaxy Nexus (Maguro) and Nexus 4 (Mako) build to a CM 12.1 based build. For the Maguro this solved the garbled audio issue that was present on our previous CM 10.1 based builds. We also have a new target device running on CM 12.1 based build, the Nexus 5 (codename Hammerhead)! We are fully aware that Cyanogen Inc stopped development of Cyanogen OS and also supporting the development of CyanogenMod by the community and all builds have been taken offline. At the time of writing the successor of CyanogenMod, LineageOS, is still in early stages of their setup and has just it’s initial builds, however this is not available for all target devices (yet). We’ll be re-assessing our source for builds at some point in the near future. The change to support LineageOS and/or AOSP directly should be fairly straight forward. Our RaspberryPi2 and RaspberryPi3 builds are currently building again and are included in the release this time. The UI is still not working for the RaspberryPi devices, but at least you should be able to get it to boot and connect via console. Many other small items have been fixed as well, see below for more details of all the changes! Known issues: Node-SQLite3 is currently not working. Components using Node-SQLite3 have switched to an alternative storage method for now. Focus bug on input fields. You can work around this by hiding the virtual keyboard and pressing the input again. Changelog Applications: Messaging (org.webosports.messaging): Conversion to Enyo 2.7, package.json: Add missing icon.png, replaced Contact Picker with Address Picker, Renamed AddrModel to MsgAddrModel, Made Message Address Search list more compact (Mojo-style), return addr picker dynamically populated in threadview, fix back gesture, unified use of guillemets. Contacts (org.webosports.app.contacts): Fixed bug where first IM address wouldn’t have type, updated messaging service picker to align with supported account types, removed obsolete entries. Settings (org.webosports.app.settings): Clarify keyword: AutoCompletion->AutoCorrection. System Level: meta-rpi-luneos: Fix build issues. jenkins-jobs: Add Hammerhead as target v2.3.9. webos-telephonyd: telephonyservice_sms.c: Use timestamp in milliseconds for legacy compatibility. luna-sysmgr: autoCompletion->autoCorrection. webos-keyboard: autoCompletion->autoCorrection, fix various typos mSpellchecing -> mSpellchecking. luna-init: autoCompletion->autoCorrection. pulseaudio-modules-droid: fix build when using android-headers from Ubuntu. qt5-qpa-hwcomposer-plugin: fix build for 4.4.2 with Ubuntu’s android headers. nyx-conf: add hammerhead configuration. luneos-package: use KERNEL_IMAGETYPE for the image name. initramfs-boot-android: improve initrd’s kernel logging. luna-sysmgr-conf: externalize machine-specific configuration files. nyx-modules: externalize machine-specific configuration files. luna-next-conf: add hammerhead environment file. luna-sysmgr-conf: have better GridUnit for hammerhead. VoiceCall: Update to latest from upstream (28-Jan-2017). pulseaudio-modules-droid: Update to latest from upstream (28-Jan-2017). sensorfw: Update to latest from upstream (28-Jan-2017). mobile-broadband-provider-info: Switch to Mer variant & bump SRCREV. qtbase_git.bbappend: Use += for PACKAGECONFIG_DISTRO. hunspell: removed from meta-webos-ports using the one from meta-openembedded instead. libhybris: Bump SRCREV, together with fixes for issues. Add qtubuntu-camera as backend. The usual 1. Sign up for the bug tracker 2. Get involved and 3. Join the mailing list Download and Install Feel free to download the updated builds to get started. Tenderloin, Mako, Hammerhead and Maguro remain our focus for now, but the emulator & Grouper work too. Please note that in order to use the latest stable builds on the Galaxy Nexus (Maguro), Nexus 4 (Mako) and Nexus 5 (Hammerhead) you need to flash the CM 12.1 images first using CWM/TWRP. In order to do so, you might be required to do a “factory reset” or at least “wipe cache”. CWM/TWRP will indicate when this is needed. After successfully flashing CM 12.1, make sure to boot it at least once before going back to CWM/TWRP to flash the latest LuneOS image! We have provided links to CM 12.1 for these 3 images on our device pages below. Installation instructions for TouchPad (Tenderloin), Galaxy Nexus (Maguro), Nexus 4 (Mako), Nexus 5 (Mako), Emulator, and Nexus7 (Grouper) are on the wiki. And remember we don’t do timelines. Don’t forget to contact us with any questions and feel free to join the discussion on the webOS Nation forums. Catch us on Twitter @webosports on IRC: Freenode:#webos-ports or email [email protected]. We will see you in March with a new release! We have the following items on our to-do list to focus on: Get the camera working Work on Yocto Morty/Pyro upgrade Investigate feasibility of QT 5.7/5.8 Upgrade UI tweaks Messaging improvements Image credit: And the prize for best dressed chai latte goes to… by Lachlan Hardy. Related posts: LuneOS October Stable Release: Caffè Latte LuneOS February Stable Release: Café Miel LuneOS December Stable Release: Cappuccino View the full article

