24 ms·

The Promise of Firefox OS

219 points by cornbread_bun 14y ago

VaucGiaps 14y ago
I would have liked to have heard a story like this one at FOSDEM. You had a room full of interested IT people/devs/... and missed selling the 'spirit' of fOS. Too bad...
- pragmatictester 14y ago
  https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/firefox_os/ https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/firefox_os/ https://fosdem.org/2013/interviews/2013-jonas-sicking/ https://fosdem.org/2013/interviews/2013-jonas-sicking/ https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/automating_firefox_os/ https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/automating_firefox_os...
janjongboom 14y ago
Good article. The main reason for FFOS is not to take over the world but rather disrupt the closed ecosystems that Google, Apple and Microsoft are creating; the same way that Firefox broke Microsofts monopoly on the browser market.
- smoyer 14y ago
  Curiously, Google has produced another (enterprisey) system than disrupts the (more) closed Android system ... GWT. If you like the strong typing of Java, compiling it to Javascript seems "safe".
- lucian1900 14y ago
  Except Android is no more or less closed than Firefox OS. Both open source, allow sideloading and have curated app stores.
  - janjongboom 14y ago
    Android itself isn't, but the ecosystem that they're building is. The market is controlled by Google and the apps will only run on Android phones. Not the OS is important, the ecosystem is. That's why Apple and Google and everyone are trying to keep everyone inside.
    - lucian1900 14y ago
      The Firefox OS app market is controlled by Mozilla and the apps will only run on Firefox OS (for now, at least). Everyone is free to implement the Android app API, as Blackberry have, just like they are free to implement the Firefox OS phone APIs. The difference is very small. Firefox is more likely to have portable apps, Android offers a much higher quality API for building apps.
      - zabraxias 14y ago
        There is an official marketplace offering from Mozilla: http://marketplace.firefox.com http://marketplace.firefox.com but others are free to implement their own and no one has to use the official one. The apps will run on both the OS and Firefox for Android, Firefox Desktop. I tend to agree there are advantages to a packaged SDK but there are project initiatives such as Mortar to cover this base also.
      - kibwen 14y ago
        > The Firefox OS app market is controlled by Mozilla One clarification here: Mozilla's marketplace code is entirely public (though confusingly named): https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni Any corporate or individual entity could take this code and set up their own entirely compatible platform.
        lucian1900 14y ago
        While the Play backend isn't open-source, there are already at least two other competing app stores. The differences really aren't that big.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
Glad to see this coming out - I think the technical chutzpah of FirefoxOS is fantastic, now let's see Mozilla Market it in the same clear vision and spirit. I mean I simply did not know there was an emulator (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/12/firefox-os-simulator-1-0-is-here/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/12/firefox-os-simulator-1-0-i...) until this post, and honestly I looked. Edit: oh and can someone tell me if persona is taking off or not - are there stats from login.persona.org?
- stomlinson 14y ago
  Hi lifeisstillgood, I am one of the core Persona developers. Persona is a pretty awesome project with very ambitious goals. We obviously want to see growth explode and are working hard to make Persona great for both users and site operators. Persona's growth has been steady, primarily driven by newly developed sites. We hope that as the user base grows and support for the BrowserID protocol is natively built into the browsers, existing sites will have more of an impetus to offer support. A version of Persona is already integrated into FirefoxOS and we hope to offer support in desktop Firefox by the end of the year. If you want to participate in discussions, have an idea on how we can improve, or just want to see what we are up to, our mailing list is open to everyone: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla.dev.identity https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla.dev.identity
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    Thank you - I have just joined the group. I agree - Persona is an awesome project - and I like anything that is going to take the pain of managing passwords away from me. I am most interested in python / wsgi integration - if any of your collegues are working on this I will be very happy to contribute.
    - minikomi 14y ago
      In some downtime at work I threw together a rough proof of concept just to see what it invloves in go[1].. It was crazy simple to get running. I hope people start using it in more places. [1] https://gist.github.com/minikomi/4563344 https://gist.github.com/minikomi/4563344
robotmay 14y ago
