21 ms·

Firefox OS Apps run on Android

221 points by rnyman 12y ago

Touche 12y ago
What would be really nice if you allowed developers to export their apps as signed APKs. That way they could submit them to the Play Store, Amazon AppStore, etc. That would be truly amazing.
- ozten 12y ago
  If there is enough demand, we'd love to build that. It takes quite a bit of security resources to manage the developer's signing keys properly, which is why it didn't make it into 1.0.
suyash 12y ago
nothing new about that…after all the app is rendered in html, for that matter it will run on iPhone too..but if the app only runs on the firefox browser on Android, I don't see many people creating apps for that reason rather using Cordova.
- mbrubeck 12y ago
  The new part is that the app is automatically packaged into an APK (Android Package) file, so you can manage it (launch, restart, uninstall, reset data, switch between apps) just like other Android apps. Android and iOS both offer "bookmark to home screen" features that include some of this functionality, but not all of it.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - rnyman 12y ago
      Even if web apps run in modern web browsers, there's a big chance that you would want your app to offer the same experience and integration as native apps on other platforms. On Cordova/PhoneGap and Firefox OS, please see https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/building-cordova-apps-for-firefox-os/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/building-cordova-apps-for-...
- TD-Linux 12y ago
  Using the Firefox runtime rather than Android Webview is great because the Firefox runtime is far faster than most phones's Webview implementations, and will continue to be updated.
  - zobzu 12y ago
    im not sure how much faster it is, as a user, it seems like about the same - but it certainly support a bunch more things.
fidotron 12y ago
Does this actually support the interesting parts of phone APIs like push messaging (and notifications), bluetooth, in app billing via the stores etc.? And is it compatible with the equivalent Chrome OS APIs or are we looking at writing web apps two different ways?
- ozten 12y ago
  I work on the service and CLI, so I'm probably wrong... but I think we're incrementally fixing these. See https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/06/testing-your-native-android-app/comment-page-1/#comment-2162369 https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/06/testing-your-native-androi... for an example
- wfwalker 12y ago
  in-app billing is coming soon, as is simple push; the other API's will appear on Firefox for Android (and therefore be available to these apps) on an API-by-API basis, see https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI some API's are the same as Chrome OS, some are not; we are talking regularly with those folks about standardizing API's.
- kumar303 12y ago
  Yeah, a lot of web APIs have implementations that connect directly to the Android equivalent. When writing a web app you'd always use a "web" API though. Some of those APIs are still very new and Chrome and Mozilla haven't reached consensus yet so you'd have to deal with prefixing and what not. Mozilla's APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - ozten 12y ago
    Our goal with Firefox OS APIs is to create open web standards for the sensors / capabilities on mobile devices. FxOS is a demonstration of new open web APIs, not a new platform to lock people in. Web standardization takes time and Chrome OS / FxOS will hopefully converge and become standards. We should write web apps with standards and progressive enhancement. Raw access to the camera? Use that. No, getUserMedia? Use that. No, file upload? Use that...
mox1 12y ago
What's the "value add" here over just going the Cordova route? Cordova/phoneGap already has lots of plugins for in app billing, push messaging, etc....
- vertex-four 12y ago
  You write a web app, throw it up anywhere, and it's an Open Web Application that can access anything the user lets it. There's no required "store", no need to enable sideloading, it's just a bunch of APIs you can access... on Firefox OS and Firefox for Android. It's part of Mozilla's push in their portion of the mobile space to get away from the walled garden app ecosystem as much as possible.
- kumar303 12y ago
  If you build an app with Cordova you can easily get stuck in their APIs. If you build a Firefox OS web app you get stuck in Mozilla's APIs :) BUT Mozilla is making a strong effort at standardization and is working with Chrome and others to reach consensus. Cordova strays farther away from stable HTML5 APIs than Mozilla does so in Firefox OS you will definitely be building a more webby app. I.E. some HTML5 APIs work great on mobile, no reason to use a custom Cordova one in many cases. However, if you need rich cross platform support for your app (like iOS) I'd still suggest going with Cordova. There is a Firefox OS backend! https://github.com/apache/cordova-firefoxos https://github.com/apache/cordova-firefoxos
- wfwalker 12y ago