This article is unusual for pivotCE. Most of our articles are aimed at the general reader, but this one is specifically aimed at those with knowledge of javascript frameworks – specifically frameworks designed for app development. We hope this article will reach such people in our community and beyond in the hope that the LuneOS project can benefit from a range of experience and insight and even perhaps recruit some new contributors. Long time webOS fans will be aware that one of it’s features was the ease with which apps could be created using methods more associated with web design. Most (non-game) apps were in fact mixtures of HTML & javascript. This and the ‘synergy’ of connecting data from various remote services into common user interfaces is what gave the system the name of webOS. In the early days, webOS was at the cutting edge of using web technologies, but performance was not as responsive compared to more traditionally coded apps. Since the days of legacy webOS, many improvements have been made in app development frameworks and their implementation to bring speed up towards that of ‘native’ apps or at least fast enough for the user to see little difference. Increasing speed, power and multi-core processors have also helped, though performance is beginning to plateau as the physical limits of current hardware is reached. The first (proprietary) development framework for webOS was called ‘Mojo’. After the purchase by HP, the (Open-source) ‘Enyo’ framework was introduced to target more varied screen sizes. Version 1 ran on the webOS 3.0 HP TouchPad and was back-ported to phones. Version 2 became a cross-platform framework also. Of course, we all know about the end of hardware at HP and the eventual sell off of all parts of webOS. Officially, the Open-webOS project is still maintained by LG & HP and LG’s Silicon Valley lab have continued to develop the Enyo JS framework. The part used to make the UI for mobile apps is called ‘Onyx’. To make apps suitable for Television screens, LG developed a new UI library called, ‘Moonstone’. Enyo itself has developed through version 2.5 to now stand at version 2.7 and LGSVL now looks to the next generation of Enyo (Forum comments). But this brings with it potential problems for LuneOS. To begin with, the various iterations of Enyo are not entirely backwards compatible. This is not a big problem as each version can be installed and recent versions are even able to package up modular parts of the framework with the app itself. But to take advantage of the latest improvements, each app needs some rewriting. At this time, apps written specifically for LuneOS are almost all system apps and have been written in whichever version of Enyo was current at the time. Secondly, the Enyo team are assessing developments in web app development and technology and considering where to next take the framework. This project is currently called, ‘Enyo-next gen’ and will be based in part on the React.js framework. This means that compatibility will again be broken – likely to a greater extent than previously. For this reason, updates of existing LuneOS apps have been put on hold until the Enyo situation becomes clearer. As the Onyx UI library is built on Enyo 2.x, it will not work on React.js unless it is re-engineered. The team’s priorities are obviously lead by LG’s webOS product line: Televisions (briefly a watch) and now refrigerators. It seems that the next generation Enyo will target mobile devices, but Onyx will not be part of the package. It remains to be seen what the replacement will be like. To avoid remaining in a backwater, LuneOS will need apps. The time is approaching when developer attention must turn from the core OS to the app ecosystem. Millions of apps aren’t needed, but a decent range of modern apps will be. LuneOS has a modern browser based on Chrome. All modern JS frameworks support it and therefore many web apps can be run on LuneOS: old Legacy favourites, apps from similar systems and standalone web apps. Of course, the latter examples won’t necessarily resemble or act like webOS apps and LuneOS will still need a framework for original apps; One that will ‘feel’ and hopefully look like webOS. In short, the LuneOS project needs to make a choice of javascript framework for the future and standardise upon it. What are the options? webOS Ports could stick with Enyo 2.7. It will be supported for a while. The problem is that this version will