Palm releases Project Ares as public beta

On Thursday, Palm made its new browser-based mobile development platform available to all developers as a public beta. Dubbed Project Ares, developers can now create programs for Palm WebOS simply by firing up their browser (Firefox, Safari, and Chrome are supported) and signing into their account where they will then have access to all the tools they need to build apps.

Project Ares includes such features as:

• Drag-and-drop interface builder, code editor, visual debugger, and log viewer
• Access to full library of Mojo UI widgets
• Push-button project and scene creation
• Drag-and-drop file upload
• SMS and MMS messaging delivery is improved
• Ability to run apps directly on the WebOS emulator or device

Palm's believes that the future of mobile will be built on the Web and hopes that Project Ares will open the door to more developers creating apps for WebOS. Of course, one of the criticisms about the OS and Palm's current devices, the Palm Pre and Palm Pixi, has been the sparse app catalog, but it's been making progress. Hopefully, Project Ares will speed things along just a bit more.

To find more information on Project Ares or to sign up, you can check out Palm's Web site.