  We are working closely with the Cordova team to align our API's with those existing plug-ins. Meanwhile, this approach lets your app take advantage of Gecko's awesome WebGL and JS performance, plus goodies like WebRTC and Web Audio API.
adrusi 12y ago
This reminds me of Nokia's attempt to make their mobile platform popular by supporting existing android apps. This backfired and lead to developers not making native apps for their platform because they could just reuse their existing android app and still reach all the users. Mozilla is taking the opposite approach. Their platform already has reasonable support because it doesn't take too much effort to port an existing web application to their platform. By making apps for their platform compatible with android, they might get developers building for Firefox OS first and then just reusing their Firefox app for android. It sounds like a bit of a stretch, but developers already do this with tech like phonegap. This will attract the same crowd as other html5->native app development platforms do. The advantage for Mozilla here is that if developers use their devevelopers tools to make apps, their apps will look more in place on Firefox OS and advance the platform.
- sosborn 12y ago
  Blackberry tried to make this a selling point too.
  - JTon 12y ago
    From my experience the ability to sideload android apps is a major motivator for android users wanting to make the switch over to BB10. I'm a bit of a BB nerd, but I see this conversation come up again and again in online discussions
    - girvo 12y ago
      The android compatibility (plus some nice native apps/games) and BlackBerry Bridge where why I held onto my Curve and Playbook for so long...
- sirkneeland 12y ago
  As someone who worked in Nokia developer relations, I have no idea what you're talking about. Aside from the Nokia X (which is Android), no Nokia product has ever done anything to "make their mobile platform popular by supporting existing Android apps" -Symbian didn't -MeeGo didn't (sigh, my beautiful N9...) -Windows Phone didn't -S40 didn't You might be confusing Nokia with BlackBerry, which did make Android support a feature of BB10.
phoboslab 12y ago
Shameless plug: the game shown in the screenshot and video is X-Type[1]. I'm working on a much improved version that will be released on the Nintendo Wii U soon[2]. [1] http://phoboslab.org/xtype http://phoboslab.org/xtype [2] http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/02/developer_interview_phoboslab_on_xtype_plus_impact_and_why_the_nintendo_web_framework_matters http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/02/developer_interview...
- wfwalker 12y ago
  X-type ROCKS.
- sgarman 12y ago
  Oh this is cool and that article was really insightful. I had no idea Nintendo was doing this. Back in the day console dev was near impossible to get into but this opens up all kinds of doors.
- leorocky 12y ago
  That game is very nice. I can't get past level 8 though. What's the trick? Be 10 years younger I think...
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  Do you have any way to add Bluetooth controller support on Android? (via Firefox or otherwise)
rcthompson 12y ago
For anyone who wants to try this, just open Firefox on your Android device, go to https://marketplace.firefox.com https://marketplace.firefox.com, and click on the install button for an app. It will download an APK and prompt you to install the application, and that app will then act just like any other app. It's pretty neat.
- veeti 12y ago
  It's hard to say this without being so negative, but I really have to wonder if any of these apps have even been tested on an Android device. Because to be quite frank, they are absolutely terrible. Here's what I tested: - Calculator. Whenever I press a number, it takes a second to be actually reflected in the user interface. If I try to press anything in rapid succession, the entire view zooms in. After this the entire size and scale of the user interface keeps shifting randomly. Completely broken. - Wikihow. This is just a wrapper on their mobile site with an ugly search bar on top. Long pressing a link shows a context menu that lets me "open in a new tab" but there's no tab switcher to be found. I can select text by tapping and holding but can't figure out how to copy. - Wikipedia. Pretty much the same. Scrolling performance is strangely atrocious considering that it works fine in Firefox for Android. Pressing the back button on the device boots me out of the app instantly instead of, you know, going back. And all in all, they are all just slow and clunky. It feels like browsing a web page or using a web app in a mobile browser that just isn't up to the task. In between this aim on building a more open platform for apps, there doesn't seem to be any focus in building apps or user interfaces that people would actually want to use.
  - wfwalker 12y ago
    No, we haven't done a lot of testing of these apps on Android, we've been really focussed on testing them on Firefox OS up to now. BTW, which version of Firefox are you using? Bug fixes are coming in pretty fast lately, I'd recommend using Firefox Aurora for Android.
    - voltagex_ 12y ago
