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There is something magical about Firefox OS

• drivebyacct2 14y ago
  I wish they would add softkey support and toro support for the Galaxy Nexus. I'd love to try a build out.
  • CrazedGeek 14y ago
    Are you sure it doesn't already work? The build prerequisites page[1] makes it sound like all variants should work. I've run it on maguro, but it's definitely the most well-supported of the variants. The lack of softkeys made it astoundingly painful; I ended up using a USB OTG keyboard just to navigate. [1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gecko/B2G_build_prerequisites https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gec...
• Robby2012 14y ago
  I'm really in love with Boot2Gecko, it's the future
• zacharyvoase 14y ago
  > In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript! This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues—and IIUC Gecko has some of those already. [1]: http://www.slashgear.com/hp-ipad-2-webos-testing-double-touchpad-performance-says-insider-19172970/ http://www.slashgear.com/hp-ipad-2-webos-testing-double-touc...
  • dshankar 14y ago
    Doesn't the article you link to point our performance issues with the TouchPad _hardware_?
  • ngokevin 14y ago
    WebOS had a proprietary Javascript SDK or something lame. Firefox OS runs on pure HTML5 standards.
    • masklinn 14y ago
      > WebOS had a proprietary Javascript SDK or something lame. WebOS was straight webkit with additional APIs for telephony and hardware access, and a bundled framework to help with laying out. Said framework having been extracted for regular in-browser JS[0] > Firefox OS runs on pure HTML5 standards. Firefox OS runs straight Gecko with additional APIs for telephony and hardware access, without a framework to help getting started. It's the exact bloody fucking same thing. [0] http://enyojs.com/ http://enyojs.com/
      • robhawkes 14y ago
        I posted further up but I'll put it here as well. You might appreciate this piece on WebOS and Fx OS from one of our engineers: http://www.quora.com/How-does-Mozillas-Boot-2-Gecko-compare-with-webOS http://www.quora.com/How-does-Mozillas-Boot-2-Gecko-compare-...
    • sp332 14y ago
      There might have been some proprietary bits, but you can download the code for the WebOS desktop and build it to a useable state from here: https://github.com/openwebos/build-desktop https://github.com/openwebos/build-desktop
  • masklinn 14y ago
    > This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS Yeah, and I find the complete and utter lack of any mention of WebOS in TFA troubling. > What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues Your link points to insufficient hardware though, not software issues. Hardware which seems to have been the main recurring problem on all WebOS machines (according to reports, there were also issues with the software being shipped far too early for v1.0, against the wishes of the engineers working on it)
    • klausa 14y ago
      Well, considering that the same chipset (APQ8060) was also used in some variants of Galaxy S II, I really don't think so that Touchpad hardware was that bad. And the fact that after installing Android 4.0.4 on it, it feels like whole new machine (speed-wise) - I really blame webOS here.
      • robhawkes 14y ago
        Fx OS on the SGS2 runs BLAZING fast compared to the device in the video. The reason why we don't shout about that? Because we're not launching with that device and it's not right to raise expectations in that way.
        • bornhuetter 14y ago
          Are we going to be able to load Fx OS onto our own SGS2s when it's released?
          • kibwen 14y ago
            AFAIK you can do it right this minute, if you'd like. Here's a guide for dual-booting B2G and Android on SGS2 (though I have no idea how up-to-date it is): https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gecko/Dual_boot_of_B2G_and_Android_on_SGS2 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gec...
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    Thanks for the comment, the WebOS question is one I see a lot. One of our engineers answered this recently on Quora, I hope it helps explain the differences a bit: http://www.quora.com/How-does-Mozillas-Boot-2-Gecko-compare-with-webOS http://www.quora.com/How-does-Mozillas-Boot-2-Gecko-compare-...
    • nikcub 14y ago
      I might not be reading this right, but in my mind this summarized as: * WebOS added custom API's to handle parts of the phone hardware that are not web standard, for eg. phone calls, SMS * The Firefox project also added custom API's, except they are submitting them for standardization as web interfaces Why not just implement the WebOS API's and thus make them a standard, or are they considered flawed in some way that the B2G project now solves? This option would have had the added bonus of immediate interop with WebOS applications, developer learning curve, documentation, etc.
      • bryanlarsen 14y ago
        I'm not intimately acquainted with it, but I believe that some of the WebOS API's were too intimately tied to their Javascript framework. I'm sure that Firefox OS used the WebOS API's as inspiration though.
      • newman314 14y ago
        webOS had some ugly bits under the hood that probably would have required cleanup. This would have been great if webOS was in a form ready to be adopted by Mozilla or someone else. As it stands, open webOS has still yet to ship (hopefully soon). Most likely because it has taken this much time to untangle the non-open bits. Even though I understand the reasons why, I'm still extremely bummed that this effort does not cover the Pre3 (or phone based device). Which means people will not be able to go back and retroactively fix a lot of the unfinished bits on the phones.
  • gjulianm 14y ago
    Gecko will have an awesome performance. I went to Telefónica offices in Madrid a few weeks ago. They showed us a prototype (ZTE phone) running one of the lastest builds of Firefox OS (not the nightly, though). We touched it and it had pretty good perfomance. It was somewhat snappy on scrolling items, but overall a similar performance that you get on a medium-cost Android phone. Then we asked about that device. It was a crappy ZTE with 600 MHz CPU and with the poorest Qualcomm chipset. This blew out my mind: a non-optimised system was running with acceptable performance on the lowest of smartphones. I can't imagine how will this perform when it's fully optimised on a high-end smartphone. They're doing a great work.
    • andrewcooke 14y ago
      any idea when/if it will be available to buy? or what markets they are aiming at (latin america?)?
      • robhawkes 14y ago
        Brazil at first, next year. We're working on developer devices that can be used worldwide.
        • ravichhabra 14y ago
          Any developer version that we could buy? I don't mind if we have to pay more. Need to test this for Burma market. Edit: Didn't read carefully. You already mentioned that developer versions would be available worldwide soon. Any mailing list to subscribe for the announcement?
