8 ms·

There's something wrong with your quote and/or the previews that you have read. For one thing, the link you provide doesn't contain that quote anywhere that I

by Yoric 13y ago

There's something wrong with your quote and/or the previews that you have read. For one thing, the link you provide doesn't contain that quote anywhere that I can see. Perhaps you intended to post a different link? Secondly, I have been using a Firefox OS developer preview phone for several months (one less powerful than the ZTE, I believe), and the UI is extremely snappy. As all 1.0s it still has rough edges that I only hope will be softened by future upgrades, but I find the user experience generally pleasant. Finally, you can certainly grab a refurbished iPhone if you prefer. iOS 6 is certainly visually nicer than Firefox OS 1.0. But the whole point of FirefoxOS is freedom from silos. One of the consequences is that the appstore will not simply drop support on you whenever Apple (or whoever owns your silo) decides that they want to force you into buying a new phone. Unless I'm mistaken, another of the consequences is that any application bought on FirefoxOS will still belong to you if decide to move to an Android phone or to your Windows/MacOS/Linux personal computer (sorry, no iPhone support, Apple wouldn't want that kind of thing to happen). Oh, and of course, with a Firefox OS phone, you can just write and deploy your own apps without having to ask anybody's permission. I wrote a (small) game during a conference and released it a few days later, before the Marketplace was even open. If visual effects are more important to you than this kind of freedom, yes, by all means, go ahead and buy a refurbished iPhone. Caveat: I'm a Mozillian.

PommeDeTerre 13y ago
The benefits you list for Firefox OS may not apply to iOS, but they do apply to Android, too. I can install apps on my Android phone without using any app store, for instance. I can freely write my own Android apps, and distribute them myself, without having to pay anyone or get permission to do so. I don't have to upgrade to a newer version of Android if I don't want to. If I can already get all of that with Android, and so much more (such as decent performance, the ability to develop apps in languages other than JavaScript, access to a huge number of existing applications, and so on), what is it that should be compelling me to use Firefox OS instead? Furthermore, various incidents since the release of Firefox 4 have also shaken my trust in Mozilla. Time and time again, we've seen decisions made with very limited community input, and apparently little regard to the impact that they'll have. I'm talking about how the approach to releases was changed in a way that broke extensions time and time again, for a long time. I'm talking about how the status bar has been removed, and the menu bar was hidden by default. I'm talking about how the protocol isn't shown in the URL bar. I'm talking about the latest incident from today, where the preferences dialog option for disabling JavaScript will apparently be removed in Firefox 23. Incidents like those make me very skeptical of the "openness" claims we hear time and time again with respect to Firefox OS.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  All of those decisions were made with quite a bit of community input. The people who claim they were not are the people who disagreed with them. Firefox had to be switched to a faster release model to keep pace with Chrome. That's what competition does. Firefox adapted and excelled. Some extension developers took a while to catch on and understand the new process. But as there are 6 weeks of time to test each new version and generally extensions don't change unless there is an API change, it's not much of an issue. Any commercial developer that falls down on this is simply irresponsible. The status bar is there and shows up whenever it needs to (during loading or hovering over a link). There's no need for it to be there the rest of the time. Any old-school extensions that had UI elements in the status bar simply moved to the toolbar. The protocol is shown in the URL bar whenever it's something besides http (so for ftp, https, chrome, etc). http is redundant as it's assumed. Same reason we don't use it when giving web addresses via other media. You can still disable JavaScript in the about:config window and using all kinds of extensions to add UI elements if you want a quick toggle. It's being removed since it's not very useful anymore as much of the web requires JavaScript. Lots of developers don't even bother testing sites for when JavaScript is disabled anymore (nor do they really need to as no one disables it except a core group of a couple million geeks and these folks know that if a site breaks, they need to whitelist it in NoScript).
- Yoric 13y ago
  (I won't reply on your remarks regarding Mozilla and UX, as JohnTHaller has done this quite nicely.) It is true that power users can install apps without going through the Android Play Store. Regular users (i.e. your customers, if you are a developer)? I wouldn't be so sure. That's your first clue that Android is not the pinnacle of mobile OS. For most users, Android is effectively a silo. Worse than that, it is a silo in which all your otherwise private data belongs to a single company. As a user, this is a pretty big clue to me that Android is not the platform I want for me, or for my children. As for developing apps in languages other than JavaScript, well, here are "a few" other languages that you can use: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang... . This includes C, C++, C#, Python, Java, etc. Heck, even I have developed a language in that list :) Caveat: I am a Mozillian (and I'll stop writing this at the bottom of my messages, I grow tired of it).
slacka 13y ago
There is nothing wrong with the previews I read, but I did accidentally paste the wrong link. Here it is: http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/geeksphone-keon/4505-6452_7-35619072.html http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/geeksphone-keon/4505-645... Hard as it is for me to admit, MS did an amazing job with Windows Mobile 8. For low-end hardware it gives a silky smooth OS performance. On the apps side though, I wasn't too impressed with the Nova 3 and Asphalt 7 on the phone I tested. I'm not sure if this is a fault of the OS, hardware, or just that iOS developers have more experience optimizing for that platform. Given the same hardware, I'd put money on iOS, Win8, and even Android (w/ NDK) outperforming Firefox OS.
- Yoric 13y ago
  Indeed, it seems that their experience was not very good using a pre-release version of FirefoxOS. Given that my less powerful phone is very responsive, I am confident that this is a temporary glitch that has been fixed already or, at worst, will be soon. So I'll take your bet :)
- untog 13y ago
  Hard as it is for me to admit, MS did an amazing job with Windows Mobile 8. Why is that hard to admit?
  - slacka 13y ago
    After upgrading to an iPhone from a Treo 700w (and Win Mo 2003 phone before that), it's hard for me to admit to myself or believe that MS has made such a 360 in mobile UX.
    - iSnow 13y ago
      180° maybe?
lbenes 13y ago
I used Firefox since from the Firebird days until the memory bloat in 4.0 drove me to Chome. Now every time I try to go back, I find Firefox behind the competition. For example, when I loaded up FF to test out ASM.js, I found I was still on version 18 because your silent auto updater only works when you run as administrator. You expect all your users to run as root in 2013? Really? OK cidadel under ASM.js was pretty cool and memory boat seemed under control. Nice job BTW! So I set FF as my default browser. Next day I come to HN and open some CSS3 hair demo in a new tab. Next thing I know my browser is completely unresponsive. Until I find the offending tab and close it. Back to multi-process Chrome as my default. As a Mozillian can you please explain why Mozilla is wasting their resources trying to power budget phones with a bloated outdated browser? Fix your browser, and by then, maybe the mobile hardware will be fast enough to justify the performance hit from running everything inside a JavaScript VM.
- cbhl 13y ago
  > You expect all your users to run as root in 2013? Really? > As a Mozillian can you please explain why Mozilla is wasting their resources trying to power budget phones with a bloated outdated browser? Do you really expect anyone that isn't a developer to be running on a desktop in 2018? Really?
  - alphakappa 13y ago
    Are you predicting that in 5 years only developers will have laptops? (I presume that your definition of a desktop includes laptops given the browser application we are talking about)
- Yoric 13y ago
  > As a Mozillian can you please explain why Mozilla is wasting their resources trying to power budget phones with a bloated outdated browser? Fix your browser, and by then, maybe the mobile hardware will be fast enough to justify the performance hit from running everything inside a JavaScript VM. I have several answers to that. Firstly, budget phones running everything inside a JavaScript VM works today. We have now proved it. Almost every optimization/new technology we have achieved along the way has also been made available to Firefox for Android and Firefox Desktop, so it's hardly an exclusive or. One of these new technologies is the much-wanted support for multi-process. It is not ready for deployment, far from it, but it is now field-tested, so I hope that we will all be able to benefit from this feature soon. Also, if you are a developer, you are certainly aware that this is not how things work. You simply cannot wait until a product is perfect before getting started with another product, because this is the road to never releasing anything, ever. Finally, glad that you returned to Firefox, however briefly :), and glad that you liked some of the experience. I hope we'll have you back once we have finally released a multi-process version. Or once you grow weary of Google owning all your data :)

