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> 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 t

> 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.

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.