          • grayrest 14y ago
            > Any developer version that we could buy? Like all Mozilla projects, this is developed completely in the open. You can get an original Galaxy Nexus and flash it over to the latest nightly relatively easily. It probably works on other phones, but the nexus is what they gave out at JSConf so that's what I use. ;) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gecko/Building_and_installing_Boot_to_Gecko https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gec...
  • newman314 14y ago
    webOS also suffered from execution issues (as a company). They were forever rewriting things under the hood as a fair number of things were duct-taped together. For example, they moved from a Java based solution to JS using v8 from webOS 1.x to 2.x. Hopefully, Firefox OS will not suffer from the same issues. And I would certainly like to hear more about the under-the-hood architecture. It's pretty eye candy but things like power management quickly jump to the forefront when you actually try to use the device as a phone on a regular basis. As far as the webOS performance issues go, it was less the hardware and more the fact that most of the software were not optimized and shipped with an ENORMOUS amount logging turned on. Put simply, Palm essentially did a "make debug_build" and shipped it. Not trying to be harsh, just what I have observed from poking around webOS.
    • robhawkes 14y ago
      You might be interested in this: https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/Architecture https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/Architecture
      • newman314 14y ago
        The fact that the links says nothing about power or memory management worries me. Those two things IMO were major things affecting webOS. Pretty much all the phone devices shipped with insufficient memory. And given that Fx OS is JS, HTML etc. based, those things have a tendency to chew up a fair bit of mem. Throw in a JIT and suddenly you are in a mem swap situation (which is definitely not batt friendly). So, yeah I would like to see more docs about how those are going to be addressed.
    • masklinn 14y ago
      > For example, they moved from a Java based solution to JS using v8 from webOS 1.x to 2.x. Wow, you may want to do some basic checking on your assertions there: * webOS never used Java, Luna (webOS-to-be) was a skunkworks alternative to the Java-based Prima project. there was java stuff below from Prima, it was not the application core and was never made available to developers * webOS always used both Webkit and V8 for its application runtime (Palm was the first company to ship a mobile V8 port) http://blogs.gurulabs.com/dax/2009/06/palm-pre-webos.html http://blogs.gurulabs.com/dax/2009/06/palm-pre-webos.html http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-inside-story-pre-postmortem http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/5/3062611/palm-webos-hp-insid...
  • sixothree 14y ago
    The world can only process the introduction of so many mobile operating systems at once? I get the impression it was seen as competition to Android, but failed because Palm was a two-bit player in comparison to the Google juggernaut. Maybe if it were being introduced today it would stand more of a chance. edit: oh and as to the failing of the author to acknowledge WebOS speaks to the author's knowledge or honesty, take your pick.
    • ktizo 14y ago
      I pick option 3. The author probably knows about WebOS and didn't think that it was necessary to go over it for this article. [edit] If someone offers you n options, always pick option n + 1.
    • stcredzero 14y ago
      > The world can only process the introduction of so many mobile operating systems at once? If there's a subset of the world for whom an iPhone or a high end Android smartphone is just a pipe dream, then the pipe-dream devices won't be much of a distraction.
      • georgemcbay 14y ago
        One of the great things about Android is that you don't have to be running it on a "high end" phone. Why bother with another new OS for your low-end handset when Android runs pretty well on low-end devices and you still get most of the benefit of Android (Google Apps like Nav, etc, don't require much processor power, they run great even on sub-$100 (off-contact price) phones).
  • oneandoneis2 14y ago
    "Firefox OS is based on the same concepts as WebOS so it's doomed"? Isn't that a bit like saying "OS X is based on BSD so it will only be of interest to hackers"? Execution is important - just because somebody screwed up an idea before doesn't mean that nobody else can make it work.
• antidaily 14y ago
  Looks pretty but painfully slow in that demo video.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    We have plenty of challenges to overcome but it's nothing that can't be fixed. We're fully aware of some of the frame-rate issues on the really low-end devices (like in the video) and are actively working on improving that (it's a main priority to get 60FPS).
    • coffeeaddicted 14y ago
      Constant framerate is the thing that matters most to games. 60 fps or just 30 fps doesn't matter as much as that it's constant. You can even play a racer for example at 15 fps, but you fly out the curve the moment a 60 FPS game has a 250ms freeze at the wrong moment. Just mentioning this as it's something a lot of people not doing games are missing (and maybe one of the main reasons why c/c++ still are dominant in game programming - I mean what's the point of coding in Java when the only way to get a constant FPS is to work throughout with static variables for example?). So if you want games - makes sure you have realtime guarantees.
      • robhawkes 14y ago
        Yup, you're completely right… it's the constant frame-rate of a game that's important. And even if it's not truly 'constant', it should always stay above 30FPS. You probably shouldn't code a game to be tied to the frame-rate though. This is exactly what my job is at the moment, testing games and monitoring FPS across these games on various devices and platforms. I'm confident that JavaScript is more than capable to have games running fast on mobile, we just need to work with the game developers more (to optimise) as well as improve the platform.
        • coffeeaddicted 14y ago
          Hm, yeah - my point is that FPS isn't as important as the longest frame. You can have 100 FPS when 99 of them are really fast while the last one is stuck for nearly a second :-) Or said otherwise - for a game measuring average over a second is already a too long time-frame. It's nice as a simple feedback number for users, but it's not sufficient for smooth gameplay.
• macavity23 14y ago
  It's an interesting project, and I'm all for competition, but honestly I don't see the value proposition for an OEM to put this on a phone instead of Android. Rendering JavaScript faster is great, but does that really outweigh all the benefits of the Android ecosystem?
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    You'd be surprised, Mozilla is going to launch this with Telefonica next year in Brazil. That's happening. We're also working with plenty of other partners to bring this to other areas, so there is definitely interest. I think what appeals to them is the open, customisable nature. Also, remember that this isn't meant to compete with Android and iOS, it solves other problems beyond performance and feature-set.
  • mmahemoff 14y ago
    I don't know the stats, but I'm fairly convinced anecdotally there's still a huge segment of users who don't know or care about apps, and don't much know or care about the OS either. They'll use whatever ships with the phone. If you're an OEM, how would you target these people? As long as you can get a clean, attractive, easy-to-use OS, you'll take an interest in one that's easy for you to customise, and ship with solid default apps, some of which you can monetise on. I think Firefox OS offers that possibility to OEMs, they get to completely control the experience and keep the relationships with customers. And the customisation process - being HTML5 - is arguably simpler and less of a specialised skill.