      Where and how do I log bugs for Firefox Apps on Android? I'm on 4.4.3 with Firefox Aurora and I installed WikiHow and the Gaia Team Calculator - open WikiHow, hit back and open Calculator and I still get WikiHow. I have to "swipe away" the Firefox app in the task manager to get it to work.
robgibbons 12y ago
What they really need is Android apps running on Firefox OS.
- gedrap 12y ago
  It would probably do more harm than use. People would stop developing for FxOS because developing for Android would have a wider reach. Another reason is that, while I am not very familiar with internals, I think running FxOS app on Android is much easier than native Android on FxOS. Because FxOS app essentially is just a web app, which Android is capable of running out of the box. Can't say the same about Android apps. So not sure what's your argument for that?
- CmonDev 12y ago
  They want to force everyone to use/transpile to legacy stuff (JS, HTML). So cross-paradigm thinking is not an option for them.
mundanevoice 12y ago
Would prefer Chrome apps packaged by Apache Cordova(http://blog.chromium.org/2014/01/run-chrome-apps-on-mobile-using-apache.html http://blog.chromium.org/2014/01/run-chrome-apps-on-mobile-u...) anyday to the apps on Firefox OS. The apps on Firefox are like years behind in quality and quantity as compared to chrome apps.
- zobzu 12y ago
  Would prefer if webapps were standard and not tied to a unique browser. What happened to standards and stuff? We forgot its actually good? I want to run firefox webapps on chrome and chrome webapps on firefox, and both of them on IE. Obviously that doesnt work today.
  - mundanevoice 12y ago
    It sounds very nice but the whole user experience and feel of the apps looks very substandard. Even my Nokia phone of 2008 had better and more useful apps. Supporting something and using it in real life is two different things. If you have really used Firefox OS, you will never want to switch to it, unless you want to experiment with it. It is not even a good match to the low cost android phones.
    - vidarh 12y ago
      They have to start somewhere.
    - zobzu 12y ago
      i used it on the flame developer device,its quite decent actually. I certainly wouldnt want a N95 instead of it. Its not at all in the same league.
zak_mc_kracken 12y ago
Nice technical trick but doesn't this make Firefox OS even less necessary than it ever was? I mean, if I were Mozilla, I'd work very hard to get Android apps to work on Firefox OS, not the other way around.
- oconnore 12y ago
  You're missing the point. FirefoxOS exists to increase the market share of the web by giving lots of people in developing countries $25 smartphones built on browser technology. This creates incentives for companies to develop for the web. Running Android apps on Firefox OS would be in direct conflict with that mission. Allowing developers to target both FFOS+Android with a single standards-track web application is definitely on mission.
  - Pacabel 12y ago
    The reasoning in your first paragraph never really seems very sensible or realistic. So people with very limited financial resources to begin with will be able to buy ultra-low-end phones that offer poor performance and a poor user experience. Then they'll only be able to choose among a very small selection of apps, none of which end up being particularly useful. And although they have basically no money to spend at this point, somehow their mere presence online will somehow induce companies, who need to make or take money from these users somehow, to create more apps? It just doesn't follow. It makes even less sense when you consider that it's possible to get used Android phones in these target markets for the same amount of money, if not less. And these Android phones often end up being more capable than a new, low-end phone running Firefox OS. Plus they offer all of the numerous benefits (like better performance and far more apps) that even old versions of Android offer over Firefox OS.
throwaway41597 12y ago
Is there any hope that startup performance will get on par with native Android apps? It takes a good 6 seconds to start a trivial Firefox web app on Android. I found a bug [1] mentioning that gecko has to be loaded in the web app's process and that takes much of the time. But it got closed because no one seems to know how to improve it. It's better than nothing, but it's hard to send the user to Firefox on Android knowing that their experience is going to be plagued by this. Chrome's "Add to homescreen" is faster but not quite there yet (2 seconds for launching duckduckgo). [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=779974 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=779974
r12e 12y ago
This is great for me, I've just rebuilt my Android phone without GAPPS as an ongoing effort to minimise my reliance on Google. The Twitter app does what it says on the tin. Looking forward to the Facebook app supporting Android too. I've always used simple bookmarks for these two services anyway (because why should their Play Store apps need all those permissions?) so the performance hit isn't something I'm bothered about.

