CES 2009: Palm Shakes Its Mojo At DevelopersCES 2009: Palm Shakes Its Mojo At Developers

Now that we know about the new Pre and webOS, we're naturally curious to know how Palm expects to bring applications and services to webOS. In an answer to that burning query, Palm announced Mojo and the Mojo SDK, its new development tools for webOS.Palm's webOS is an interesting animal. Linux is providing the base engine, but webOS is really a browser. The entire user interface is based on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, all Web-based standards. In other words, it is completely different from developing for Palm's Garnet OS, which is used currently on Palm Treos. So how will developers create applications for this new OS and can they bring their old ones to webOS?

The answer is Mojo.

According to Palm, "Palm webOS applications are easy to write using Mojo, a new application framework based on the HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript standards that Web developers already know and love. webOS applications are installed and run directly on the device at native speed and have access to a wide range of device services."

Mojo will let developers:

That's all for creating brand-new applications. For developers who already have applications for Palm devices, Palm says that it is absolutely possible to migrate data from an existing PDB file to a new webOS app.

How quickly developers will respond to and adopt Mojo for Palm is another story. While I am sure Palm already is talking to its developer community about webOS and Mojo, there have been no announcements from major software creators that they'll develop for webOS.

More information about Mojo and the SDK is available here.