by Yoric 13y ago

PommeDeTerre 13y ago

The benefits you list for Firefox OS may not apply to iOS, but they do apply to Android, too. I can install apps on my Android phone without using any app store, for instance. I can freely write my own Android apps, and distribute them myself, without having to pay anyone or get permission to do so. I don't have to upgrade to a newer version of Android if I don't want to. If I can already get all of that with Android, and so much more (such as decent performance, the ability to develop apps in languages other than JavaScript, access to a huge number of existing applications, and so on), what is it that should be compelling me to use Firefox OS instead? Furthermore, various incidents since the release of Firefox 4 have also shaken my trust in Mozilla. Time and time again, we've seen decisions made with very limited community input, and apparently little regard to the impact that they'll have. I'm talking about how the approach to releases was changed in a way that broke extensions time and time again, for a long time. I'm talking about how the status bar has been removed, and the menu bar was hidden by default. I'm talking about how the protocol isn't shown in the URL bar. I'm talking about the latest incident from today, where the preferences dialog option for disabling JavaScript will apparently be removed in Firefox 23. Incidents like those make me very skeptical of the "openness" claims we hear time and time again with respect to Firefox OS.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
JohnTHaller 13y ago
All of those decisions were made with quite a bit of community input. The people who claim they were not are the people who disagreed with them. Firefox had to be switched to a faster release model to keep pace with Chrome. That's what competition does. Firefox adapted and excelled. Some extension developers took a while to catch on and understand the new process. But as there are 6 weeks of time to test each new version and generally extensions don't change unless there is an API change, it's not much of an issue. Any commercial developer that falls down on this is simply irresponsible. The status bar is there and shows up whenever it needs to (during loading or hovering over a link). There's no need for it to be there the rest of the time. Any old-school extensions that had UI elements in the status bar simply moved to the toolbar. The protocol is shown in the URL bar whenever it's something besides http (so for ftp, https, chrome, etc). http is redundant as it's assumed. Same reason we don't use it when giving web addresses via other media. You can still disable JavaScript in the about:config window and using all kinds of extensions to add UI elements if you want a quick toggle. It's being removed since it's not very useful anymore as much of the web requires JavaScript. Lots of developers don't even bother testing sites for when JavaScript is disabled anymore (nor do they really need to as no one disables it except a core group of a couple million geeks and these folks know that if a site breaks, they need to whitelist it in NoScript).
Yoric 13y ago
(I won't reply on your remarks regarding Mozilla and UX, as JohnTHaller has done this quite nicely.) It is true that power users can install apps without going through the Android Play Store. Regular users (i.e. your customers, if you are a developer)? I wouldn't be so sure. That's your first clue that Android is not the pinnacle of mobile OS. For most users, Android is effectively a silo. Worse than that, it is a silo in which all your otherwise private data belongs to a single company. As a user, this is a pretty big clue to me that Android is not the platform I want for me, or for my children. As for developing apps in languages other than JavaScript, well, here are "a few" other languages that you can use: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang... . This includes C, C++, C#, Python, Java, etc. Heck, even I have developed a language in that list :) Caveat: I am a Mozillian (and I'll stop writing this at the bottom of my messages, I grow tired of it).

