Earlier tonight, Alexia found and posted some screenshots of something that sure looked a lot like the mythical “Project Spartan“. Shortly thereafter, Facebook took down the page in question. And for good reason. That was Project Spartan, we’ve now confirmed.
Facebook’s f8 is quickly approaching — by all accounts, it’s going to be massive. Ten days ago, I laid out some of what we were hearing would be coming. Now it’s time for one important update — for something not coming: Project Spartan.
Facebook’s HTML5 app project (which will not be called Spartan at launch) is ready to go. But the latest word is that Facebook is worried that the project is so ambitious and the ramifications of it will be so large that there’s some concern that it may overwhelm some of their other big announcements at their event. The fact is that they have so much coming that they don’t need to announce it just yet.
For well over a year now, Google has been hyping up something called Native Client. It’s an open source technology that allows a web browser to run compiled native code. In other words, it’s a potential missing link between native apps and web apps. And now it’s finally getting baked into Chrome.
As Google notes on their Chrome Blog blog today, the latest beta version of Chrome (version 14) has Native Client built-in. Their implementation allows for C and C++ code to be executed inside of the browser while maintaining the security that a web technology like JavaScript offers.
Adobe released a public preview of Adobe Edge, its new web motion and interaction design tool, on Monday. Edge enables users to create animated content using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript — not Flash. It’s the first professional-grade HTML5 editing tool on the market and is currently available for free, as the company is looking for feedback from developers.
Interestingly enough, Adobe Edge shares the name with Adobe’s free newsletter, which is bound to create some confusion among users.
The leaking of Facebook continues. Following our stories yesterday about their new Photos mobile app and “Project Spartan” (a new mobile app platform), Nick Bilton of The New York Times reports that Facebook will soon release an iPad app. Yes, finally.
We had also heard in recent weeks that despite Facebook’s seemingly anti-iPad stance, such an app does exist internally, and has for some time. But we hadn’t been able to find anyone who had actually seen it. Well, until right now. We can now confirm the app’s existence with someone who has actually seen it.
“It looks pretty slick. Photos are fullscreen & really nice UI,” says a person who has played with the app.
I’ve long complained about Facebook’s lack of an iPad app. While their regular site works pretty well on the iPad, even Facebook CTO Bret Taylor recognized the need for a UI more custom-tailored for big touch screens.
More importantly, third-party Facebook apps have been flying off the virtual shelves since day one of the iPad (including a few that have tricked people into thinking they were official apps). Facebook needed to get on top of this situation, to ensure that they own their own brand on the device, not some third party. And now they are.
We have not heard a specific date the app will be released, but NYT says that it will hit the App Store in the “coming weeks”.
One interesting tidbit we did hear was that the app has been done for some time, but that Facebook may have been holding it back as a bit of leverage over Apple. Those two companies have been in the news a bunch recently following Apple’s inclusion of Twitter in iOS 5, despite talking about a similar deal with Facebook previously.
And then there was our story yesterday about Project Spartan. We heard (and have seen) indications that Facebook was targeting mobile Safari with the mobile platform. HTML5-based apps as well as Facebook Credits are the key parts of the plan.
Since our story, Facebook PR has gone on the offensive, trying to spin this to other journalists as not being a move against Apple, but rather a way to “complement” their devices (while at the same time declining to admit the project even exists — heh). That’s a bunch of horseshit, and they know it.
But honestly, does anyone expect them to say anything else? It’s not like they’re going to declare war on Apple (or anyone else) publicly. You don’t announce to someone that you’re going to punch them in the face before you punch them in the face. That would be madness. (Madness?! This. Is. Sparta[n]!)
Again, developers actually working on this new platform say it’s very clear that Project Spartan is step one in an attempt to gain control over the mobile space. That means getting on the devices currently controlled by Apple and Google, and doing so without fear of restrictions (hence, HTML5). And it means disrupting the current mobile distribution channels (App Store, Android Market, etc) which are controlled by the gatekeepers. Facebook has to do this because they do not have their own devices. At least not yet.
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