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disclaimer: I work on FxOS Care to elaborate why hopeless? I Use Flame as my second device and while I totally agree that there's a lot of work needed before F

disclaimer: I work on FxOS Care to elaborate why hopeless? I Use Flame as my second device and while I totally agree that there's a lot of work needed before FxOS "feels" as polished as Android or iOS, I don't feel like it is hopeless. Remember Android 2.0? What a piece of.. ehm.. unpolished mobile OS it was? FxOS 2.2 is significantly more useful than any 1.x. p.s. If you also have any basic webdev skills, you can fix UX yourself. I miss charging time notification on lockscreen and I started working on it yesterday [1] - fairly easy to add. We just need webdevs to help us hack :) [1] https://github.com/zbraniecki/gaia/commit/a7829b7f4750e294b315a35eebe65abea5847736 https://github.com/zbraniecki/gaia/commit/a7829b7f4750e294b3...

scrollaway 12y ago
[Disclaimer: I am indirectly affiliated with Mozilla - I'm also an UX dev in addition to a programmer] I don't just remember Android 2.0: I have an HTC Desire phone running it (it can't upgrade any further due to its limited hard drive space). First impressions are awful: The Flame feels slow and extremely unpolished (the stretching is ridiculous, no progress bars in the system updates and other places, hard-to-find text-only buttons, missing fade-out effects...). The screenshot gesture/keybind that triggers almost every time I unlock the phone. Confusing wording all over the place. Performance issues everywhere, even on the lock screen and camera, etc etc. These are just some the ones I gathered in the first couple of hours. I stopped writing them down... and I stopped using the phone altogether after two days. I wanted, I really wanted to contribute to it but the amount of basic UX issues made me feel like there is little QA/UX being done at all. My FOSS time is limited. I have a job in FOSS, and I do LXQt work in my off time (in addition to personal project). Being put in front of Firefox OS made me feel like what you guys needed were more full-time UX devs on it, not an assorted basket of contributions. This is why it felt very hopeless to me. This was a couple of months ago. I have to admit I did not update since, the phone just went unused. Upgrading it is on my TODO some time in the next few months, unless you tell me things radically improved since.
- hardwaresofton 12y ago
  Do you know what version you were running? There was a recently an upgrade to 2.0, and I have to say that it is pretty amazing. Definitely a lot better than 1.3. They went a drastically different way with the home screen (I say drastic, but they basically went from horizontal scroll to vertical scroll, but that's a pretty drastic UX change), and I think the UI is much better and much more consistent.
- zbraniecki 12y ago
  Which version are you describing? As I said, I use "nightly" 2.2 and it is drastically different experienxe (altough still fairly raw) than 1.3/1.4. I used android G1 (same as your dream). Do you claim it was smoother? Faster? More polished?
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    Nightly from october or so. I believe it's the 2.x branch.
- throwawaymsft 12y ago
  Mozilla, if you're listening, please take this as feedback on how to improve the QA/user acceptance tests. Even if v2.0 is better, v1.0 shouldn't have shipped to the public in this condition. Another dev who desperately wanted to use your phone couldn't. Users experiencing these types of issues in 2014, when the alternative is silky smooth phones, is negative word of mouth. The expectations around phones have changed and it isn't 2006. I wish you luck.
  - scrollaway 12y ago
    I think you put it very well: The expectations have changed, and while Android had rough starts, it also had the benefit of the doubt and of a completely new field (there was just ios then, and it too was very primitive!). In LXQt, as desktop environment devs, just because the software we create is alpha, users don't expect things to look and feel like windows 95. They expect something modern right off the bat, and we should integrate our own previous experiences on all the other systems that did what we're doing. I think because of that, we have an advantage.. and so should Firefox OS.
darklajid 12y ago
As a Mozilla fan and the owner of a Flame: Basic functionality is missing. I couldn't offer it to my wife (more or less still dicovering the word of smartphones) and cannot use it myself (and I can live w/ a stock CyanogenMod installation, w/o GApps if necessary, byninstalling one or two things). Back to the UX: Can random people on the net really fix that? I got the impression that while technical fixes would be fine to submit, UX decisions are mostly 'done' and hard to impossible to argue about as a lay person. Would you disagree?
- fabrice_d 12y ago
  Yes I disagree that UX decisions can't be argued. File bugs (start at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=firefox%20os https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=firefox%2...), and cc firefoxos-ux-bugzilla@mozilla.com For sure it may not be easy to get changes, but that's the same for paid contributors (I still have bad memories of keyboard changes I fought against and could not get in).
  - darklajid 12y ago
    Thanks, to both of you. (I have some issues with the keyboard as well, but that's "old" now)
- zbraniecki 12y ago
  Basic functionality is getting added and you can help. UX wise, you definitely can change UX. File bugs, join dev.gaia and lets talk about it.