  • scriptproof 14y ago
    "Android has a cost" (Steve Ballmer). And it could increase (Apple)...
    • pjmlp 14y ago
      Who assures you that this JavaScript OS is safe from litigation?
  • bzbarsky 14y ago
    Part of the value proposition is that instead of waiting for the big code drop (from Google, in Android's case) and then having to scramble to do whatever they need to customize for their phones an OEM can be involved in Firefox OS development all along. And some are. See also item two in the list at http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_spot_openwashing.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_spot_openwashing...
• kayoone 14y ago
  "Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!" Scary thought ;)
  • tsahyt 14y ago
    It is. Sounds like a big waste of performance to me.
    • robhawkes 14y ago
      You'd be surprised at how well JavaScript performs when allowed.
      • tsahyt 14y ago
        Probably. I haven't witnessed that yet though.
      • praptak 14y ago
        The scary part of JavaScript is not performance, it is the hell of inconsistency. '1' - 0 is 1. Guess what '1' + 0 is? Nope, it's '10'. Crockford's JavaScript truth table is mind-bending. On top of that, semicolon insertion.
        • ajanuary 14y ago
          Type coercion and asi are probably the least troublesome odd parts of js I encounter day to day. I find the weird scoping rules around 'this' and the verbosity of anonymous functions far worse. [1] (Sincerely and non-rhetorically) Do you really find the former more annoying than the latter? I see a lot of people using those examples to call out JS inappropriateness for development, but it seems like they're focusing on the wrong things to me. [1] I know they can be fixed by using a language that compiles down to JS. So can the parent's criticisms.
        • scriptproof 14y ago
          Not inconsistency to me. + is a string concatenation operator, - is not (maybe it could be) and '1' - 0 is just a fallback.
• zobzu 14y ago
  I think the only major advantage of Firefox OS is that it helps you run full HTML5 apps. The apps are cached, auto-updated, and easy to code. They run on the phone and on the desktop alike. That's it. The only OS that really compares, is actually Chrome OS, except Chrome OS has not been ported or made to run on phone hardware. If it's not fast enough, it will not work. If it is, it has a small chance of making a difference.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    Let's just hope that it's fast enough then! To be fair, I think there is much more too it than just HTML5 apps. Think beyond the single mobile phone device… it's more about how concepts will change if many different types of devices run apps and can communicate via the same languages (JavaScript, for example). The other advantage is that it's free, and open for others to take and turn into whatever they want it to be. That's kinda cool.
• j_col 14y ago
  Giving how shockingly similar Firefox OS is to webOS (now also open source), I would have much rather that they support that OS instead of reinventing the wheel. Some strange strategic decisions coming out of Mozilla inc. these days, I would much rather see them focus on their browser instead (and Thunderbird!).
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    You might appreciate this piece on Fx OS and WebOS: http://www.quora.com/How-does-Mozillas-Boot-2-Gecko-compare-with-webOS http://www.quora.com/How-does-Mozillas-Boot-2-Gecko-compare-...
    • j_col 14y ago
      Yes I read that from your other comment, the engineer begins with: > There are many similarities Indeed. And he then goes on to admit that a new version of Enjo JS will address many of the perceived shortcomings in webOS: > This is a simplification, and I should also note that Enyo 2 (the next version of the webOS application framework, not yet released) is designed to be less platform-specific and allow Enyo apps to run on both webOS and in standard web browsers: http://enyojs.com/ http://enyojs.com/ Enyo JS 2 is now available for download: http://enyojs.com/ http://enyojs.com/ So again, why reinvent the wheel? What's the real benefit of boot-to-Gecko versus boot-to-Webkit (webOS)?
      • MatthewPhillips 14y ago
        First off, B2G started well over a year ago, when there were no signs of WebOS becoming open source (it was more likely that it would be sold). So what you're suggesting is that they either have waited or that they should have stopped working when Open WebOS was announced (even though it was just released a few weeks ago). Secondly, the existence of 2 OSes that support the same apps is not a negative; it is an overwhelming positive. Just as having multiple browsers in Windows is positive. The SysApps working group was created to standardize the (currently incompatible) APIs that exist between Firefox OS, Tizen, Chrome OS, and others. http://www.w3.org/2012/05/sysapps-wg-charter.html http://www.w3.org/2012/05/sysapps-wg-charter.html
• lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  I apologise for writing a long post - I have not time to write a short one There is a reason MBAs are taught market analysis. Its important to position your product for maximum effect (usually maximum profit, but that may not be the case here) The arguments for FirefoxOS seem to be 1. It's OSS 2. It's Web-technologies only 3. It's aimed at the "emerging" markets' mobile users 4. It runs on cheaper hardware better than the competition 1 and 2 are great. And no-one but us cares, except in 20 years when no child has even seen a line of code because OSS gets wiped out as all PCs are replaced by mobile devices. (This is the reason I want this to succeed, and I want laptops to be certified FreeBSD compliant. It matters!) Anyway this is about market positioning, not OSS. So. Its a well-known truism that don't be in the middle of any market - you get squeezed from both ends. The emerging markets have adapted enormously well to only having SMS and no smartphones (see anyone in Mumbai). That is not going to go away, so the true bottom end of the market is SMS capable devices. They will probably just give them away. If Firefox OS says we are not as good as iOS then thay are squarely putting themselves in the middle of the market. Aim higher folks. The world is not segmented into feature phones and smartphones. It is segmented into one market "I want to use a networked mobile app to get laid or get cash." You will never be the bottom end - that belongs to sending cash by SMS, or selling your harvest with a text. So its the top of the market - what the cool kids have. And so, 1 & 2 might just be our saviours. Apple made a great new product that was catnip to the coolest kids in the West. Firefox OS is geeky cool - it might just appeal to the coolest kids not in the West. And they will want to buy the 'best' phone - aim high folks. I hope you succeed.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it! To be clear, I'm not educated in business so my thoughts are my own (potentially naive) conclusions. However, there are some very sound business decisions behind us chosing to go with Brazil first, and to go with cheaper, low-end devices. I'm sure they know what they're doing more than I do! As an aside, we do have versions of Fx OS running on high-end devices and it runs amazingly well. It's not our market though (for now) so it's merely a cool "look what we could do with the power" moment. I hope we succeed too.