not be updated as technology moves forward and the Ports team lack the resources to maintain the framework in addition to the OS. If Enyo-next gen works well (It is certainly expected to be a contender), but lacks the UI elements suitable for LuneOS, the team could attempt to maintain a version of the Onyx or Mochi UI libraries for dedicated use, but again human resource issues mean this option will probably be overlooked in favour of a more ‘off the shelf’ solution. Enyo-next gen could provide an ideal solution, offering the option of creating webOS-style mobile apps. Another suitable framework may need to be found – one that can offer modern performance and which will be supported for the foreseeable future. A popular framework could also deliver a range of apps from sources beyond the small webOS community. The webOS Ports team are soliciting demo web apps that show the “feel” of webOS can be duplicated by candidate frameworks. What is needed from a javascript framework suitable for LuneOS? LuneOS developer, Doug Reeder of Hominid Software suggests some requirements: 1. A single app is usable on both phone- and tablet-sized screens. 2. A layout widget to organize multiple panes, like Enyo Panels, but possibly behaving differently. 3. A list with 500 items. 4. …whose items can be swiped left or right 5. …and whose items can be rearranged by dragging. A fuller list can be found at this wiki page. Most of our articles link back to the forum at webOS Nation, but in this special case, we are going to link to the archive of the webOS Ports mailing list and invite those interested to join the list and the IRC channel. Here are archives of the discussion so far: Enyo EOL 1, 2, 3. Choosing a new JavaScript framework and UI library 1, 2, 3. If you are familiar with JS frameworks, you are invited to share your experiences of development and performance and suggest candidates for testing. Please click here for information on the IRC channel and how to join the webOS Ports mailing list. Please share this article with anyone who may have useful insights. Image credit: Working on the Meccano Bridge by David Dixon. Related posts: Enyo 2.7 released, with next generation plans Job Listing: Staff Software Engineer for Enyo JavaScript/HTML5 Introduction to Enyo, Minneapolis, 2nd May. View the full article

Shortly after the end of CES, I searched idly for any news from TCL. You may have read that they recently acquired the rights to make & sell Blackberry hardware. Longtime readers will recall TCL’s announcement at 2015’s CES that they had acquired from HP, the last remaining piece of Palm Inc: The brand name. To create an image for that story, I added Palm’s logo to the image on TCL’s website: Palm joins TCLSince that announcement, where TCL encouraged the ‘Palm community’ to participate in developing a device worthy of the name, there has been silence. Now, some have speculated that we could see some kind of combined Palm/Blackberry wonder device, but so far only a Blackberry has been revealed. If you click the link, you can see the familiar keyboard style & this points up the difference between the two purchases: One is a license to manufacture a branded product including hardware & the software that runs on it. The other is just a brand name. Of course, nothing prevents TCL from making anything it wants & calling it a Palm device, but despite it’s recent travails, the Blackberry brand is a going concern with up to date & current technology. Palm is not. In my search for TCL/Palm news, I of course visited the website & the image at the top of this story is from that site. My only change this time was to enlarge it. Note how the Blackberry logo has been added, then realise that the Palm logo doesn’t appear on their website & to my knowledge, never has. Two years on from the 2015 announcement, this likely tells us all we need to know about the future of the Palm brand, but there is one optimistic spin that can be put on this: TCL own the Palm brand. There’s a lot more direct benefit from the Blackberry arrangement, but it’s a licensing deal & one that has resulted from Blackberry’s problems in selling it’s own product. TCL’s Alcatel brand has long been an affordable, no doubt profitable, but unspectacular also-ran in the mass market. The team-up gives TCL access to a technology leader, a respected brand & enables Blackberry to concentrate on software, letting TCL worry about selling product to the masses. If TCL succeed, some of the profit will return to Blackberry. If they fail or the deal turns sour for some other reason, they have another brand ready to be painted on a high-quality handset; A brand unencumbered by licensing fees or any other external requirements: Palm. But really, don’t hold your breath! Related posts: Video: A feature comparison between webOS and Blackberry 10 HP is to Palm as Lenovo is to Motorola…Not Good Christmas News Crumbs, 2016 View the full article