scrollaway 12y ago

[Disclaimer: I am indirectly affiliated with Mozilla - I'm also an UX dev in addition to a programmer] I don't just remember Android 2.0: I have an HTC Desire phone running it (it can't upgrade any further due to its limited hard drive space). First impressions are awful: The Flame feels slow and extremely unpolished (the stretching is ridiculous, no progress bars in the system updates and other places, hard-to-find text-only buttons, missing fade-out effects...). The screenshot gesture/keybind that triggers almost every time I unlock the phone. Confusing wording all over the place. Performance issues everywhere, even on the lock screen and camera, etc etc. These are just some the ones I gathered in the first couple of hours. I stopped writing them down... and I stopped using the phone altogether after two days. I wanted, I really wanted to contribute to it but the amount of basic UX issues made me feel like there is little QA/UX being done at all. My FOSS time is limited. I have a job in FOSS, and I do LXQt work in my off time (in addition to personal project). Being put in front of Firefox OS made me feel like what you guys needed were more full-time UX devs on it, not an assorted basket of contributions. This is why it felt very hopeless to me. This was a couple of months ago. I have to admit I did not update since, the phone just went unused. Upgrading it is on my TODO some time in the next few months, unless you tell me things radically improved since.

hardwaresofton 12y ago
Do you know what version you were running? There was a recently an upgrade to 2.0, and I have to say that it is pretty amazing. Definitely a lot better than 1.3. They went a drastically different way with the home screen (I say drastic, but they basically went from horizontal scroll to vertical scroll, but that's a pretty drastic UX change), and I think the UI is much better and much more consistent.
zbraniecki 12y ago
Which version are you describing? As I said, I use "nightly" 2.2 and it is drastically different experienxe (altough still fairly raw) than 1.3/1.4. I used android G1 (same as your dream). Do you claim it was smoother? Faster? More polished?
- scrollaway 12y ago
  Nightly from october or so. I believe it's the 2.x branch.
throwawaymsft 12y ago
Mozilla, if you're listening, please take this as feedback on how to improve the QA/user acceptance tests. Even if v2.0 is better, v1.0 shouldn't have shipped to the public in this condition. Another dev who desperately wanted to use your phone couldn't. Users experiencing these types of issues in 2014, when the alternative is silky smooth phones, is negative word of mouth. The expectations around phones have changed and it isn't 2006. I wish you luck.
- scrollaway 12y ago
  I think you put it very well: The expectations have changed, and while Android had rough starts, it also had the benefit of the doubt and of a completely new field (there was just ios then, and it too was very primitive!). In LXQt, as desktop environment devs, just because the software we create is alpha, users don't expect things to look and feel like windows 95. They expect something modern right off the bat, and we should integrate our own previous experiences on all the other systems that did what we're doing. I think because of that, we have an advantage.. and so should Firefox OS.

darklajid 12y ago

As a Mozilla fan and the owner of a Flame: Basic functionality is missing. I couldn't offer it to my wife (more or less still dicovering the word of smartphones) and cannot use it myself (and I can live w/ a stock CyanogenMod installation, w/o GApps if necessary, byninstalling one or two things). Back to the UX: Can random people on the net really fix that? I got the impression that while technical fixes would be fine to submit, UX decisions are mostly 'done' and hard to impossible to argue about as a lay person. Would you disagree?

fabrice_d 12y ago
Yes I disagree that UX decisions can't be argued. File bugs (start at https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=firefox%20os https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=firefox%2...), and cc firefoxos-ux-bugzilla@mozilla.com For sure it may not be easy to get changes, but that's the same for paid contributors (I still have bad memories of keyboard changes I fought against and could not get in).
- darklajid 12y ago
  Thanks, to both of you. (I have some issues with the keyboard as well, but that's "old" now)
zbraniecki 12y ago
Basic functionality is getting added and you can help. UX wise, you definitely can change UX. File bugs, join dev.gaia and lets talk about it.