I'm really excited for Firefox OS, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I have a lot of respect for Mozilla and the high quality of their software. Having a fresh ecosystem is always going to attract developers who haven't bothered with the current platforms due to overcrowding (among other things), even if it never rivals the size of Android/iOS.
kiba 14y ago
Can FirefoxOS run on top of android or iOS, or is that lower level?
- sergimansilla 14y ago
  The applications can, through Firefox for Android. That means that if you use WebAPIs that access phone internals, it will work just fine.
jpwagner 14y ago
There are plenty of js/html frameworks for mobile. That mission was (and is??) the _promise_ of webOS. So I don't see how you can say "even in the unlikely event that Firefox OS itself disappears in the process, if web-apps become mainstream it will have succeeded" since it's far from a controlled experiment. Mozilla always seems to have the same answer to "what if we just started from scratch": which is "let's do it". It's endearing I guess.
- bergie 14y ago
  One big difference here is that Firefox OS (just like PhoneGap/Cordova) is aiming at standardizing the APIs, not at just being another framework. That by itself will make the web richer regardless of how FFOS fares on the market.
  - zokier 14y ago
    And what makes those "standards" different from "another framework"? A rubber stamp from W3C?
    - bergie 14y ago
      Yeah, and usually a compliance test suite. And nowadays browser vendors even seem to be quite active in implementing these things. See for instance http://blog.chromium.org/2013/02/hello-firefox-this-is-chrome-calling.html http://blog.chromium.org/2013/02/hello-firefox-this-is-chrom... and https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-calling/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-c... In general, I'm curious about the hatred here on HN towards W3C. Sure, standards often move slowly, but it is still the best way to achieve interoperability.
erikj54 14y ago
Interesting if this is in fact the goal. I would argue you still will have a mix of both. No ubiquitous environment, but Web apps will get first class support on upcoming platforms. At least this seems to be the most logical route. If you've ever used Cordova or "PhoneGap" you would know about the plug in architecture and how it is in fact still the wild west. Developers write native extensions to do things the underlying JS API can't, this won't change for a long time until the Web API does. The future is a mix of both Web and native, not just the Web.
supercoder 14y ago
I'm starting to feel like html/js/css is starting to become the 'this will be the year of linux on the desktop' of apps. They're flexible technologies, but don't think they'll ever have the feel of purpose built native API's.
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  Unless the native apps are meant to be built with web technologies. It's not like using these technologies no a mobile OS is a new concept. And be wary of using something like iOS has a base for your assumptions. It's not built with those technologies in mind, and people already use HTML/JS/CSS for their apps (successfully, I might add).
- PommeDeTerre 14y ago
  Only just starting? It was pretty apparent after the DHTML craze of the late 1990s fell flat on its face that web apps weren't any threat to native desktop apps. Then the exact same thing happened during the mid 2000s, when AJAX was all the rage. The more recent HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript fad is yet one more revival of the same failed set of ideas.
  - marknutter 14y ago
    Because people use desktop apps all the time now...
    - PommeDeTerre 14y ago
      Are you seriously trying to suggest that people don't? I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but desktop apps are still very widely used by all sorts of people. This includes home users, business users, scientific users, software developers, academics, and so forth. Even when it comes to web browsing, traffic from non-desktop devices is generally only around 10% to 15% of a site's total traffic these days, for sites that aren't specifically targeting mobile users. The remaining 85% (or more) of traffic is coming from people who are, guess what, using web browsers implemented as desktop apps.
  - 14y ago
Uchikoma 14y ago
I've read the article, I agree with the HTML5/JS premise, but I still do not understand Firefox OS.
anon1385 14y ago
And if your problem is with JavaScript as a language, you can already use a myriad of languages that reliably compile to it. Do you come from a Java background? You’ll probably like Dart, from Google. More of a functional kind of developer? Try ClojureScript, which is an impressive, well-maintained and well-performing implementation of Clojure on top of JavaScript. Coming from Ruby? You’ll be almost at home with CoffeeScript. You get the picture. God no. Instead of having to use a single awful language all the time I get to choose what language to transpile to javascript and I never have to look at or think about javascript at all. Unless of course there are bugs and then you get to experience the pleasure of debugging machine generated javascript. Maybe some people are filled with joy by the thought of debugging generated js, all I can say is that those people are certifiably insane. How about we work on platforms that support more that one language as first class citizens. Is that really such a crazy idea in 2013?
