Guess what I found in my inbox today?
For a moment, that kind of made my day. I mean, I’ve been waiting almost a year for this mail to arrive. No kidding. I applied for the beta after reading GigaOm’s post about Xcerion’s Internet OS, XIOS (now apparently renamed icloud). That was on 1 April last year.
So. I receive the mail today to say that my beta account has been activated. Go me! I head on over to activate my account, invite a few friends.. and what do I see?
So much for beta testing. I guess April Fool’s came a year late for Xcerion. I’d have thought developing for a (relatively more) standards compliant browser like Firefox for something as Web-centric as an Internet OS might be something of a priority. Apparently I thought wrong.
Re-reading the article from GigaOm, I realise that “Xcerion counted Lou Perazzoli, a former Microsoft distinguished engineer and one of key architect of Windows NT, and John Connors, former Microsoft chief financial officer was an investor.”
Oh. I guess that makes sense.
HA. HA. HA.
——–
Well, yeah, I know it’s a beta and all, and we can’t expect everything to be perfect. But seriously, to develop only for IE? I would’ve thought it’s usually the other way around: developing first for compliant browsers, then mangling customising for IE. Xcerion must know something we don’t.
Still, I’m hoping they’ll buck up and come up with Firefox support soon, so people without access to IE can still give it a go.
Goran said
am April 18 2008 @ 2:33 pm
Yes it is unfortunate that only IE6 and IE7 are supported for the moment. However Xcerion has stated that it wants to adapt icloud/xios to Firefox.
You as a developer will develop Applications using XML (for logic, for UI and for data). There is no adaptaing your application to different browsers. When icloud supports Firefox, your application will also support it. It is up to Xcerion to make the XML code render exactly the same in Internet Explorer as in Firefox and not you as a developer.
Kind regards,
Goran
icloud Beta Team said
am April 18 2008 @ 9:03 pm
Thanks for writing about icloud. You have to remember, we started developing this in 2001. At that time Firefox was not mature enough to allow something like icloud to be written. Today, it had probably been better to start with Firefox
We opened the beta up early in the IE to let people start develop, even though we where not ready with everything like Firefox support. It was better to let some people on, than having everybody waiting. Since we are driven with XML, the same applications developed will also work later in Firefox.
icloud Beta Team
Ruiwen said
am April 19 2008 @ 4:18 am
@Goran, icloud Beta Team
Thanks for taking the time to reply =)
I guess my disappointment is really directed at the fact that at this point, I am unable to even view the interface in Firefox, much less develop applications for the system. I did expect web sites to work better in Firefox than IE.
All the same, I’m happy to hear work is being done on getting icloud to work properly in Firefox, and I look forward to the day. (Just wish we’d get there a little faster though!)