6 ms·

Mozilla working on Chromecast-like mirroring for Firefox Android browser

49 points by yeukhon 13y ago

leokun 13y ago
I don't understand Mozilla's game plan. Do they want to be the company that makes a bunch of "me too" copies that are a little bit crappier than what Google makes or do they want to fix their browser. Seriously, focus. I want Mozilla to do well.
- mcpherrinm 13y ago
  If I was a Mozilla engineer and I saw the chromecast, I'd think it was neat and hack out a quick version on a Saturday afternoon. I think the ability to experiment is one of the great powers of open source software, which is why I'm surprised somebody hasn't already linked the github or Mozilla hg repo of the code to make this work. When you have a community, focus is impossible because there's nobody in charge: The worst you can do is not accept the patches. Nobody has said this was done on company time. I think you don't understand how Mozilla works if you think this represents any sort of game plan: It's just an engineer writing something cool to make his favourite browser do something the other one does.
  - leokun 13y ago
    That makes sense, although not accepting patches is something that can be totally ok.
    - ZoF 13y ago
      That's his point; he's saying worse case no harm done.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  I think you've been misled by poor reporting, where everything needs to be a copy or an X-killer or a war. The tech used to share Chrome tabs with Chrome cast is WebRTC, which Mozilla has been working on for a while. It's better known as a "Skype-killer", but it has other uses too.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  I don't understand your ire at Mozilla. Without seeing Mozilla's implementation of tab-mirroring, you seem to have somehow come to the conclusion that it is "a little bit crappier than Google". Personally, I'm glad Mozilla is keeping track of popular features from competing browsers and not falling prey to the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Not_Invented_Here.html https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Not_In...
  - leokun 13y ago
    I don't have ire at Mozilla. I love Mozilla, I want Firefox on the Mac to stop having such terrible performance. It has gotten a lot better but the scrolling and tab jittering/lag just makes it near unusable. It seems frustrating to me that with such glaring problems that Mozilla would branch out into features and products that don't seem core to their mission nor important to their users.
    - mccr8 13y ago
      Mozilla is working on many things at the same time. What gets picked up by the press is not a representative sample. Some things being worked on that will improve responsiveness include off main thread compositing, running content in a separate process, network cache rewrite, generational garbage collection, incremental cycle collection, and many other things. These are all large complex projects that take time, unfortunately.
- paulrouget 13y ago
  A Mozilla mobile hacker playing with screen mirroring is not really what we could call "Mozilla's game plan".
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Chromecast is new? I don't think so. Firefox came before Chrome and according to your logic Google was just "me too" logic. We have startup doing "me too". What's innovation? Innovation happens to be things people want to use and people find it useful and secured. If Mozilla's version is secured, useful, bug-free and great, why not?
kelnos 13y ago
Great, just what we need: another competing standard for pushing stuff between display devices. It's bad enough that AirPlay is an Apple technology and so we'll never see it integrated deeply into Android or anywhere else, and so we have the Chromecast/GTV protocol. I don't want yet another protocol. I want all my devices to be able to talk to each other. That's it.
- vijucat 13y ago
  My Android "mini-pc" comes with an app called AirPin (Pro) that apparently does AirPlay. I never had a chance to test it, though. Just FYI.
lnanek2 13y ago
Hopefully some good competition will force Google to open the ChromeCast up. The current ChromeCast is pretty bad for users because it doesn't support the current big standards in remote media play like DLNA and Miracast. Supporting DLNA would have enabled instant usage with phones from many years ago. Meanwhile people who hack the protocol and send more than a browser tab to it get their stuff broken immediately in an update. It's a lot like the Nexus Q, a remote media playback device of Google's that only did Google Play and nothing else. It's a pretty transparent attempt at proprietary lock in that doesn't benefit the end users. Personally, my Miracast Netgear Push2TV has been far more useful than my Chromecast. My Chromecast can't even be used on most networks I'm on because it is incompatible with WiFi that uses a username or WiFi that requires a terms page to be clicked through or WiFi that isolates peers on the AP for security. Chromecast shouldn't even be using anything more than WiFi direct for local use cases, since anything else has too much lag and hiccups for gaming. That has been proven pretty well by other contenders like the MediaLink HD. With any luck some competition will force Google to offer a better product for users than for just forcing people to use their other stuff.
- spankalee 13y ago
  I'm not sure why Google didn't go with DLNA or Miracast, but presumably they looked at this. Second screen devices with no control on their own are a bit new, so maybe they weren't a great fit. Chromecast is built on at least some open protocols like DIAL and WebRTC, and it works with 3rd party apps, and there are broadcaster and receiver projects out there. I use [CheapCast] [1] on an old phone and it works great (for non-DRM'ed content, admittedly). Google also said they want devices like TVs and radios to include Chromecast support, I'm hoping without any licensing beyond the branding, and hopefully no fees. It certainly looks like it's heading in a pretty open direction. Yes, I know that one guy used an undocumented API call and had his broadcast app broken, and pitched a hissy fit, but that's what happens when you do that. The API is supposed to stabilized soonish. So I don't see your lock in claim holding much water. I think it's much, much more important to make Play content available on devices at all, than to lock out other content. When you sell digital media you generally want it to be available everywhere possible. [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.maui.cheapcast&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.maui.cheapc...
ck2 13y ago
Is it just me or does browser screen projection seem like a surveillance dream come true if it can be silently enabled?
eliben 13y ago
This makes me wonder what the market share of Firefox Mobile is on Android. Does anyone have numbers?
drivebyacct2 13y ago
Chromecast is really not special, in the least. It just happens to be basic, "Google", and recent. Chromecast: SSDP, DIAL, WebRTC (for tab/screen casting) Bonjour/Airplay: mDNS, DNS-SD Firefox: Surely WebRTC. Hopefully mDNS+DNS-SD as it's a better solution. Even Google is pretty obviously looking at mDNS+DNS-SD. The Print guys are working on Privet. The Android guys have mDNS stuff in the MediaRouter APIs. Once again, Apple has the best technical implementation (it enables a bunch of scenarios that can't be done with DLNA/SSDP alone), but it's locked down so much that everyone else half-assedly re-invented the wheel. Can we all just get on board with something mDNS+DNS-SD based that uses something like DIAL inside for second screen apps? Please? We get all of the discovery functionality of Bonjour with the openness and second-screen-simplicity of DIAL. It's almost a no-brainer.