• dmpk2k 14y ago
  What's the £50 device? I'm not going to buy a Galaxy variant to play with Firefox OS, but £50 is a different story.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    It's a ZTE Kis. You can't use it yet because it's a development version but we're working on getting devices available to developers before we launch properly. The Kis is merely a test device for now.
    • dochtman 14y ago
      I really want a cheap test device so I can start hacking on B2G. Sure, I guess I could get a second-hand SGS2, but those are still pretty expensive to use a test device.
• kgabis 14y ago
  This looks like a terrible idea for a mobile OS, where every cycle should count. What about battery life? I think that for now, and foreseeable future, the only reasonable choice for mobile devices are native code based apps and system.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    Battery life is very, very good. I can leave this thing on for days and it's still running. Now obviously that's not running too much in the background but there is no reason why a JavaScript phone would have a detrimental effect on battery life. You should try it out sometime, it's really not 'terrible' when you get hands on. But your opinion is one I see a lot and we're hoping to change it in the future, slowly ;)
    • newman314 14y ago
      Have you made any actual power measurements using say powertop etc? webOS can be left on for days and days IF you turn all the radios off, underclock, undervolt... Given that most smartphones last for at most a day with actual usage (not sitting there in sleep mode), I would like to see more quantification as to what the usage pattern is that enables you to leave it for days and days.
      • robhawkes 14y ago
        The short answer is no, I haven't used anything scientific to measure this… just my eyes. I'll make sure that we release test results as they are performed, probably on the Mozilla Hacks blog or likewise.
  • zokier 14y ago
    > I think that for now, and foreseeable future, the only reasonable choice for mobile devices are native code based apps and system. So basing a mobile OS on something like Java (or C#/Silverlight) would be completely silly in your opinion?
    • 14y ago
• lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Mozilla seem almost apologetic about Firefox OS. "aiming at middle market" "performs well on low end hardware" I think this is a mistake in positioning - this is still an expensive piece of hardware for most of the world (50 USD is not low-end if minimum wage in Brazil is 322 USD /mth) Instead this has the potential to be "the best" phone in most emerging markets - the most desireable OS, because it can appeal to the very same people who iPhone appealed to - the cool and influential geeks and designers. Shout from the rooftops guys, its high-end, high-value, cool. Let the network providers sort out how to put 50 USD worth of hardware into the hands of boys and girls in the favelas. Just make sure everyone wants one. And that means not apologetically aiming for the middle market. Aim higher. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_countr... edit: this was an edit on my other post here, but it is so different in tone it just was better reposting.
  • andrewcooke 14y ago
    it doesn't really work like that. emerging markets have people as rich as rich americans and they know about, want, and own iphones. (i live in s america and would love the kind of thing being described. but i am pretty odd and currently use a dumbphone that cost $20 - i know plenty of people with fancy phones here. so i would like what you suggest to work, but in practice i think people would perceive it as aimed at "second class citizens" - kind of condescending, in a way. you have to remember that even though people have less money on average (and higher prices for imported goods) they swim in a similar media context - can access the same internet sites, see the same aspirational movies, etc)
    • lifeisstillgood 14y ago
      I think that getting my cool, trend-leading designer friends is possible - apple is not undefeatable. And while google is not very evil, Mozilla is nearly saint-like in comparison. So, yes we do all live in the same global media village, but things will change. It will be harder to knock Apple off top spot in the US or UK because of the installed base. But the battle for hearts and minds is at the top of the market - if you dont compare yourself to apple, no one else will.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• anil_mamede 14y ago
  Looks nice but it's not fluid.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    It will be, we're actively working on performance now. We have no reasons to believe that we can't get it 'fluid'.
• h2s 14y ago
  You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying. Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would love to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer. Give me a platform that costs nothing to develop for and lets me use my existing skills. If there's a website version of my application, let me share components between the two versions instead of locking my mobile version up in your platform's chosen systems programming language and development environment. Firefox OS ticks all these boxes. I just might be the most average developer out there these days: a web developer. If you enable people like me to develop applications for your device without any bullshit, then you automatically have a bigger set of possible contributors than the competition. That is why I am cautiously optimistic about Firefox OS. If you build it, we will come.
  • PommeDeTerre 14y ago
    I'm confused by your statement about "the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer." Perhaps that's true for a hobbyist. But any professional software developer should already be familiar with at least one (if not all) of those languages, and should be able to pick up the others with very little work. Once you know C#, for instance, you'll quickly see that Java is essentially a subset of it these days. Sure, there are differences, but they're quite minor. The same goes for Objective-C, to some extent. The syntax is a bit different, but most of the concepts are similar enough. Even the most commonly-used libraries for each don't actually differ that much in practice. In fact, many developers with experience in industry will have already had to use multiple languages at the same time throughout their careers. They'll already know how to work on several projects simultaneously, using several languages, and many more libraries. In fact, I'd suspect that most of these professionals would feel very handicapped if they were forced to use JavaScript for all development. JavaScript has proven time and time again to not be a good language for anything but short scripts. Languages like C++, Java, C#, and Objective-C have core features that make large-scale, distributed software development possible. JavaScript lacks these, and anyone working on a large JavaScript code base will know the pains that arise. It won't be good for Firefox OS if only the most inept developers are attracted to it. That's not the kind of ecosystem that produces useful applications.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• hermanhermitage 14y ago
  Terrific stuff. I still think there is a use case for a static C like language (with explicit memory management) for some kernels. The same way that WebGL has HLSL, it would be nice if there was a WebCPU API with C as the 'shader' language. (Alternative is LLJS approach - but that has other issues).
  • udp 14y ago
    I couldn't agree more. It's all good being purist JavaScript for most applications, but having some kind of native code support is really important when it comes to things like games.