- lucian1900 14y ago
  That particular problem will improve immensely with SourceMap, so you'll almost never have to look at JS.
  - johnyzee 14y ago
    Even without source maps it is not such a big deal as people who have no experience using cross-compilation would think. I write a very big game engine with GWT (http://www.webworks.dk/enginetest http://www.webworks.dk/enginetest) and have no problems debugging. Clients send neat stack traces back to the server and I can even obfuscate the application code and using symbol maps deobfuscate the stack traces on the server. I gave a presentation a couple of weeks ago with a couple of slides with example stack traces with and without deobfuscation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TCzHx1UH24gA1Au8LOvZQkrQmRFtzGQeoVQlqZMkfME/edit#slide=id.g6bdaa991_0_120 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TCzHx1UH24gA1Au8LOvZ...
- contingencies 14y ago
  How about we work on platforms that support more that one language as first class citizens. Is that really such a crazy idea in 2013? You mean like iOS' half-C or Android's half-Java?
shadowmint 14y ago
So... it's 2013, and I'm sitting here with my blazingly fast nexus 4, and the web sites I visit are... slow. terrible. broken. spammy. Half of them have 'popups' that try to banner at the bottom of the screen, but end up flailing wilding and either taking up the entire screen, or just helpfully sitting exactly over the middle of the page. A lot of them try repeatedly to direct me to a specific page, or a native app when ever I flick between pages. The links are tiny and impossible to click on without zooming in. It's just a terrible, terrible experience. How do we get from this broken UX experience story of right now, into the magical compelling 'mobile web app' future that OP talks about? I just don't see a roadmap for it. :(
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  You are on a site that is not broken, slow or spammy. It has "stickiness" and "retention" that all of those sites cannot dream of. Good User Experience beats terrible. Good user experience makes money - trust us, the market will win.
  - anon1385 14y ago
    >You are on a site that is not broken, slow or spammy. Is this sarcasm? I honestly can't tell. You have never experienced the expired link error? Or the 'site not available' error? HN is one of the most broken websites I frequently visit. Also you ignored the part about tiny links. HN is full of tiny links: have you used the site on a phone and tried to upvote a post?
    - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
      No, not sarcasm. HN sits with craigslist on the set of sites that the UX is in the community not the site.
  - dhimes 14y ago
    This site is totally broken for mobile, and has been for years despite complaints.
mikecane 14y ago
I still don't understand why Firefox OS will go anywhere when webOS did not. Aren't we talking about basically the same thing? HTML5/JS/CSS? Is it timing, the changed environment that now focuses attention on web apps? Is it the reputation of Mozilla vs that of Palm/HP? I'm not saying web apps won't have a place, I'm just extremely confused about the seeming contradiction or about-face here.
- chris_wot 14y ago
  Palm/HP didn't exactly make it a huge deal to go to standards bodies, did they? That was my impression. Could be wrong.
  - mikecane 14y ago
    Yes, perhaps that's it. The mention of standards bodies stood out to me too.
- mephju 14y ago
  The problem with webOS of course was not the sdk or anything related to how to build an app for that platform. It was just the lack of interest and relevance which is needed to attract developers.
brudgers 14y ago
In the abstract FireFox OS is appealing. But the likely realities aren't. It's hard not to assume the ease with which Firefox the browser can be installed by my Mom when thinking about the OS. But doing so is plain wrong. For most end users it will be as tied to a particular device by the manufacturer as any other mobile OS. And the likelihood that the end user will, as a practical matter, be able to load Firefox OS on their own is low because there is no ISA for mobile and the mobile ecosystem is so mined with patents. It's not that some people may not be able to hack Firefox OS onto an iPhone - I actually expect it. It's that such hacks will kludged beyond utility for most non-technical people.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
  You're missing the point of Firefox OS. They don't want to make an OS, they want to make the web a good platform for apps.
mephju 14y ago