LG has had a few announcements at CES over the years and some of them have included webOS since the company unveiled it’s webOS smart TVs in 2014. The televisions are now on to version 3 of the OS. Late last year we saw stories that webOS would appear on a video projector and in the last few days a refrigerator. What did the CES presentation in Las Vegas have to offer? As ever, it was less than hoped (at least for webOS on mobile fans), but within the bounds of it’s presentation, what was shown was very impressive. Firstly, there was no sign or mention of the projector, so we’ll get back to that another time. The Presentation was introduced as usual by LG CTO, Dr Skott Ahn. Main presentation duties were once again handled by LG’s head of US marketing, David Vanderwaal. Of the products that made it onto the stage, two ran LG’s webOS operating system. Mr Vanderwaal began with the new refrigerator. In many ways, the Smart Instaview fridge is simply a combination of existing technologies from LG and elsewhere. It has a 29″ portrait format screen on one of the doors. Tapping on the door displays a view of the interior so that no energy is wasted in unnecessary opening and it has automatic power saving features. This view can also be sent to a smart phone so you can double check your list when out shopping. The fridge runs a version of webOS, with an interface clearly different from that on the TVs. It can play music and videos, track the freshness of products on the shelf, display noticeboard type messages, recipes and order fresh groceries online. LG have worked with Amazon to integrate their Alexa voice recognition system for control and ordering. The whole arrangement can hook up to to an Artificial Intelligence system called Deep ThinQ to anticipate the user’s lifestyle needs. The flag-ship fridge has almost every feature you could think to cram in and is an impressive item for the moneyed consumer. After a diversion into a pair of Schmoo-style robots, the focus moved to televisions. This year will see an update to LG webOS 3.5 including support for recording and 360 VR videos. Mr Vanderwaal started this section with improvements to their LCD display technology. LG uses nano cell technology to improve colour rendition up to 1 billion colours. Both luminance and viewing angles are improved. Mr Vanderwaal was joined on stage by representatives from both Technicolor and Dolby Labs. The new TVs will support both company’s systems for colour rendition and high dynamic range pictures among other formats. Some HDR processing can be applied to images with standard dynamic range. To compliment improved colour, brightness and contrast range, LG speaker systems also support Dolby’s Atmos sound system. Dolby’s Giles Baker stated that, “there is no better TV on the market today.” The support from these two big names in cinema technology is certainly impressive. The presentation finished with the flag-ship TV for 2017: The 77″ LG Signature W. This 4K OLED TV needs no back light so can be only 2.57mm thick. Mr Vanderwaal said this enables the TV to be magnetically mounted directly to the wall and claimed that this made the total thickness less than 4mm, casting such a minimal shadow that the TV appears to be part of the wallpaper – hence the ‘W’ in the name. There was brief mention of a new generation Blu-ray Ultra HD HDR player to compliment this screen, but there were few details. Here is the video (you may need to forward to the start): What was interesting was that there was no mention of mobile phones or tablets. It seems clear that this sector has somewhat reached saturation – at least in most developed countries. Though LG has produced consistently high quality devices, they have struggled to differentiate – even with experiments like their modular G5. After Samsung’s PR disaster with the Note 7, there may be an opportunity for LG to grab more market share. Well known is the rivalry between LG and fellow South Korean electronic manufacturers, Samsung. They often attempt to match and ideally top each other. As Samsung have attempted to avoid Google’s increasing control of Android by using their own Tizen system in other product categories, we have wondered if LG might follow – especially when Tizen on TVs so closely resembles LG webOS. Now as a refrigerator runs webOS, we can again wonder if a webOS IoT eco-system can be built. Whether this creates a path for a commercial webOS phone or even a webOS toaster remains to be seen. Maybe next year? Related posts: The LG Keynote at CES 2016 LG will show webOS TVs at CES 2014 Countdown to LG’s CES 2014 press conference View the full article