  • Jyaif 14y ago
    *WebGL has GLSL (HLSL is Microsoft territory)
• cs702 14y ago
  According to this blog post, Firefox OS is already providing native-like performance in a standard JavaScript+HTML+CSS environment. (By "native-like" I mean fast enough that the application will feel native to users.) If this is true, then I would agree Firefox OS is a game changer, because it means that ALL modern web applications can run unmodified at native-like speeds on mobile devices. The number of apps available for the platform is already in the many millions. Very exciting! -- Edits: changed "ALL existing web applications" to "ALL modern web applications," which better reflects what I intended to say; added a bit of context in response to robhawkes's comment below.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    JavaScript doesn't run at the speed of native, but it certainly runs fast enough on things like Fx OS (or desktop browsers) to run 'native-like' apps. It really depends what you want to do with it. For example, this is JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread
    • pkolaczk 14y ago
      So how come e.g. www.circuitlab.com which is a simulator written in pure JS is two orders of magnitude slower on Chrome or Firefox than native *SPICE implementations in C? It is actually even much slower than the already pretty slow Falstad's Java applet.
      • azakai 14y ago
        Two orders of magnitude? That can't be explained by the difference between C and JS. There must be some other difference, like which algorithms are used, or that the C one relies heavily on inline assembly or such. The expected difference between C and JS should be more like one order of magnitude in the worst cases (and much better in the best).
        • mbrubeck 14y ago
          Since azakai is too humble to mention his own qualifications, I want to point out that is the author of the Emscripten LLVM-to-JS compiler, and the BananaBread first-person-shooter demo linked above, so when he talks about the limits of JS performance compared to C, he really knows what he's talking about. :)
• mhd 14y ago
  He mentions it being a "hackable dream for developers". I wonder if we're ever going to get something that's hackable by users. Or in other words, bridges the gap between the common user and the elite app-store backed developer… With all its sensors and social and personal applications, there seems to be a high potential for individual customizations and connections, probably more than what your average PC-of-yore office suite would warrant. Yet there's nothing like VBScript or (A)Rexx on mobile devices. (Some of you might remember Apple's NewtonScript, from their superior mobile device they're still trying to ignore) Part of that is that it's all in the hand of the people financially benefitting from it, i.e. us developers. You could easily make a new site/app that connects social platform A and social platform B. Which is part of why we've got that huge mess of redundant, barely interoperable cloud ad sellers and allowance pinchers. What if teens could trade JavaScripts to do the same? Script their calculator app to better fit their teacher's views and their curriculum? Connect their text messaging app with the hip new microblogging platform. Set up little JS "cron jobs" whenever they enter a certain WLAN range (or GPS quadrant)… Apart from security issues there's little technological reason to prevent this. But it seems all over the place we've moved away from interoperation. From what I see, end-user scripting is pretty low. Nobody's talking about document-centric desktops anymore (ah, OS/2, how I miss thee). It's all about apps and services, maximum hype, maximum profit.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    Theoretically, this is definitely possible and something that I'd love to see. I know we have some guys within Mozilla working on things that are more 'hackable' for the general user, rather than developers.
  • maxerickson 14y ago
    Scripting layer for Android if fairly close to what you are talking about: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/ http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/ It does not seem to be explosively popular. But it has to be sought out and installed and all that stuff, so who knows.
    • mhd 14y ago
• chj 14y ago
  Is there any bridge between JS and native code? Yes, I know it is hard to support development and debugging of a hybrid of script and native code, but regarding battery life and computation intensive apps, JS is not an option. Unless this OS is for really low end phones.
  • MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    What makes you think that? Android runs non-native apps and the battery life can be very good (depending mostly on hardware of course).
  • ralfn 14y ago
    You seem to assume an existential difference between "native" and "not-native" that does not actually exist. Is Objective C native? Not yet. Is the ARM executable native? Yes. Is javascript native? No. Is the executable code generated by the jit native? Yes.
• thedeuce 14y ago
  There's nothing magical about a device that primarily uses crap web technologies. That being said I can't wait to write some malware for this...
• mtgx 14y ago
  Mozilla, please don't allow carriers or manufacturers to modify your OS! You need to set the right tone from the very beginning. Otherwise you'll never get that kind of power back later on. Sell it to them as an alternative to Android. That's all they need to know if they want it or not. If they want more, you can go elsewhere.
  • podperson 14y ago
    If it's an alternative to Android that doesn't let Carriers "add value" then it's an alternative they won't use. Open Source, in this case, becomes a race to the bottom in every respect. We need carriers to be dumb pipes we buy data plans from; then this entire class of problem goes away. Until then, any platform that doesn't let carriers charge us different amounts for bits from different places is going to die on the vine.
    • pezz 14y ago
      So how do we curb this voracious appetite of needing to get into every bit (data, apps, ads, other value adds) of being a telco? I agree with what you're saying, but how do we get to a state where we can have "dumb pipes", yet have an open, privacy driven and easily user controllable OS on a device? Is there an alternative to always needing to "add value"? Isn't earning our coin off carrier charges, data etc enough?
      • podperson 14y ago
        I think the fundamental problem is the carriers' vertically integrated business model -- Verizon and AT&T want to sell you the phone, the phone service, the data service, the TV service, etc. etc.. From the consumers' point of view we need the actual pipes to be infrastructure then we buy devices that use the pipes, and pay for services that send us stuff over the pipes. But how to get there? Massive government intervention of some kind is probably the only option. Left to the market we'll simply get the biggest most monolithic monopolies that the government allows to form.
    • nathan_long 14y ago
• Apocryphon 14y ago
  A really minor point- why is it that the phone icon nowadays has defaulted to a handset turned to that angle, with green as the color? That looks similar to the phone icon in some of the Samsung phones that look more like iOS. Is green and at 2 o'clock simply how we think of calling someone now?
  • jere 14y ago
    I came to post this. Seriously, why is this necessary? Are they trying to provoke a lawsuit? I get that green is usually associated with starting a call and red ending a call, but why? Why not blue or purple or orange or yellow or black? Good point on the angle. But why even use the same handset icon? You could use a candlestick phone, a wall phone, a rotary phone.... for fuck's sake, you could use an icon representing the phone itself.