This is a real question and no trolling: Why is nobody building a second kind of browser, one which is not based on html and css. A browser which is geared towards app execution and development. A browser which can run apps which can be programmed in a way that is similar to programming Android apps. Where I can for example have a footer without doing some css hacks. DNS and most of our backends could still be reused but the client stuff would have to be written again. Delivering apps and linking between them like the web does is awesome. Building sophisticated apps is not awesome but on Android and iOS it is. Why not take the best of both worlds...now....not in 10 years when some standards might agree on something. Just think about how very important the web is. Everyone is using it. The whole world largely depends on it, but it's increasingly not up to the task. And why do web developers seem to be so satisfied with the state of the technology which drives the web. Oh, you think css is great because you can code a hack for putting a footer on the bottom of the page even when there is no content in the attention area? What? It's so strange. Why has nobody ever tried to create such a browser?
- heja2009 14y ago
  Not 100% sure what you mean, but wasn't Java ME a portable solution, a platform geared towards app execution and development? And in a limited sense it even succeeded... Not sure I want a 2nd iteration though.
  - mephju 14y ago
    Java ME doesn't have any of the advantages of the web. Like links or being searchable and so on. It's just another app environment. I am talking about combining the advantages of the web (which is not css/html) with those of successful app development platforms.
- andrewflnr 14y ago
  It would have to be huge piece of software, and nobody would use it. That is, it would be very difficult to get adoption. That said, some of us are thinking about it. It seems like this ought to have made it onto PG's list of frighteningly ambitious ideas.
DrinkWater 14y ago
Some people are not getting the main goal of the Firefox OS: To give emerging markets (cheap) smartphones and keep the web as open as possible. Therefore, HTML/CSS/JS is a damn good combo to keep the web open, and to enable rapid development of apps.
soapdog 14y ago
Some people on this thread are completely missing the point of Firefox OS. Its about standards and making it work cross-platform with no lock-in about vendors. Last week, I spent some days on a hackathon to promote Firefox OS app development. It was very refreshing and fun. After developing for iOS and Android, developing for a mobile phone using JS was a very good experience. I enjoy using Javascript. I think Obj-C is great too and I am not fond of Java but this is not about whats your favorite language, its about bringing the freedom of the web to your mobile device. In couple days, I created a tiny QR Decoder that anyone with a Firefox OS device could browse too and install on their phone. That was great. During the hackathon we shared lots of apps between each other without the need for market approval, vendor saying or whatever. And yet there's the Firefox Marketplace to help discovery and certification for privileged apps. Firefox Aurora for Android already has open web apps support that allow you to install web apps on your Android device and will hopefully implement all the WebAPI. Once Android and Firefox OS support the WebAPI there will be pressure on the other vendors to implement it as well and then we'll be in a better place than we are now.
itsbits 14y ago
Good...i would be interested to know what kind of hardware support FireFoxOS would be targeted to build on...Just you know before i buy my new mobile...... I am already looking fwd for UbuntuOS which also supports JS as native and Nexus seems to fill their hardware req.
camus 14y ago
At the end of the day , the only user will care about is the app store and performances. If the apps are great and run fast then people will not care how they are made. That's the only thing we should care about.If FFos doesnt deliver on these levels then it wont work. There is already an os for cheap celphones , android. Cheaper hardware means crappy software.
logn 14y ago
I can easily see it beating Android/iPhone (or at least competing). I can't wait to get my hands on such a phone and I'll definitely be making apps for it. I think a lot of developers are like myself since 1) it's all JavaScript/HTML5 which is cool and 2) it's by Mozilla and company. Once there are a bunch of apps the people will come, unless the mobile industry decides to make this fail or Firefox OS turns out to be terrible. Also I think people miss, this isn't just a phone full of webapps, it's about opening up the native functionality of the phone to JavaScript. So operating the camera, accelerometer, contacts list API, etc.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
general_failure 14y ago
html5 apps != web pages
kunai 14y ago
Interesting. I'd love to see Firebooks in the future along with Chromebooks. It would be nice to have two cloud-based operating systems for the desktop out there.
Apocryphon 14y ago
"But how is it going to beat Android or iOS?” I'm more interested in how it stacks against other open source mobile OS's, most importantly Ubuntu, but also open webOS and Tizen.
cmccabe 14y ago
If the stench of doom were any stronger on this project, Id Software would have to sue for trademark infringement.

