The future of HP’s webOS operating system remains uncertain. While the company canceled all current webOS smartphones and tablets this summer, HP has continued to push out software updates for the million or so HP TouchPads that had been sold. But it looks like the company won’t be offering any updates for the Palm Pre3 smartphone.

A member of the HP developer relations team posted a message on the webOS Developer Center forums suggesting that there are no plans to offer any software updates for the Pre3.

That’s not a huge surprise. There aren’t many Pre3 phones in the wild. It was launched in the UK on August 17th, just a day before HP canceled the phone.

Still, for the handful of Pre3 owners out there, the fact that there won’t be any more updates comes as bad news. After all, the news only came out in response to a question about a bug affecting the Pre3 which had already been fixed for the TouchPad tablet. It looks like the smartphone version of that bug may never be fixed.

via PreCentral

One issue which has reared its ugly head on most current tablet OSes is how to deal with legacy apps. For the upcoming HP TouchPad and the shiny, new webOS 3, the challenge is how to handle apps created using the older Palm Mojo SDK. As the Touchpad nears launch readiness, however, HP has finally revealed its response in the latest beta build of its tablet emulator.

Right now, Mojo apps default to running in their original resolution — a Pre-friendly 320×480. As you can see, the emulator also defaults to rendering a virtual handset around the app. HP has included a way for developers to tag their apps so as to utilize the TouchPad’s full 9.7″ display, though doing so causes the virtual gesture area to disappear. That’s not a problem if an app offers other built-in navigation options, but it could certainly cause issues in some cases.

Of course, the emulator is still in its beta form and HP has released four versions between April 12th and now. As they continue to update, the rough edges will no doubt be smoothed out.

via PreCentral

With a slide-out QWERTY keyboard like the one the Palm Pre and Plus hide beneath their shells (or a permanently exposed one in the case of the Pixi) always at the ready, it’s a shame when you want to get productive on a mobile website but can’t.

That’s been the case with Google Docs for some time now, because although iOS and Android users had been granted editing superpowers webOS wasn’t invited to the party. Not until now, anyways. Forum users over at PreCentral have confirmed that they can now edit Google Docs files on their devices — from webOS 2.1 right back to version 1.4.5.

As you can tell from PreCentral’s screen capture, the formatting isn’t quite perfect — with a bit of the entered text spilling beyond the boundaries of the input area. Still it’s better than not being able to make changes at all. Is there anything more frustrating than pulling up a document only to discover you have read-only access?

Ok, there are plenty of things. But for webOS users, this is one more irritation which can finally be sent packing.

When Palm introduced the Palm Pre and Pixi phones a few years ago running the shiny new webOS operating system, the company announced that it was moving away from support for legacy Palm apps. But rather than leave users in the cold after they had  spent years (and a reasonable amount of cash)  collecting PalmOS apps, Palm partnered with a company called MotionApps to release a PalmOS emulator for webOS called Classic. You could use it to run old apps on the new platform — until recently.

With the launch of webOS 2.0, Palm eliminated some of the underlying code that MotionApps needed to get Classic working properly. So MotionApps abandoned the project.

But now an independent developer named Arthur Thornton has posted information on how to get Classic to work on devices running webOS 2.0 and 2.1.

Sure, old Palm OS apps might not look as pretty on a Palm Pre 2 or other new phone. And they may not have been updated in years. But if you rely on an app that isn’t available for webOS, or if you just don’t feel like paying for the new version when you’ve already paid for the old, then Classic can certainly fill a need.

via PreCentral

HP has decided to remove the Palm OS ROM from webOS 2.0 — which means that while anyone with an older version of webOS can install an app called Classic to run… well, classic PalmOS apps on the Palm Pre or Pixi, there’s officially no way to run Palm OS apps on webOS 2.0.

Motion Apps, the company behind Classic has already made it clear that there won’t be an official Classic app for webOS 2.0. But it turns out that all hope is not lost.

It turns out that if you extract the Palm OS ROM from webOS 1.4.5 and install it on a webOS 2.0 device like the Palm Pre 2, you should be able to get Classic to work.

It seems likely that HP and Palm left out the ROM simply because many users didn’t need it, but it was taking up space — or because the company wants to encourage developers to write new apps for webOS and for users to upgrade to new apps instead of relying on legacy apps for Palm OS.

You can find step by step instructions for installing the Palm OS ROM at PreCentral.

I don’t normally cover smartphone hardware, but today HP started taking orders fro the Palm Pre 2, which is notable because it’s the first device to run the new webOS 2 software.

The Palm Pre 2 is available for $449.99 from HP.com. That’s the price for an unlocked phone. Wireless carriers will probably start offering the phone soon, with deep discounts for customers that sign up for long term service contracts.

The Pre 2 looks a lot like the original Palm Pre and has the same curved design and slide-out keyboard. It has a slightly faster CPU, but the biggest difference is that it runs the latest operating system from HP/Palm — although webOS 2.0 should roll out to older devices soon.

The new operating system packs a number of updates, including support for Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and Skype (for Verizon customers). It has QuickOffice baked in for viewing office documents. And it has improved multitasking, better integration with web services such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, and more.

You can check out a short video I took recently looking at some of the new features in webOS 2.0 after the break.

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Sure, HP and Palm officially launched webOS 2.0 a few weeks ago, but I got my first chance to check out the new operating system at an event in New York last night, and I have some video to prove it.

In the video after the break you can see how “Stacks” works to group together currently running apps that are linked. For instance, if you open an attachment from an email, they’ll be grouped together. If you open the web browser by clicking a link in OpenMenu, those apps will be grouped together.

There’s also an in-depth look at the new Facebook app, which lets you view multiple items without closing cards. If you want to see your messages, news feeds, friends list, or other data, you can just keep opening new items and the cards will be added to a “stack.”

Finally the friendly HP/Palm rep showed how the new “Just Type” feature makes it easier to find what you’re looking for just by entering a few letters in the search bar.

In other news, while he wasn’t able to comment on exactly when HP would release a tablet-friendly version of webOS, he did confirm that it’s on the way — and that existing webOS apps should run on the tablet version although the reverse might not necessarily be the case. After all, if an app is written for a larger, higher resolution display, it might not look right on a handheld item. Just look a the iPad and iPhone email apps to see how that works.

Sorry about the poor visibility in the video. The lighting was awful and the table twas apparently shakier than I thought when I rested my camera tripod on it.

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While webOS was built from the ground up as a new operating system, effectively severing support for old school PalmOS apps, Palm partnered with a company called MotionApps to develop an app called Classic. Basically, it’s a PalmOS emulation layer for webOS, allowing webOS users to run classic Palm apps on the Palm Pre or Pixi.

Unfortunately, it looks like the recently launched webOS 2.0 won’t be able to run Classic… which means it won’t be able to run old PalmOS apps.

MotionApps says that Palm and HP released webOS 2.0 without providing the tools necessary to run Classic. As a result, Motionapps has decided to cease development of future versions of Classic. The company doesn’t seem all too happy about it, and claims that Palm’s changes are “contrary to our agrement with Palm.” MotionApps will continue to support the existing version of its software for now.

via Palm InfoCenter