• se85 14y ago
  Javascript performing well on mobile is NOT magic, its just good engineering. The big problem I see with Firefox OS is that it is not going to take much to make the entire "App Store" full of app's that perform horribly, and in return that will make Firefox OS look bad as a result. Abstracting away all the complexities of making JavaScript/HTML/CSS perform well on mobile into a set of API's that anyone can use regardless of skill doesn't seem feasible to me but I could be wrong and If they have actually pulled this off, great! But it's still not magic.
• peterwwillis 14y ago
  Firefox OS is the start of something huge. It's a revolution in waiting. A breath of fresh air. A culmination of bleeding-edge technology. It's magical and it's going to change everything. I'm glad you didn't use any hyperbole. it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript! And you thought a Java-powered operating system was crappy... So you might be thinking, "This sounds great, but why use JavaScript to build a phone?" And you'd be right, that's a really important question to ask. The good news is that there are plenty of reasons why this is a good idea, besides making Web developers weak at the knees. I'm pretty sure this is the only reason to do this. Nobody but web developers are going to give a shit. Grandma doesn't care what OS her iPad runs on. It just needs to work really well. I am wondering how you're going to get real-time priority on threads for the phone app over your slow HTML5 game threads if they're run by the same interpreted scripting engine. Why the huge performance improvements over browsers in Android on identical devices? It's because of the lack of stuff going on between Gecko and the hardware, meaning things like JavaScript can run at full pelt. So much for JavaScript being slow! What lack of stuff ? What's going on in this "JavaScript OS" that is different than in a Java OS? What calls are not happening? What memory is not being allocated? What graphics are not being displayed? What the hell are you talking about? What Firefox OS aims to do here is to use the native everywhere-ness of the Web to provide a platform that allows applications to be enjoyed on a mobile device, a desktop computer, a tablet, or anywhere else that has access to a browser. Wouldn't you want to be able to pick up your Angry Birds game on the desktop where where you left it on your phone? I certainly would! I think you actually missed the point of the quote right before that paragraph. It's an incredibly powerful idea to make a mobile platform that's as free-to-use as a web browser. A security nightmare, yes. A competing-open-product-that-implements-unsupported-features nightmare, yes. But it could change things, for better or worse. Because Firefox OS is constructed using HTML, JavaScript and CSS it means you only need basic Web development skills to reach in and completely change the device experience. You could literally change one line of CSS and completely change the way the icons on the homescreen look, or re-write some core JavaScript files that handle phone-calls. I could have sworn I heard of something like this before... Web Oh Ess or something? Has the whole world gone nuts? What the hell was wrong with just having a web browser and native apps side by side? You could use your web apps for a universal free experience, and for apps which need a lot of performance like games you would write a fast, minimal native app. Now we're reinventing a reinvention of the wheel, poorly. Have you people even used S60? That shit was easily skinnable, had tons of developer resources, a free marketplace (once you signed your app), it was fast, stable, cheap. Now it's dead of course (thanks Android) and all we have to fill the space is bloated incompatible buggy crap.
• polshaw 14y ago
  >There are a few intense games, like Biolab Disaster, that perform stunningly on even the £50 low-end device that I'm testing on — we're talking between 40 and 60FPS. . You have to be kidding me, my amiga 500 (released 1987, 7mhz) offers similar games to that (but better graphics). That puts it literally 20 years behind modern smartphones today, where the cutting edge games are in a similar position vs xbox 360 games. . Firefox OS clearly isn't going to appeal to anyone looking for gaming on release-- However, i do not want to shit on it, unlike many.. I think it is a great idea, could do wonders for openness as well as the advancement of web technologies, and the web as a platform. I can certainly see FFOS devices becoming a standard smartphone for 'regular folks'.. web browsing and the kind of things that web-apps could easily do; media playback, calendar and clock apps.. i'm sure this covers 80% of all smartphone apps today anyway. As time goes on and performance (and web features) continues to increase, with 3/4 smartphone platforms (plus 3/4 more 'desktop' platforms), the appeal of developing once for all platforms is going to become an overwhelming advantage. It is very different to webOS, which suffered from limited, expensive devices, constricting user base, which failed to inspire developers. Is it the most computationally efficient way of doing most things? no. Does it offer other advantages that could offset this? absolutely.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it. If you start comparing these mobile HTML5 games with any device or platform that was originally build to run games well then you'll always see issues – though we are working on improving that. Games on the Web are probabably never going to be quite the same, and nor should they be. Still, things are improving each and every day and I think that's the most important thing here. We know things aren't perfect and we also know that we're no where near the limit of performance yet. I'm really excited to see what those advantages you mention turn into in the future. There is a lot of potential here, way beyond performance and how things compare to other devices.
• gnuvince 14y ago
  Can we please stop putting JavaScript everywhere? It's not a good language and people have a tendency to produce frailer code with it than they would otherwise.
  • robhawkes 14y ago
    What makes you say this?
  • JackC 14y ago
    This kind of request strikes me as kind of similar to the movements to standardize English spelling. There are groups out there who, for at least a hundred years, have been saying "can we please stop spelling the same sounds in five different ways? It's not a good approach to language and people waste a lot of time that they wouldn't otherwise." It's true, but at the same time, there are reasons they're not making any progress. JavaScript shows up in new places because everyone already knows it, because it's relatively easy to write a JS app and deploy it to every single platform, because anyone who wants to learn it can probably jump into a REPL from Facebook by hitting cmd-shift-J, because there's a huge amount of code already written in it, because there's intense competitive pressure to optimize the interpreters, etc. etc. etc. The same kind of reasons that English is hard to replace. If you want to improve the situation, you can't just point out the flaws, you have to offer a smooth transition from here to a better language. But actually, that's already happening. JS is actively, incrementally improving. (As one random snapshot: https://brendaneich.com/2011/05/my-jsconf-us-presentation/ https://brendaneich.com/2011/05/my-jsconf-us-presentation/) So the answer is, no, we cannot stop putting it everywhere. That is not going to happen. But we can make it better.
• rglover 14y ago
  Really excited to play with this. Also excited to see the people working on it are really geeked. It's going to get really interesting as a web developer over the next couple of years. If you can use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to manipulate an OS, then wow. Can't wait to see where this goes.