219 points by cornbread_bun 14y ago

I would have liked to have heard a story like this one at FOSDEM. You had a room full of interested IT people/devs/... and missed selling the 'spirit' of fOS. Too bad...

pragmatictester 14y ago
https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/firefox_os/ https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/firefox_os/ https://fosdem.org/2013/interviews/2013-jonas-sicking/ https://fosdem.org/2013/interviews/2013-jonas-sicking/ https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/automating_firefox_os/ https://fosdem.org/2013/schedule/event/automating_firefox_os...

janjongboom 14y ago

Good article. The main reason for FFOS is not to take over the world but rather disrupt the closed ecosystems that Google, Apple and Microsoft are creating; the same way that Firefox broke Microsofts monopoly on the browser market.

smoyer 14y ago
Curiously, Google has produced another (enterprisey) system than disrupts the (more) closed Android system ... GWT. If you like the strong typing of Java, compiling it to Javascript seems "safe".
lucian1900 14y ago
Except Android is no more or less closed than Firefox OS. Both open source, allow sideloading and have curated app stores.
- janjongboom 14y ago
  Android itself isn't, but the ecosystem that they're building is. The market is controlled by Google and the apps will only run on Android phones. Not the OS is important, the ecosystem is. That's why Apple and Google and everyone are trying to keep everyone inside.
  - lucian1900 14y ago
    The Firefox OS app market is controlled by Mozilla and the apps will only run on Firefox OS (for now, at least). Everyone is free to implement the Android app API, as Blackberry have, just like they are free to implement the Firefox OS phone APIs. The difference is very small. Firefox is more likely to have portable apps, Android offers a much higher quality API for building apps.
    - zabraxias 14y ago
      There is an official marketplace offering from Mozilla: http://marketplace.firefox.com http://marketplace.firefox.com but others are free to implement their own and no one has to use the official one. The apps will run on both the OS and Firefox for Android, Firefox Desktop. I tend to agree there are advantages to a packaged SDK but there are project initiatives such as Mortar to cover this base also.
    - kibwen 14y ago
      > The Firefox OS app market is controlled by Mozilla One clarification here: Mozilla's marketplace code is entirely public (though confusingly named): https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni https://github.com/mozilla/zamboni Any corporate or individual entity could take this code and set up their own entirely compatible platform.
      - lucian1900 14y ago
        While the Play backend isn't open-source, there are already at least two other competing app stores. The differences really aren't that big.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

Glad to see this coming out - I think the technical chutzpah of FirefoxOS is fantastic, now let's see Mozilla Market it in the same clear vision and spirit. I mean I simply did not know there was an emulator (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/12/firefox-os-simulator-1-0-is-here/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/12/firefox-os-simulator-1-0-i...) until this post, and honestly I looked. Edit: oh and can someone tell me if persona is taking off or not - are there stats from login.persona.org?

stomlinson 14y ago
Hi lifeisstillgood, I am one of the core Persona developers. Persona is a pretty awesome project with very ambitious goals. We obviously want to see growth explode and are working hard to make Persona great for both users and site operators. Persona's growth has been steady, primarily driven by newly developed sites. We hope that as the user base grows and support for the BrowserID protocol is natively built into the browsers, existing sites will have more of an impetus to offer support. A version of Persona is already integrated into FirefoxOS and we hope to offer support in desktop Firefox by the end of the year. If you want to participate in discussions, have an idea on how we can improve, or just want to see what we are up to, our mailing list is open to everyone: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla.dev.identity https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla.dev.identity
- lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Thank you - I have just joined the group. I agree - Persona is an awesome project - and I like anything that is going to take the pain of managing passwords away from me. I am most interested in python / wsgi integration - if any of your collegues are working on this I will be very happy to contribute.
  - minikomi 14y ago
    In some downtime at work I threw together a rough proof of concept just to see what it invloves in go[1].. It was crazy simple to get running. I hope people start using it in more places. [1] https://gist.github.com/minikomi/4563344 https://gist.github.com/minikomi/4563344

robotmay 14y ago

I'm really excited for Firefox OS, but I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I have a lot of respect for Mozilla and the high quality of their software. Having a fresh ecosystem is always going to attract developers who haven't bothered with the current platforms due to overcrowding (among other things), even if it never rivals the size of Android/iOS.