49 points by yeukhon 13y ago

I don't understand Mozilla's game plan. Do they want to be the company that makes a bunch of "me too" copies that are a little bit crappier than what Google makes or do they want to fix their browser. Seriously, focus. I want Mozilla to do well.

mcpherrinm 13y ago
If I was a Mozilla engineer and I saw the chromecast, I'd think it was neat and hack out a quick version on a Saturday afternoon. I think the ability to experiment is one of the great powers of open source software, which is why I'm surprised somebody hasn't already linked the github or Mozilla hg repo of the code to make this work. When you have a community, focus is impossible because there's nobody in charge: The worst you can do is not accept the patches. Nobody has said this was done on company time. I think you don't understand how Mozilla works if you think this represents any sort of game plan: It's just an engineer writing something cool to make his favourite browser do something the other one does.
- leokun 13y ago
  That makes sense, although not accepting patches is something that can be totally ok.
  - ZoF 13y ago
    That's his point; he's saying worse case no harm done.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
I think you've been misled by poor reporting, where everything needs to be a copy or an X-killer or a war. The tech used to share Chrome tabs with Chrome cast is WebRTC, which Mozilla has been working on for a while. It's better known as a "Skype-killer", but it has other uses too.
r0h1n 13y ago
I don't understand your ire at Mozilla. Without seeing Mozilla's implementation of tab-mirroring, you seem to have somehow come to the conclusion that it is "a little bit crappier than Google". Personally, I'm glad Mozilla is keeping track of popular features from competing browsers and not falling prey to the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Not_Invented_Here.html https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Not_In...
- leokun 13y ago
  I don't have ire at Mozilla. I love Mozilla, I want Firefox on the Mac to stop having such terrible performance. It has gotten a lot better but the scrolling and tab jittering/lag just makes it near unusable. It seems frustrating to me that with such glaring problems that Mozilla would branch out into features and products that don't seem core to their mission nor important to their users.
  - mccr8 13y ago
    Mozilla is working on many things at the same time. What gets picked up by the press is not a representative sample. Some things being worked on that will improve responsiveness include off main thread compositing, running content in a separate process, network cache rewrite, generational garbage collection, incremental cycle collection, and many other things. These are all large complex projects that take time, unfortunately.
paulrouget 13y ago
A Mozilla mobile hacker playing with screen mirroring is not really what we could call "Mozilla's game plan".
yeukhon 13y ago
Chromecast is new? I don't think so. Firefox came before Chrome and according to your logic Google was just "me too" logic. We have startup doing "me too". What's innovation? Innovation happens to be things people want to use and people find it useful and secured. If Mozilla's version is secured, useful, bug-free and great, why not?