221 points by rnyman 12y ago

What would be really nice if you allowed developers to export their apps as signed APKs. That way they could submit them to the Play Store, Amazon AppStore, etc. That would be truly amazing.

ozten 12y ago
If there is enough demand, we'd love to build that. It takes quite a bit of security resources to manage the developer's signing keys properly, which is why it didn't make it into 1.0.

suyash 12y ago

nothing new about that…after all the app is rendered in html, for that matter it will run on iPhone too..but if the app only runs on the firefox browser on Android, I don't see many people creating apps for that reason rather using Cordova.

mbrubeck 12y ago
The new part is that the app is automatically packaged into an APK (Android Package) file, so you can manage it (launch, restart, uninstall, reset data, switch between apps) just like other Android apps. Android and iOS both offer "bookmark to home screen" features that include some of this functionality, but not all of it.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - rnyman 12y ago
    Even if web apps run in modern web browsers, there's a big chance that you would want your app to offer the same experience and integration as native apps on other platforms. On Cordova/PhoneGap and Firefox OS, please see https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/building-cordova-apps-for-firefox-os/ https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/02/building-cordova-apps-for-...
TD-Linux 12y ago
Using the Firefox runtime rather than Android Webview is great because the Firefox runtime is far faster than most phones's Webview implementations, and will continue to be updated.
- zobzu 12y ago
  im not sure how much faster it is, as a user, it seems like about the same - but it certainly support a bunch more things.

fidotron 12y ago

Does this actually support the interesting parts of phone APIs like push messaging (and notifications), bluetooth, in app billing via the stores etc.? And is it compatible with the equivalent Chrome OS APIs or are we looking at writing web apps two different ways?

ozten 12y ago
I work on the service and CLI, so I'm probably wrong... but I think we're incrementally fixing these. See https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/06/testing-your-native-android-app/comment-page-1/#comment-2162369 https://hacks.mozilla.org/2014/06/testing-your-native-androi... for an example
wfwalker 12y ago
in-app billing is coming soon, as is simple push; the other API's will appear on Firefox for Android (and therefore be available to these apps) on an API-by-API basis, see https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI some API's are the same as Chrome OS, some are not; we are talking regularly with those folks about standardizing API's.
kumar303 12y ago
Yeah, a lot of web APIs have implementations that connect directly to the Android equivalent. When writing a web app you'd always use a "web" API though. Some of those APIs are still very new and Chrome and Mozilla haven't reached consensus yet so you'd have to deal with prefixing and what not. Mozilla's APIs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- ozten 12y ago
  Our goal with Firefox OS APIs is to create open web standards for the sensors / capabilities on mobile devices. FxOS is a demonstration of new open web APIs, not a new platform to lock people in. Web standardization takes time and Chrome OS / FxOS will hopefully converge and become standards. We should write web apps with standards and progressive enhancement. Raw access to the camera? Use that. No, getUserMedia? Use that. No, file upload? Use that...

mox1 12y ago

What's the "value add" here over just going the Cordova route? Cordova/phoneGap already has lots of plugins for in app billing, push messaging, etc....

vertex-four 12y ago
You write a web app, throw it up anywhere, and it's an Open Web Application that can access anything the user lets it. There's no required "store", no need to enable sideloading, it's just a bunch of APIs you can access... on Firefox OS and Firefox for Android. It's part of Mozilla's push in their portion of the mobile space to get away from the walled garden app ecosystem as much as possible.
kumar303 12y ago
If you build an app with Cordova you can easily get stuck in their APIs. If you build a Firefox OS web app you get stuck in Mozilla's APIs :) BUT Mozilla is making a strong effort at standardization and is working with Chrome and others to reach consensus. Cordova strays farther away from stable HTML5 APIs than Mozilla does so in Firefox OS you will definitely be building a more webby app. I.E. some HTML5 APIs work great on mobile, no reason to use a custom Cordova one in many cases. However, if you need rich cross platform support for your app (like iOS) I'd still suggest going with Cordova. There is a Firefox OS backend! https://github.com/apache/cordova-firefoxos https://github.com/apache/cordova-firefoxos
wfwalker 12y ago
We are working closely with the Cordova team to align our API's with those existing plug-ins. Meanwhile, this approach lets your app take advantage of Gecko's awesome WebGL and JS performance, plus goodies like WebRTC and Web Audio API.