kiba 14y ago

Can FirefoxOS run on top of android or iOS, or is that lower level?

sergimansilla 14y ago
The applications can, through Firefox for Android. That means that if you use WebAPIs that access phone internals, it will work just fine.

jpwagner 14y ago

There are plenty of js/html frameworks for mobile. That mission was (and is??) the _promise_ of webOS. So I don't see how you can say "even in the unlikely event that Firefox OS itself disappears in the process, if web-apps become mainstream it will have succeeded" since it's far from a controlled experiment. Mozilla always seems to have the same answer to "what if we just started from scratch": which is "let's do it". It's endearing I guess.

bergie 14y ago
One big difference here is that Firefox OS (just like PhoneGap/Cordova) is aiming at standardizing the APIs, not at just being another framework. That by itself will make the web richer regardless of how FFOS fares on the market.
- zokier 14y ago
  And what makes those "standards" different from "another framework"? A rubber stamp from W3C?
  - bergie 14y ago
    Yeah, and usually a compliance test suite. And nowadays browser vendors even seem to be quite active in implementing these things. See for instance http://blog.chromium.org/2013/02/hello-firefox-this-is-chrome-calling.html http://blog.chromium.org/2013/02/hello-firefox-this-is-chrom... and https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-calling/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/02/hello-chrome-its-firefox-c... In general, I'm curious about the hatred here on HN towards W3C. Sure, standards often move slowly, but it is still the best way to achieve interoperability.

erikj54 14y ago

Interesting if this is in fact the goal. I would argue you still will have a mix of both. No ubiquitous environment, but Web apps will get first class support on upcoming platforms. At least this seems to be the most logical route. If you've ever used Cordova or "PhoneGap" you would know about the plug in architecture and how it is in fact still the wild west. Developers write native extensions to do things the underlying JS API can't, this won't change for a long time until the Web API does. The future is a mix of both Web and native, not just the Web.

supercoder 14y ago

I'm starting to feel like html/js/css is starting to become the 'this will be the year of linux on the desktop' of apps. They're flexible technologies, but don't think they'll ever have the feel of purpose built native API's.

jasonlotito 14y ago
Unless the native apps are meant to be built with web technologies. It's not like using these technologies no a mobile OS is a new concept. And be wary of using something like iOS has a base for your assumptions. It's not built with those technologies in mind, and people already use HTML/JS/CSS for their apps (successfully, I might add).
PommeDeTerre 14y ago
Only just starting? It was pretty apparent after the DHTML craze of the late 1990s fell flat on its face that web apps weren't any threat to native desktop apps. Then the exact same thing happened during the mid 2000s, when AJAX was all the rage. The more recent HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript fad is yet one more revival of the same failed set of ideas.
- marknutter 14y ago
  Because people use desktop apps all the time now...
  - PommeDeTerre 14y ago
    Are you seriously trying to suggest that people don't? I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but desktop apps are still very widely used by all sorts of people. This includes home users, business users, scientific users, software developers, academics, and so forth. Even when it comes to web browsing, traffic from non-desktop devices is generally only around 10% to 15% of a site's total traffic these days, for sites that aren't specifically targeting mobile users. The remaining 85% (or more) of traffic is coming from people who are, guess what, using web browsers implemented as desktop apps.
- 14y ago

Uchikoma 14y ago

I've read the article, I agree with the HTML5/JS premise, but I still do not understand Firefox OS.

anon1385 14y ago

And if your problem is with JavaScript as a language, you can already use a myriad of languages that reliably compile to it. Do you come from a Java background? You’ll probably like Dart, from Google. More of a functional kind of developer? Try ClojureScript, which is an impressive, well-maintained and well-performing implementation of Clojure on top of JavaScript. Coming from Ruby? You’ll be almost at home with CoffeeScript. You get the picture. God no. Instead of having to use a single awful language all the time I get to choose what language to transpile to javascript and I never have to look at or think about javascript at all. Unless of course there are bugs and then you get to experience the pleasure of debugging machine generated javascript. Maybe some people are filled with joy by the thought of debugging generated js, all I can say is that those people are certifiably insane. How about we work on platforms that support more that one language as first class citizens. Is that really such a crazy idea in 2013?