kelnos 13y ago

Great, just what we need: another competing standard for pushing stuff between display devices. It's bad enough that AirPlay is an Apple technology and so we'll never see it integrated deeply into Android or anywhere else, and so we have the Chromecast/GTV protocol. I don't want yet another protocol. I want all my devices to be able to talk to each other. That's it.

vijucat 13y ago
My Android "mini-pc" comes with an app called AirPin (Pro) that apparently does AirPlay. I never had a chance to test it, though. Just FYI.

lnanek2 13y ago

Hopefully some good competition will force Google to open the ChromeCast up. The current ChromeCast is pretty bad for users because it doesn't support the current big standards in remote media play like DLNA and Miracast. Supporting DLNA would have enabled instant usage with phones from many years ago. Meanwhile people who hack the protocol and send more than a browser tab to it get their stuff broken immediately in an update. It's a lot like the Nexus Q, a remote media playback device of Google's that only did Google Play and nothing else. It's a pretty transparent attempt at proprietary lock in that doesn't benefit the end users. Personally, my Miracast Netgear Push2TV has been far more useful than my Chromecast. My Chromecast can't even be used on most networks I'm on because it is incompatible with WiFi that uses a username or WiFi that requires a terms page to be clicked through or WiFi that isolates peers on the AP for security. Chromecast shouldn't even be using anything more than WiFi direct for local use cases, since anything else has too much lag and hiccups for gaming. That has been proven pretty well by other contenders like the MediaLink HD. With any luck some competition will force Google to offer a better product for users than for just forcing people to use their other stuff.

spankalee 13y ago
I'm not sure why Google didn't go with DLNA or Miracast, but presumably they looked at this. Second screen devices with no control on their own are a bit new, so maybe they weren't a great fit. Chromecast is built on at least some open protocols like DIAL and WebRTC, and it works with 3rd party apps, and there are broadcaster and receiver projects out there. I use [CheapCast] [1] on an old phone and it works great (for non-DRM'ed content, admittedly). Google also said they want devices like TVs and radios to include Chromecast support, I'm hoping without any licensing beyond the branding, and hopefully no fees. It certainly looks like it's heading in a pretty open direction. Yes, I know that one guy used an undocumented API call and had his broadcast app broken, and pitched a hissy fit, but that's what happens when you do that. The API is supposed to stabilized soonish. So I don't see your lock in claim holding much water. I think it's much, much more important to make Play content available on devices at all, than to lock out other content. When you sell digital media you generally want it to be available everywhere possible. [1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.maui.cheapcast&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.maui.cheapc...

ck2 13y ago

Is it just me or does browser screen projection seem like a surveillance dream come true if it can be silently enabled?

eliben 13y ago

This makes me wonder what the market share of Firefox Mobile is on Android. Does anyone have numbers?

drivebyacct2 13y ago

Chromecast is really not special, in the least. It just happens to be basic, "Google", and recent. Chromecast: SSDP, DIAL, WebRTC (for tab/screen casting) Bonjour/Airplay: mDNS, DNS-SD Firefox: Surely WebRTC. Hopefully mDNS+DNS-SD as it's a better solution. Even Google is pretty obviously looking at mDNS+DNS-SD. The Print guys are working on Privet. The Android guys have mDNS stuff in the MediaRouter APIs. Once again, Apple has the best technical implementation (it enables a bunch of scenarios that can't be done with DLNA/SSDP alone), but it's locked down so much that everyone else half-assedly re-invented the wheel. Can we all just get on board with something mDNS+DNS-SD based that uses something like DIAL inside for second screen apps? Please? We get all of the discovery functionality of Bonjour with the openness and second-screen-simplicity of DIAL. It's almost a no-brainer.