• akrymski 14y ago
  So it's an OS that requires apps to be written in JavaScript (an interpreted language that was designed by Netscape for web scripting and nonprofessional programmers) and HTML (a markup language designed to display static documents in the browser). None of these technologies were designed to help developers create software applications, so why is this magical? Let's look at few possible reasons: 1. JavaScript/HTML/CSS are better tools for developing software than anything else out there. No. 2. It's open source. So is WebOS, Android. 3. It's more efficient - same software can run on cheaper hardware. No, Java & Objective C are more processor-efficient. If Firefox OS runs on $100 hardware, than iOS can run on $50. The fact that nobody is making an ulta-cheap smartphone is because there's little demand for one (it's like making a shitty Porsche) 4. Developers can package existing web applications as native mobile applications. There's already a thing called PhoneGap for that. 5. More teenagers know JavaScript than any other language It seems like #5 is the only valid reason. A lot of kids don't know Objective C or Java, so they must love Firefox OS if they just know the web stack. But sometimes you've got to ask yourself - why rewrite an OS in a new cool language? Just because you can? Look how far Apple has come with Obj-C, why constantly replace the hammer? Having said that, the force of teenagers is not to be underestimated.
  • kibwen 14y ago
    To be clear, the OS is not written in Javascript. It's simply Mozilla's Gecko platform (the same engine used by Firefox, written in C++ since time immemorial) running directly on top of Linux. Nothing was rewritten to get this to work: Gecko was originally designed to be a portable application platform rather than "just" a layout engine (and it was this concomitant complexity that led Apple and Chrome to use Webkit (which is just a layout engine) for their own browsers). It's literally just a web browser running directly on a smartphone. Any web apps that you're using right now will Just Work on Fx OS. No rewrites required. One last point: it seems intuitive that Java would be more processor-efficient than Javascript, but SpiderMonkey is waaaaay more mature than Dalvik (Android's Java VM). I'd like to see some hard performance numbers before making that call.
  • marknutter 14y ago
    People use javascript not because of what it was originally created for but because of what it has become and is currently being used for. But most of all, because of its ubiquity. Last time I checked, Objective-C doesn't run in a web browser. Your whole post smacks of elitism. What's with the "More teenagers know JavaScript than any other language" and "A lot of kids don't know Objective C or Java" comments? Are you just trolling, or trying to be insulting?
• carloslopes 14y ago
  Rob, could you put on the article which devices we already can build the OS? I want to buy one but i don't know what is already supported :)
  • abrowne 14y ago
    Take a look at the list here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gecko/B2G_build_prerequisites https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Boot_to_Gec...
• wprater 14y ago
  Sounds a lot like webOS; huge amounts of potential, only to be plagued by 'being ahead of the game'. Probably still 5 years out, sadly. I really like the idea of a JavaScript OS. Why was webOS not mentioned in the article? They have a very nice linux stack, telephony, and radio interfaces as well. Not to mention it's been open sourced (both OS and framework) https://github.com/openwebos https://github.com/openwebos http://enyojs.com http://enyojs.com
• timparker 14y ago
  I just wish Firefox wasn't coping iOS. Slide open, 4 x 4 grid with a dock, swipe between panes. It's just sad that companies think this is the 'standard' for any phone os and stick to it. Metro gets some respect from me for taking a fresh approach, this, unfortunately doesn't.
  • bryanlarsen 14y ago
    Why don't you criticize Toyota for using a circular steering wheel and similar feeling clutches, brake pedals and gas padels while you're at it? Slide open: given a large touch screen, what's the easiest interaction that has a low likelihood of being accidental? panes: there are basically two possible metaphors that work well: paged or infinite scrolling. Is it copying if random chance would have a 50% chance of choosing the same answer? swipe between panes: given a paged screen, what gesture but the same one used for turning pages in a book makes any sense at all? 4x4 grid: given a 3-4" screen and given an icon the size of a human thumb, how many icons fit? dock: given a paged, gridded metaphor and a need to have the most commonly used functions always available, does anything make any sense but to keep a set of icons pinned and visually distinct? Sure, they could have moved them to the top or to the side or to the middle or something, but that's just change for the sake of change.
• benwerd 14y ago
  Yes. I was introduced to Firefox OS in detail at Mobile 2.0 the other day, and I instantly fell in love. This is what the world needs: an open platform designed for the people who don't already have an Internet connection, let alone an iPhone. If they succeed in their mission, and current partnerships with telcos like Telefonica suggest that they will, then they could quite possibly change the world. I'm sold, and completely on board.
• needle0 14y ago
  I saw a talk on FxOS (then B2G) earlier this year, and asked a question about how FxOS will handle native SDKs, considering practically every single mobile OS that used VMs to run apps had eventually capitulated and provided native SDKs for speed and codebase compatibility. The Mozilla guy who responded was very adamant on keeping HTML/CSS/JS the one and only dev environment for the OS. Perhaps JS optimization has come far enough that speed is not a problem, but how is FxOS going to handle codebase compatibility for bringing large preexisting native-code projects (eg. games) into it? Compiling the entirety of Unreal Engine 3 in Emscripten, for instance, seems a bit far-fetched.
• dhx 14y ago
  Most of the discussion so far has focussed on the development environment (APIs, languages, etc) and performance issues. I would therefore like to raise the question “how will Firefox OS encourage a consistent and usable experience across applications?” Gnome[1], iOS[2] and Windows have comprehensive human interface guidelines and the systems tend to be user-friendly as a result. The latest WHATWG HTML standards do make an attempt to improve user interface consistency by adding new, specific tags. While this will help to some extent, I do not think it will solve the underlying problem. Web developers are accustomed to creating whatever interfaces they like with little regard to usability considerations including consistency with other websites. Different colours, typography, borders, page structures, navigation styles, etc between websites and applications produces a difficult user experience. [1] http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.5/ http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.5/ [2] https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/ https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/usere...
  • mbrubeck 14y ago
    UX design guidelines are coming; the designer who is working on them gave a talk at MozCampEU last week. (Only the slides are available for now, but a more detailed write-up should be posted soon.) https://wiki.mozilla.org/MozCampEU2012/Design-Principles-behind-the-Firefox-OS-UX https://wiki.mozilla.org/MozCampEU2012/Design-Principles-beh...