lucian1900 14y ago
That particular problem will improve immensely with SourceMap, so you'll almost never have to look at JS.
- johnyzee 14y ago
  Even without source maps it is not such a big deal as people who have no experience using cross-compilation would think. I write a very big game engine with GWT (http://www.webworks.dk/enginetest http://www.webworks.dk/enginetest) and have no problems debugging. Clients send neat stack traces back to the server and I can even obfuscate the application code and using symbol maps deobfuscate the stack traces on the server. I gave a presentation a couple of weeks ago with a couple of slides with example stack traces with and without deobfuscation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TCzHx1UH24gA1Au8LOvZQkrQmRFtzGQeoVQlqZMkfME/edit#slide=id.g6bdaa991_0_120 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1TCzHx1UH24gA1Au8LOvZ...
contingencies 14y ago
How about we work on platforms that support more that one language as first class citizens. Is that really such a crazy idea in 2013? You mean like iOS' half-C or Android's half-Java?

shadowmint 14y ago

So... it's 2013, and I'm sitting here with my blazingly fast nexus 4, and the web sites I visit are... slow. terrible. broken. spammy. Half of them have 'popups' that try to banner at the bottom of the screen, but end up flailing wilding and either taking up the entire screen, or just helpfully sitting exactly over the middle of the page. A lot of them try repeatedly to direct me to a specific page, or a native app when ever I flick between pages. The links are tiny and impossible to click on without zooming in. It's just a terrible, terrible experience. How do we get from this broken UX experience story of right now, into the magical compelling 'mobile web app' future that OP talks about? I just don't see a roadmap for it. :(

lifeisstillgood 14y ago
You are on a site that is not broken, slow or spammy. It has "stickiness" and "retention" that all of those sites cannot dream of. Good User Experience beats terrible. Good user experience makes money - trust us, the market will win.
- anon1385 14y ago
  >You are on a site that is not broken, slow or spammy. Is this sarcasm? I honestly can't tell. You have never experienced the expired link error? Or the 'site not available' error? HN is one of the most broken websites I frequently visit. Also you ignored the part about tiny links. HN is full of tiny links: have you used the site on a phone and tried to upvote a post?
  - lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    No, not sarcasm. HN sits with craigslist on the set of sites that the UX is in the community not the site.
- dhimes 14y ago
  This site is totally broken for mobile, and has been for years despite complaints.

mikecane 14y ago

I still don't understand why Firefox OS will go anywhere when webOS did not. Aren't we talking about basically the same thing? HTML5/JS/CSS? Is it timing, the changed environment that now focuses attention on web apps? Is it the reputation of Mozilla vs that of Palm/HP? I'm not saying web apps won't have a place, I'm just extremely confused about the seeming contradiction or about-face here.

chris_wot 14y ago
Palm/HP didn't exactly make it a huge deal to go to standards bodies, did they? That was my impression. Could be wrong.
- mikecane 14y ago
  Yes, perhaps that's it. The mention of standards bodies stood out to me too.
mephju 14y ago
The problem with webOS of course was not the sdk or anything related to how to build an app for that platform. It was just the lack of interest and relevance which is needed to attract developers.

brudgers 14y ago

In the abstract FireFox OS is appealing. But the likely realities aren't. It's hard not to assume the ease with which Firefox the browser can be installed by my Mom when thinking about the OS. But doing so is plain wrong. For most end users it will be as tied to a particular device by the manufacturer as any other mobile OS. And the likelihood that the end user will, as a practical matter, be able to load Firefox OS on their own is low because there is no ISA for mobile and the mobile ecosystem is so mined with patents. It's not that some people may not be able to hack Firefox OS onto an iPhone - I actually expect it. It's that such hacks will kludged beyond utility for most non-technical people.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
You're missing the point of Firefox OS. They don't want to make an OS, they want to make the web a good platform for apps.

