5 ms·

I'm pretty torn about Firefox OS. On the one hand: * Mozilla's at the helm. My privacy is more likely to be respected. * Whipping up Firefox OS apps is stupid

I'm pretty torn about Firefox OS. On the one hand: * Mozilla's at the helm. My privacy is more likely to be respected. * Whipping up Firefox OS apps is stupid simple. On the other: * They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets. * There's no NDK and as far as I'm aware there are no plans for one. While most of my Android apps could be rebuilt easily in Firefox OS, the programs with 3D graphics or C library dependencies seem to be out of luck. * As an extension to the above, I can't write Firefox OS apps with Rust, which is shaping up to be a great language.

padenot 13y ago
There has been very interesting results with emscripten ports of apps (I only saw video games, actually), that were using libc and raw gl. It was running ok, but I can understand that the lack of NDK is problematic when pushing the device to the limit. I'm curious on how we will address that (being a native developer working on Gecko myself, I'd certainly interested to do some crazy ARM NEON stuff on FxOS).
kryptiskt 13y ago
Thing is, there's nothing else that runs natively, it's just Gecko on SurfaceFlinger. FirefoxOS' UI is entirely implemented above that in HTML+JS. So there is no infrastructure that can be opened up to allow native apps, it would have to be written from scratch.
- padenot 13y ago
  Nope, we hit below SurfaceFlinger. gralloc and direct gl, actually.
  - kryptiskt 13y ago
    Ah, thanks, I thought SurfaceFlinger was kept from Android.
shmerl 13y ago
For high end handsets, consider Jolla's Sailfish.
bad_user 13y ago
> They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets It's only the beginning and I think they are smart for doing this - iPhones are high-end and cheap Androids suck. The low-end market is still dominated by Symbian, or Bada, or Rex, or Asha, all of which suck. They have a real shot at gaining significant market-share with this strategy. iOS and Android have too much inertia to beat by playing the high-end game.
binarycrusader 13y ago
No native development kit is a non-starter for me personally. Apple tried to go the same route with the original iPhone and there's a very good reason why it wasn't successful -- and it wasn't just the state of JavaScript technology at the time. If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can. Apple is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps. Google is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps. Mozilla is a non-profit organization whose mission to advance the open web. Different goals, different requirements.
  - binarycrusader 13y ago
    The need for a native SDK is not going to magically go away just because Mozilla is a non-profit organisation. There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK that I personally believe are not going to be resolvable in the next 2-3 years, even with asm.js and all the other great things Mozilla is doing to advance the web. I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs. I personally find your for-profit argument specious at best.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > The need for a native SDK is not going to magically go away just because Mozilla is a non-profit organisation. Well, no. Its not going to "go away", its not going to exist in the first place. > There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK Sure, there are reasons for having one, they just happen to be reasons that are irrelevant to Mozilla's purpose. > I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs. Sure, and that's why you might need a native SDK, not why Mozilla needs one.

padenot 13y ago

There has been very interesting results with emscripten ports of apps (I only saw video games, actually), that were using libc and raw gl. It was running ok, but I can understand that the lack of NDK is problematic when pushing the device to the limit. I'm curious on how we will address that (being a native developer working on Gecko myself, I'd certainly interested to do some crazy ARM NEON stuff on FxOS).

kryptiskt 13y ago

Thing is, there's nothing else that runs natively, it's just Gecko on SurfaceFlinger. FirefoxOS' UI is entirely implemented above that in HTML+JS. So there is no infrastructure that can be opened up to allow native apps, it would have to be written from scratch.

padenot 13y ago
Nope, we hit below SurfaceFlinger. gralloc and direct gl, actually.
- kryptiskt 13y ago
  Ah, thanks, I thought SurfaceFlinger was kept from Android.

shmerl 13y ago

For high end handsets, consider Jolla's Sailfish.

bad_user 13y ago

> They don't seem to want to target higher-end handsets It's only the beginning and I think they are smart for doing this - iPhones are high-end and cheap Androids suck. The low-end market is still dominated by Symbian, or Bada, or Rex, or Asha, all of which suck. They have a real shot at gaining significant market-share with this strategy. iOS and Android have too much inertia to beat by playing the high-end game.

binarycrusader 13y ago

No native development kit is a non-starter for me personally. Apple tried to go the same route with the original iPhone and there's a very good reason why it wasn't successful -- and it wasn't just the state of JavaScript technology at the time. If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> If Apple can't do without a native SDK and Google can't, I don't know why Mozilla thinks it can. Apple is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps. Google is a for-profit corporation that makes money off its market for native apps. Mozilla is a non-profit organization whose mission to advance the open web. Different goals, different requirements.
- binarycrusader 13y ago
  The need for a native SDK is not going to magically go away just because Mozilla is a non-profit organisation. There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK that I personally believe are not going to be resolvable in the next 2-3 years, even with asm.js and all the other great things Mozilla is doing to advance the web. I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs. I personally find your for-profit argument specious at best.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > The need for a native SDK is not going to magically go away just because Mozilla is a non-profit organisation. Well, no. Its not going to "go away", its not going to exist in the first place. > There are real, quantifiable, technical reasons for having a native SDK Sure, there are reasons for having one, they just happen to be reasons that are irrelevant to Mozilla's purpose. > I'm fine with Mozilla wanting to advance the web; but not at the cost of precluding the possibility of applications that need native SDKs. Sure, and that's why you might need a native SDK, not why Mozilla needs one.