slacka 13y ago

There is nothing wrong with the previews I read, but I did accidentally paste the wrong link. Here it is: http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/geeksphone-keon/4505-6452_7-35619072.html http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/geeksphone-keon/4505-645... Hard as it is for me to admit, MS did an amazing job with Windows Mobile 8. For low-end hardware it gives a silky smooth OS performance. On the apps side though, I wasn't too impressed with the Nova 3 and Asphalt 7 on the phone I tested. I'm not sure if this is a fault of the OS, hardware, or just that iOS developers have more experience optimizing for that platform. Given the same hardware, I'd put money on iOS, Win8, and even Android (w/ NDK) outperforming Firefox OS.

Yoric 13y ago
Indeed, it seems that their experience was not very good using a pre-release version of FirefoxOS. Given that my less powerful phone is very responsive, I am confident that this is a temporary glitch that has been fixed already or, at worst, will be soon. So I'll take your bet :)
untog 13y ago
Hard as it is for me to admit, MS did an amazing job with Windows Mobile 8. Why is that hard to admit?
- slacka 13y ago
  After upgrading to an iPhone from a Treo 700w (and Win Mo 2003 phone before that), it's hard for me to admit to myself or believe that MS has made such a 360 in mobile UX.
  - iSnow 13y ago
    180° maybe?

lbenes 13y ago

I used Firefox since from the Firebird days until the memory bloat in 4.0 drove me to Chome. Now every time I try to go back, I find Firefox behind the competition. For example, when I loaded up FF to test out ASM.js, I found I was still on version 18 because your silent auto updater only works when you run as administrator. You expect all your users to run as root in 2013? Really? OK cidadel under ASM.js was pretty cool and memory boat seemed under control. Nice job BTW! So I set FF as my default browser. Next day I come to HN and open some CSS3 hair demo in a new tab. Next thing I know my browser is completely unresponsive. Until I find the offending tab and close it. Back to multi-process Chrome as my default. As a Mozillian can you please explain why Mozilla is wasting their resources trying to power budget phones with a bloated outdated browser? Fix your browser, and by then, maybe the mobile hardware will be fast enough to justify the performance hit from running everything inside a JavaScript VM.

cbhl 13y ago
> You expect all your users to run as root in 2013? Really? > As a Mozillian can you please explain why Mozilla is wasting their resources trying to power budget phones with a bloated outdated browser? Do you really expect anyone that isn't a developer to be running on a desktop in 2018? Really?
- alphakappa 13y ago
  Are you predicting that in 5 years only developers will have laptops? (I presume that your definition of a desktop includes laptops given the browser application we are talking about)
Yoric 13y ago
> As a Mozillian can you please explain why Mozilla is wasting their resources trying to power budget phones with a bloated outdated browser? Fix your browser, and by then, maybe the mobile hardware will be fast enough to justify the performance hit from running everything inside a JavaScript VM. I have several answers to that. Firstly, budget phones running everything inside a JavaScript VM works today. We have now proved it. Almost every optimization/new technology we have achieved along the way has also been made available to Firefox for Android and Firefox Desktop, so it's hardly an exclusive or. One of these new technologies is the much-wanted support for multi-process. It is not ready for deployment, far from it, but it is now field-tested, so I hope that we will all be able to benefit from this feature soon. Also, if you are a developer, you are certainly aware that this is not how things work. You simply cannot wait until a product is perfect before getting started with another product, because this is the road to never releasing anything, ever. Finally, glad that you returned to Firefox, however briefly :), and glad that you liked some of the experience. I hope we'll have you back once we have finally released a multi-process version. Or once you grow weary of Google owning all your data :)