What 2.0 Brings to the Table

Unlike what the ‘2.0’ suffix may suggest, webOS 2.0 is more of a thorough evolutionary update to the platform than anything else, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I had mentioned earlier, webOS already had a pretty solid user experience to begin with and with this update, HP is tidying things up and tying loose ends. There still are some issues with the platform in its current iteration (with the mediocre email client being a major one), but considering the fact that it hasn’t been released to the public in its final form, there still may be tweaks and improvements coming. Anyway, we have enough here to get going. If you’re new to webOS or want a primer on what you get to begin with, you can have a look at our Pre review.

Stacks

What can you do when you already have one of the best renditions of multitasking on a mobile platform? Try and make it even better. Using “cards”, webOS made it easy to get in and out of applications in a rather straightforward and seamless manner. If you realized that you had to send your boss an important update while you have a 0.25 second lead over your competitor in Need For Speed, tap the gesture area. The game minimizes, you tap the email app, type and send out the email, tap the game card again, and you’re back to fighting for first place, exactly where you left off.

This made it very easy and quick to switch applications while maintaining their state, but this also encouraged you to have multiple app “cards” running, making it a bit unwieldy and cumbersome to swipe across multiple cards to get to the one you wanted. If only there was a way to somehow stack these cards.... That’s exactly what we get with webOS 2.0: Stacks.


(Left) Multitasking in webOS using cards, (Right) Stacking cards in webOS 2.0

You can now drag cards and drop them over existing cards to create a stack of cards. In addition, any cards resulting from actions in an app will now automatically stack on top of the main app card. And finally, when it makes logical sense, webOS will stack related cards automatically. I found this very useful as now all my calendar events are bunched together with the calendar application, instead of being spread across multiple cards. You can also reorder the cards within a stack, if you choose to do so. While it takes a little practice to get used to dragging and dropping the cards or reordering them, the process in itself is quite logical and easy to grasp.

Where Does webOS Stand Now? Synergy Revisited
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  • alxxx - Sunday, February 6, 2011 - link

    So is HP eating its own dog food and making its staff use Pre2's
    or is it still only half heartedly supporting web os ?

    Pre 2 isn't available on any of the 3 major carriers here in Australia
  • Targon - Sunday, February 6, 2011 - link

    HP is not releasing ANYTHING until Feb 9th, so the lack of new devices that you have heard about may be due to keeping things quiet.
  • kmmatney - Sunday, February 6, 2011 - link

    I'll always have fond memories of the original Pre. My company is on ATT, and when I was told get my first smartphone, I was specifically told to go to the ATT store and get a crappy $79 Palm "smart " phone. I asked if I could get an iPhone, and they said no - too expensive. So I went to the ATT store, and luckily enough the Pre had just come out on Sprint, and ATT was no longer allowed to sell any Palm smartphones. Woohoo! This allowed me to buy an iPhone instead, and after showing my company that it was only $20 more, it was then an approved phone, allowing all my co-workers to go out and get iPhones. This was back in 2009, so the only smartphones worth getting on ATT were iPhones or Blackberries.
  • commet67 - Wednesday, February 9, 2011 - link

    In another era the market would have been iOS and Pre to worthy competitors. The core issue is that Google bought stole and copied a bunch of technologies and gave them away for free with Android. This is called dumping in any other industry - except in this case it wasn't hardware but software. It basically puts all the legitimate Software OS companies out of business - the little guys first - (this is a major part of the US economy and spells doom for other OS developers). If Microsoft didn't have windows and office to fund their mobile division they would be out of business to from Goggle's illegal and unethical ("don't be evil" my a$$!) behavior.

    Where are the feds to stop Google from killing off our tech industry - it will be Google's free OS (NO Software revenues from the rest of the world to USA - just great for the monster trade deficit) and a bunch of Korean and Taiwanese and future Chinese Hardware makers (again no Hardware revenue to the USA).

    Google is killing our future economy and a key growth industry we created. Where is the outrage! - where are the Feds?!

    HP is probably too far behind to resuscitate Palm to any substantial market share after Google's illegal between rounds knockout punch - but at least web OS may live to see another day.

    (P.S. I ban Android and use iOS)
  • silentim - Saturday, February 19, 2011 - link

    What HP need is its own hardware store. Dont fully trust ISP to market their phone, instead open their own showroom and store and let people try with the hardware. And also more presence in non US market, I mean lot of smart developers does not have access to Nexus S just because they don't live in US. Don't underestimate Asian market, e.g China, Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia. The developers there are desperate to get early access of hardware, while the society just love to buy anything new.

    And integration with HP laptop, e.g. rather than preinstall the HP laptop with bloatware, why not preinstall it with WebOS SDK? (like Apple always distribute XCode in its software DVD).

    I think with only knowledge of javascript, HTML, and CSS to build an app, it should have more developer potential.
  • Elijahdug - Monday, September 14, 2020 - link

    https://bit.ly/2FyoGOs - 100-% МЕТОД РАЗВЕСТИ ДЕВУШКУ НА СЕКС

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