adrusi 12y ago

This reminds me of Nokia's attempt to make their mobile platform popular by supporting existing android apps. This backfired and lead to developers not making native apps for their platform because they could just reuse their existing android app and still reach all the users. Mozilla is taking the opposite approach. Their platform already has reasonable support because it doesn't take too much effort to port an existing web application to their platform. By making apps for their platform compatible with android, they might get developers building for Firefox OS first and then just reusing their Firefox app for android. It sounds like a bit of a stretch, but developers already do this with tech like phonegap. This will attract the same crowd as other html5->native app development platforms do. The advantage for Mozilla here is that if developers use their devevelopers tools to make apps, their apps will look more in place on Firefox OS and advance the platform.

sosborn 12y ago
Blackberry tried to make this a selling point too.
- JTon 12y ago
  From my experience the ability to sideload android apps is a major motivator for android users wanting to make the switch over to BB10. I'm a bit of a BB nerd, but I see this conversation come up again and again in online discussions
  - girvo 12y ago
    The android compatibility (plus some nice native apps/games) and BlackBerry Bridge where why I held onto my Curve and Playbook for so long...
sirkneeland 12y ago
As someone who worked in Nokia developer relations, I have no idea what you're talking about. Aside from the Nokia X (which is Android), no Nokia product has ever done anything to "make their mobile platform popular by supporting existing Android apps" -Symbian didn't -MeeGo didn't (sigh, my beautiful N9...) -Windows Phone didn't -S40 didn't You might be confusing Nokia with BlackBerry, which did make Android support a feature of BB10.

phoboslab 12y ago

Shameless plug: the game shown in the screenshot and video is X-Type[1]. I'm working on a much improved version that will be released on the Nintendo Wii U soon[2]. [1] http://phoboslab.org/xtype http://phoboslab.org/xtype [2] http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/02/developer_interview_phoboslab_on_xtype_plus_impact_and_why_the_nintendo_web_framework_matters http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/02/developer_interview...

wfwalker 12y ago
X-type ROCKS.
sgarman 12y ago
Oh this is cool and that article was really insightful. I had no idea Nintendo was doing this. Back in the day console dev was near impossible to get into but this opens up all kinds of doors.
leorocky 12y ago
That game is very nice. I can't get past level 8 though. What's the trick? Be 10 years younger I think...
voltagex_ 12y ago
Do you have any way to add Bluetooth controller support on Android? (via Firefox or otherwise)

rcthompson 12y ago

For anyone who wants to try this, just open Firefox on your Android device, go to https://marketplace.firefox.com https://marketplace.firefox.com, and click on the install button for an app. It will download an APK and prompt you to install the application, and that app will then act just like any other app. It's pretty neat.

veeti 12y ago
It's hard to say this without being so negative, but I really have to wonder if any of these apps have even been tested on an Android device. Because to be quite frank, they are absolutely terrible. Here's what I tested: - Calculator. Whenever I press a number, it takes a second to be actually reflected in the user interface. If I try to press anything in rapid succession, the entire view zooms in. After this the entire size and scale of the user interface keeps shifting randomly. Completely broken. - Wikihow. This is just a wrapper on their mobile site with an ugly search bar on top. Long pressing a link shows a context menu that lets me "open in a new tab" but there's no tab switcher to be found. I can select text by tapping and holding but can't figure out how to copy. - Wikipedia. Pretty much the same. Scrolling performance is strangely atrocious considering that it works fine in Firefox for Android. Pressing the back button on the device boots me out of the app instantly instead of, you know, going back. And all in all, they are all just slow and clunky. It feels like browsing a web page or using a web app in a mobile browser that just isn't up to the task. In between this aim on building a more open platform for apps, there doesn't seem to be any focus in building apps or user interfaces that people would actually want to use.
- wfwalker 12y ago
  No, we haven't done a lot of testing of these apps on Android, we've been really focussed on testing them on Firefox OS up to now. BTW, which version of Firefox are you using? Bug fixes are coming in pretty fast lately, I'd recommend using Firefox Aurora for Android.
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    Where and how do I log bugs for Firefox Apps on Android? I'm on 4.4.3 with Firefox Aurora and I installed WikiHow and the Gaia Team Calculator - open WikiHow, hit back and open Calculator and I still get WikiHow. I have to "swipe away" the Firefox app in the task manager to get it to work.

