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The release cycle should be quite rapid, more so than any of the the existing OS platforms on the market. Additionally, if you can develop web sites/apps well o
by csuwldcat 14y ago
The release cycle should be quite rapid, more so than any of the the existing OS platforms on the market. Additionally, if you can develop web sites/apps well on "evergreen" desktop browsers like Firefox and Chrome, the experience will be almost identical. Do you feel desktop Firefox and Chrome browsers upgrade too slowly today? If not, you're in luck, because the Gecko (JS, HTML, CSS) engine in Firefox OS can be updated just about as fast - after all, the Gecko engine that evaluates your markup, styles, and JS code in Firefox OS is the same one that's in the Firefox desktop browser ;)
- meaty 14y agoI don't think that carriers will take a rapid release cycle.
- shardling 14y agoThe impression I got is that FirefoxOS is designed in such a way that it'll be a bit easier to upgrade than e.g. Android. I think with Android, carriers are slow to upgrade because each update can create hardware incompatibility. With FF OS, they can hopefully upgrade Gecko (thus exposing new functionality to web apps) without messing with the device drivers etc. For whatever reasons, that doesn't seem possible with Android updates. They can also upgrade the UI really easily (it's just HTML), but I assume that wouldn't be able to expose new APIS/functionality to apps.
- fabrice_d 14y agoThat's basically correct. We can update Gecko (the web runtime) and Gaia (the core apps) independently of firmware updates.
- shawn-butler 14y agoThis is what will get stuck in carrier certification I imagine. WebOS tried the same thing around 3.xx when they moved the App catalog out of ROM. How will you handle overriding user changes to the apps? Will you overwrite them automatically?
- drivebyacct2 14y agoSigh. Part of this simply has to do with Android's fledgling early versions and their rapid development. There were a lot of things that required core updates and driver updates that OEMs drug their feet on. Now, that's pretty well smoothed out with 4.0 and 4.x and hasn't been an issue and should be much less of one going forward. [not true:] The great irony here of course is that Firefox OS uses SurfaceFlinger and relies on the Android stack. They can add new Gecko functionality, but if Android improves the graphics stack again -- guess what? If Firefox OS wants to leverage those (and they should) then they have to make the same core difficult-for-OEMS changes. [/not true] The analog of "add APIs through Gecko" is "Android Compatibility Library" that adds new functionality to older versions of Android to allow targeting of older devices.
- fabrice_d 14y agoFirefox OS doesn't use SurfaceFlinger at all. Our graphic susbsytem talks directly to the GL layer.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoYeah, I just realized that I confused Ubuntu with Firefox OS (ubuntu does use SurfaceFlinger). IIRC, as of several months ago, there were a few components that Firefox OS still piggy-backed on Android for. Either way, my point was quite invalid. Thanks for the correction.
- shawn-butler 14y agoThere is no irony other than you are misinformed. SurfaceFlinger is not really involved. They setup an OpenGLES context and then use a custom compositor. https://github.com/cgjones/mozilla-central/blob/master/widget/gonk/nsWindow.cpp#L79 https://github.com/cgjones/mozilla-central/blob/master/widge... [Edited for tone. Frustration got better of me]
- drivebyacct2 14y agoWow. Way off, my apologies. Post has been edited.