HP releases Isis browser for webOS

Stewart Mitchell Read more February 14, 2012

HP has released more pieces of its webOS platform to the developer community, following a promise to open source the OS by September.

The company cut webOS loose last year, but is keeping it alive with tools being made available to developers through an open source model.

The company said in a blog post that it had released tools for app development and revealed details of how the project will be managed.

It also released its new Isis web browser, based on QtWebKit, a platform open-sourced by Nokia.

“webOS required a fast, standards-compliant web browser engine to provide the core of both the standalone browser and the rendering technology for the platform and its apps,” HP said. “For this reason, we chose QtWebKit to power the next generation experience for webOS.”

HP said Isis’ benchmarks showed it was on par with browsers made for “general consumption”, touting its fast render times and HTML5 standards compliance.

“We are also providing enhanced support for legacy products like Adobe Flash and other Netscape Plug-in API (NPAPI) plugins to allow them to run in non-X11 environments,” HP added. “In combination with the rest of webOS, we will be providing a complete browsing experience that can be deployed on mobile devices and other form factors.”

The company said the Isis browser was compatible with HP TouchPad devices running webOS 3.0.5.