Some Star Wars fans think that Episode V “The Empire Strikes Back” is the best of the original trilogy. A key part of that film is Bespin’s Cloud City where Lando Calrissian makes a deal with Darth Vader to betray Han Solo.
What does that have to do with Mozilla?
Well for whatever reason Mozilla has chosen ‘Bespin’ as the name for its new extensible framework for Open Web development — which to me is just a ‘fancy’ name for web editor.
Make no mistake about it though Bespin will be a ‘fancy’ web editor with a web browser interface, HTML 5 and built in collaboration — or at least that’s the plan.So in a way you could call it a ‘cloud’ web editor, though I personally think the ‘cloud’ term is ridiculously overused.
The initial demo version is interesting and shows the basic direction, but there is still lots for Mozilla developers to do here.
(Click left for a screenshot)
Years ago when I was still a Netscape and Mozilla Suite user I used the built-in Netscape Composer, which had its limitations. Over time (like most of my peers) I moved to Macromedia (now Adobe) Dreamweaver. It’ll be interesting to see where this project goes, Mozilla has some solid ideas that could change the way many web developers develop.
After the jump I’ve embedded a Mozilla vid giving more details and direction.
