HP webOSDeveloper Portal editor-in-chief Fred Patton today announced the delivery of the February Open webOS commitments which includes: extensions to QtWebKit, the release of Isis (web browser), integration with JavaScript core, UI Enyo widgets, and governance model.

“The web increasingly provides the best option for cross-platform development. It continues to be rapidly adopted and improved upon by a wide variety of platforms,” Patton wrote.

“Developers look to standards-based web development as a way of deploying across the mobile landscape, maximizing the potential market. We’re seeing proof of that with the adoption of Enyo, which has been downloaded 40,000 times in only three weeks. With today’s release, webOS remains at the forefront of this emerging standard”.

QtWebKit

The QtWebKit (a.k.a. “Cute” WebKit), originally open-sourced by Nokia, offers “unrivaled speed” and standards compliance while providing a powerful and fast platform for Enyo and apps.  It will also serve as the point of integration between the underlying System Manager, which will be open-sourced later this year, and the web rendering layer of webOS.

Isis webOS browser

HP developers are undergoing a process of moving webOS to the QtWebKit in the hopes of increasing web site compatibility and overall performance.  And their efforts came to fruition as they release the first part of their offerings to the open source community – the Isis webOS browser.

According to Patton, the Isis webOS browser is extremely responsive compared to other browsers, has a faster render pipeline and JacaScript execution profile, extensively supportive of HTML5 and CSS3.  Aside from that, they will also offer enhanced support for products like Adobe Flash and Netscape Plug-in API so they can run in non-X11 environments.  They also aim to deploy the Isis webOS browser in mobile devices and other form factors.