mephju 14y ago

This is a real question and no trolling: Why is nobody building a second kind of browser, one which is not based on html and css. A browser which is geared towards app execution and development. A browser which can run apps which can be programmed in a way that is similar to programming Android apps. Where I can for example have a footer without doing some css hacks. DNS and most of our backends could still be reused but the client stuff would have to be written again. Delivering apps and linking between them like the web does is awesome. Building sophisticated apps is not awesome but on Android and iOS it is. Why not take the best of both worlds...now....not in 10 years when some standards might agree on something. Just think about how very important the web is. Everyone is using it. The whole world largely depends on it, but it's increasingly not up to the task. And why do web developers seem to be so satisfied with the state of the technology which drives the web. Oh, you think css is great because you can code a hack for putting a footer on the bottom of the page even when there is no content in the attention area? What? It's so strange. Why has nobody ever tried to create such a browser?

heja2009 14y ago
Not 100% sure what you mean, but wasn't Java ME a portable solution, a platform geared towards app execution and development? And in a limited sense it even succeeded... Not sure I want a 2nd iteration though.
- mephju 14y ago
  Java ME doesn't have any of the advantages of the web. Like links or being searchable and so on. It's just another app environment. I am talking about combining the advantages of the web (which is not css/html) with those of successful app development platforms.
andrewflnr 14y ago
It would have to be huge piece of software, and nobody would use it. That is, it would be very difficult to get adoption. That said, some of us are thinking about it. It seems like this ought to have made it onto PG's list of frighteningly ambitious ideas.

DrinkWater 14y ago

Some people are not getting the main goal of the Firefox OS: To give emerging markets (cheap) smartphones and keep the web as open as possible. Therefore, HTML/CSS/JS is a damn good combo to keep the web open, and to enable rapid development of apps.

soapdog 14y ago

Some people on this thread are completely missing the point of Firefox OS. Its about standards and making it work cross-platform with no lock-in about vendors. Last week, I spent some days on a hackathon to promote Firefox OS app development. It was very refreshing and fun. After developing for iOS and Android, developing for a mobile phone using JS was a very good experience. I enjoy using Javascript. I think Obj-C is great too and I am not fond of Java but this is not about whats your favorite language, its about bringing the freedom of the web to your mobile device. In couple days, I created a tiny QR Decoder that anyone with a Firefox OS device could browse too and install on their phone. That was great. During the hackathon we shared lots of apps between each other without the need for market approval, vendor saying or whatever. And yet there's the Firefox Marketplace to help discovery and certification for privileged apps. Firefox Aurora for Android already has open web apps support that allow you to install web apps on your Android device and will hopefully implement all the WebAPI. Once Android and Firefox OS support the WebAPI there will be pressure on the other vendors to implement it as well and then we'll be in a better place than we are now.

itsbits 14y ago

Good...i would be interested to know what kind of hardware support FireFoxOS would be targeted to build on...Just you know before i buy my new mobile...... I am already looking fwd for UbuntuOS which also supports JS as native and Nexus seems to fill their hardware req.

camus 14y ago

At the end of the day , the only user will care about is the app store and performances. If the apps are great and run fast then people will not care how they are made. That's the only thing we should care about.If FFos doesnt deliver on these levels then it wont work. There is already an os for cheap celphones , android. Cheaper hardware means crappy software.

logn 14y ago

I can easily see it beating Android/iPhone (or at least competing). I can't wait to get my hands on such a phone and I'll definitely be making apps for it. I think a lot of developers are like myself since 1) it's all JavaScript/HTML5 which is cool and 2) it's by Mozilla and company. Once there are a bunch of apps the people will come, unless the mobile industry decides to make this fail or Firefox OS turns out to be terrible. Also I think people miss, this isn't just a phone full of webapps, it's about opening up the native functionality of the phone to JavaScript. So operating the camera, accelerometer, contacts list API, etc.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

general_failure 14y ago

html5 apps != web pages

kunai 14y ago

Interesting. I'd love to see Firebooks in the future along with Chromebooks. It would be nice to have two cloud-based operating systems for the desktop out there.

Apocryphon 14y ago

"But how is it going to beat Android or iOS?” I'm more interested in how it stacks against other open source mobile OS's, most importantly Ubuntu, but also open webOS and Tizen.

cmccabe 14y ago

If the stench of doom were any stronger on this project, Id Software would have to sue for trademark infringement.