Palm's innovative mobile operating system, webOS, was never a commercial success, but the team behind it certainly had some great ideas. Now, long after HP largely abandoned the operating system, the team is releasing one of its most intriguing user interface ideas to the community for further work. The project is known as Mochi, and we first revealed it earlier this year alongside some of very last ideas that the webOS team was working on before HP scuttled its plans. The user interface overhaul introduced a cleaner, "flat" design long before Apple and Google made similar moves, and it included a feature that expanded "cards" so that you could swap in multiple panes at once for multitasking, á la Snap in Windows 8.

The code and concepts that the team put together is now available for the community to work with via an open source framework, and since the team released its planning documentation as well, there's some hope that intrepid developers can build a working product on their own time. Alternatively, others may use some of the attractive design elements, like buttons, sliders, menus, and more for completely different projects. If you want to get a closer look at Mochi, you can check out the new Wiki and the documentation full of assets the team created for the updated operating system. As well as images of tools like buttons and sliders, the documentation includes working samples, including a very fun multi-colored activity indicator. As for the webOS team, it's going back to continue work on the operating system for use in LG's new smart TVs.

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