    • dhx 14y ago
      Thanks for the link to the presentation. As is the case with other mobile platforms I noticed a wide array of button styles. Small symbolic buttons in applications such as the photo gallery and messages screen, large glossy buttons for the radio and calculator, blue rectangular buttons for the time and date selection screen and a long red button for cancelling a call. Some applications are dark and 2D, others are light, colourful and 3D. I do like a lot of the work shown off in the presentation but still get the feeling that applications/screens on the phone are not tightly integrated or connected. This isn't criticism of Firefox OS. Rather it is an observation that I have for all mobile platforms I have used. I will look out for the detailed write-up to get the details of what is planned.
• colig 14y ago
  I enjoyed reading this. I mostly know Java and not so much Javascript, but there's something delightful in the idea the writer lays out. As much as I like Android, it isn't really 'hackable' by the average user, and Firefox OS seems capable for that.
• naitbit 14y ago
  Are web technologies on the phone really the best way to empower users? Sure Firefox and Linux are open source(and I love them for that), but what about online apps? User does not have any control over the web page. If web page changes or disappears he can do nothing(and it can happen with no warning). Storing local copy of webpage may not be possible(because huge part of app may be on server side). Even proprietary desktop apps are better[1] because they do not change on each startup and you could always try to reverse engineer them. Web app also can store user data on server giving him no way to recover and it gives more spoofing opportunities. Sure we can try to teach users about to choose open source web pages, or pages that can work in offline mode, but unfortunately most web pages does not fit these categories. I'm impressed by what Firefox OS managed to achieve using web technologies, but I posted this as a warning that users may chain themselves to some proprietary webapp even stronger than to native one. Hopefully Firefox Os will force more webapps to provide offline mode. [1] Of course DRM tries to take away this advantage from desktop apps.
• pmelendez 14y ago
  This is actually a question for you guys... I realized that this can be very revolutionary for us as developers (making our lives way easier). What I can't see is how this would "going to change everything" from an user perspective. I only can see this as increasing the amount of apps in stores very quickly. But stores already feel very dense with numbers like 500k apps. Can anyone tell me what I am missing? because I can't see this changing everything.
• posabsolute 14y ago
  Yea well there is something not magical about it too which is normal users do not care what you write your apps in. We already have 3 good options for OS, We have the cool iOS, the ios copy, android, and the alternative from microsoft. What we have here is a glorified Android that you can write apps in js, yay, 100 bucks it will never take off.
• anuraj 14y ago
  Yes. Probably the only platform that will run HTML5 apps proper. Web developers should wholheartedly lap it up. But the issue is - consumer adoption.
• Fando 14y ago
  Cool, well done Mozilla! Is this similar to WebOS?
• ilaksh 14y ago
  Can you Mozilla guys focus on making it so that HTML5 apps can install from web pages with an Install button and then show up on the home screen like a normal app? Please. So that HTML5 developers don't have to rely on people creating bookmarks or typing web addresses and can give users a similar experience as native.
  • fzzzy 14y ago
    This already works.
    • ilaksh 14y ago
      How do you do it? And on Android as well as iOS? And its the same installation and launch process? That wasn't working last I checked.
      • fzzzy 14y ago
        Sorry, I should have said that this already works on Firefox OS. It may also work on Firefox for Android, but Apple would have to add support for Open Web Apps to Safari on iOS for it to work there (and the same with Google and the standard Android browser or Chrome) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Apps/Getting_Started https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Apps/Getting_Starte... It's being proposed as a standard, so hopefully Apple and Google adopt the API, but these things take time and politics.
• ink_ 14y ago
  The mozilla project has really pulled it's socks up of late, some of the stuff from the labs: Very awesome Shumway - https://github.com/mozilla/shumway https://github.com/mozilla/shumway Very awesome PDF.js - https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/pdfjs/ https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/pdfjs/ IHeartCode - https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/iheartcode/ https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/iheartcode/ Prospector Experiments - https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/prospector/ https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/prospector/ Gladius - https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/gladius/ https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/gladius/ EntropyWave - https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/entropywave/ https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/entropywave/ And by all accounts FF itself has had some serious work done to sort close the performance gap between it and Chrome. I love Chrome, it's a top notch browsers, only the omnibox (addressbar) seems be deliberately designed to inflict pain and suffering on the user. You could be forgiven for thinking that it's been deliberatly in some kind of bizarre social experiment. Does anybody here prefer it to the Firefox Awesomebar? I'm seriously considering switching back to FF. God.
• brackishlake 14y ago
  Point. Counterpoint: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4519445 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4519445
• the_expert 14y ago
  Can it run in a virtual machine? Some folks might not want to give up their current super fast and reliable OS for one that runs only one complex, often insecure and sometimes error-prone application. In a VM I think this could be very useful.
• rsync 14y ago
  I want this, but for UNIX. I want a standalone operating system that runs on android hardware that gives me low level access, via unix commands and stdio, to phone functions. So I don't want the javascript dialer, I want /usr/bin/dialer ... I don't want the javascript sms client, I want to run: /usr/bin/sms --retries=4 --number 800-555-1212 > Hi Joe, I can't make it to the meeting^D ... sent. So yeah. This article reminded me how much I want something very much like ffox OS, but for unix core principles, like stdio, and not for open web apps (nice as they are).
• confluence 14y ago
  I hope Firefox pulls this off - native app programming is a complete pain in the ass (especially with multiple platforms). You'd have thought us programmers would've figured this out years ago - seeing as all languages are turing complete and in turn should all run everywhere, all the time, at equivalent speeds (it's all assembly/machine code in the end). Can anyone try out: http://anirudhjoshi.github.com/fluid_table_tennis/ http://anirudhjoshi.github.com/fluid_table_tennis/ on the Firefox OS and tell me its performance?
• goggles99 14y ago
  The magic is that it will disappear before ever gaining any kind of recognition or prominence. Why would I choose this over the Open Sourced WebOS?
• repoman 14y ago
  This is another attempt to solve the glory cloud os? another browser-based OS? stop making the whole world dancing. It's a lame concept.