robgibbons 12y ago

What they really need is Android apps running on Firefox OS.

gedrap 12y ago
It would probably do more harm than use. People would stop developing for FxOS because developing for Android would have a wider reach. Another reason is that, while I am not very familiar with internals, I think running FxOS app on Android is much easier than native Android on FxOS. Because FxOS app essentially is just a web app, which Android is capable of running out of the box. Can't say the same about Android apps. So not sure what's your argument for that?
CmonDev 12y ago
They want to force everyone to use/transpile to legacy stuff (JS, HTML). So cross-paradigm thinking is not an option for them.

mundanevoice 12y ago

Would prefer Chrome apps packaged by Apache Cordova(http://blog.chromium.org/2014/01/run-chrome-apps-on-mobile-using-apache.html http://blog.chromium.org/2014/01/run-chrome-apps-on-mobile-u...) anyday to the apps on Firefox OS. The apps on Firefox are like years behind in quality and quantity as compared to chrome apps.

zobzu 12y ago
Would prefer if webapps were standard and not tied to a unique browser. What happened to standards and stuff? We forgot its actually good? I want to run firefox webapps on chrome and chrome webapps on firefox, and both of them on IE. Obviously that doesnt work today.
- mundanevoice 12y ago
  It sounds very nice but the whole user experience and feel of the apps looks very substandard. Even my Nokia phone of 2008 had better and more useful apps. Supporting something and using it in real life is two different things. If you have really used Firefox OS, you will never want to switch to it, unless you want to experiment with it. It is not even a good match to the low cost android phones.
  - vidarh 12y ago
    They have to start somewhere.
  - zobzu 12y ago
    i used it on the flame developer device,its quite decent actually. I certainly wouldnt want a N95 instead of it. Its not at all in the same league.

zak_mc_kracken 12y ago

Nice technical trick but doesn't this make Firefox OS even less necessary than it ever was? I mean, if I were Mozilla, I'd work very hard to get Android apps to work on Firefox OS, not the other way around.

oconnore 12y ago
You're missing the point. FirefoxOS exists to increase the market share of the web by giving lots of people in developing countries $25 smartphones built on browser technology. This creates incentives for companies to develop for the web. Running Android apps on Firefox OS would be in direct conflict with that mission. Allowing developers to target both FFOS+Android with a single standards-track web application is definitely on mission.
- Pacabel 12y ago
  The reasoning in your first paragraph never really seems very sensible or realistic. So people with very limited financial resources to begin with will be able to buy ultra-low-end phones that offer poor performance and a poor user experience. Then they'll only be able to choose among a very small selection of apps, none of which end up being particularly useful. And although they have basically no money to spend at this point, somehow their mere presence online will somehow induce companies, who need to make or take money from these users somehow, to create more apps? It just doesn't follow. It makes even less sense when you consider that it's possible to get used Android phones in these target markets for the same amount of money, if not less. And these Android phones often end up being more capable than a new, low-end phone running Firefox OS. Plus they offer all of the numerous benefits (like better performance and far more apps) that even old versions of Android offer over Firefox OS.

throwaway41597 12y ago

Is there any hope that startup performance will get on par with native Android apps? It takes a good 6 seconds to start a trivial Firefox web app on Android. I found a bug [1] mentioning that gecko has to be loaded in the web app's process and that takes much of the time. But it got closed because no one seems to know how to improve it. It's better than nothing, but it's hard to send the user to Firefox on Android knowing that their experience is going to be plagued by this. Chrome's "Add to homescreen" is faster but not quite there yet (2 seconds for launching duckduckgo). [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=779974 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=779974

r12e 12y ago

This is great for me, I've just rebuilt my Android phone without GAPPS as an ongoing effort to minimise my reliance on Google. The Twitter app does what it says on the tin. Looking forward to the Facebook app supporting Android too. I've always used simple bookmarks for these two services anyway (because why should their Play Store apps need all those permissions?) so the performance hit isn't something I'm bothered about.