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I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've encro

I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've encroached on more and more of the web and my data on that web. Apple has always been awful for the open web. And I'd rather write JavaScript and HTML than Java.

abrowne 12y ago
I like that they are targeting the low end, both in developing countries and now in the US. I need a phone for email/sms/phone, and I use the browser, calendar, calculator, and authenticator, but really that's about it. I don't want a 5-inch device in my pocket for this use case!
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
With Firefox OS you could also write C or C++ (possibly Rust eventually) thanks to emscripten and asm.js. But, crucially, asm.js makes them portable. No compiling for different architectures.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Kankuro 12y ago
  My experience: I considered porting Ankidroid (a flashcard app) from Android to FirefoxOS (because it is a must-have for my phone). Its storage is based on SQLite, which is ported into Javascript via emscripten. Problem: it only support in-memory operations. Because my SQLite file is 70Mo+ large, it is not an option. In SQLite you can write a abstraction layer for the I/O, but the operations are synchronous, and all the I/O operations in Firefox OS are asynchronous (so it would require modifying heavily the library). So I gave up, and maybe I will start the day FirefoxOS provides supports natively SQLite. Sad thing: Firefox addons have native support for SQLite.
vijayr 12y ago
Is it possible to write good mobile apps in JS and HTML, compared to Android or iOS? I don't know much about mobile programming, but it seems much harder for JS to compete with native apps, no?
- je_bailey 12y ago
  It all depends on the hooks that Mozilla provides to the JavaScript developers. These hooks are the way that the web page can interact with the phones built in hardware. If these API's are sufficient then there is no reason that these apps can't execute as well as an app on any other phone.
- on_and_off 12y ago
  The startup I work for was approached some time ago by Firefox in order to ship our app on FFOS (our app has ~1 million daily users, so we regularly have this kind of proposals). I did not participate in this firsthand, but from what I gathered from my colleagues, the FFOS SDK is so atrocious that sadly the idea of porting our app to this OS is laughable. On the other hand, we are fully committed to our iOS and Android app (in objc & java) and are mostly satisfied by these two SDKs. It might be an unfair comparison though, Google and Apple have had way more time than Mozilla to improve their respective SDKs.
  - SwellJoe 12y ago
    I tinkered with Android development when the original Google Developer Phone came out (aka G1). And, after years of not paying it any attention, because my focus was on server development, I've started learning my way around it again. It's not even the same world. So much of the tedium of developing in Java has gone away, due to better libraries, much better tooling, and just all around a bigger/better ecosystem. Making apps for Android, even without starting with a third party framework or tool, is vastly less time-consuming than it used to be. I believe it's fair to say Firefox OS SDK will get better. I suspect we'll see interesting things happen just because it is primarily JavaScript+HTML5. There are a half dozen (or more) projects to make it possible to make Android and iOS apps in JavaScript, and they're popular, despite having dramatically less support and tooling available (as much as I hate Java, and I really do hate Java, Android Studio almost makes it tolerable). I haven't seen the Firefox OS SDK yet, though I plan to check it out, and pick up some kind of dev phone soonish, but I would bet that it's at least on par with some of the early JavaScript+native frameworks cropping up lately. Stuff like Ionic, React Native, etc. All of those are new and sloppy and don't have settled toolchains, etc. But, the desire to work in JavaScript instead of ObjC or Java is pretty strong for many people, as evidenced by the huge quantity of people doing it despite it probably being more effort than coding in the standard language of the platform. I think it's kinda like desire paths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path JavaScript is the path a lot of people want to walk for making mobile apps. Firefox OS is the first to make it the primary way to develop apps for the platform. I suspect the application developer uptake will be very rapid; probably more rapid than previous platforms, and more rapid than the actual user uptake. This is a platform that allows you to use your existing web development skills right out of the box...and there are a lot more web developers than Java or ObjC developers in the world.
MichaelGG 12y ago
Android's open enough for me, but what I find unhappy is that Google seems intent on tricking people into revealing more and more information. It often reminds me to turn on history tracking, despite having said no many times. Every time I use the Play store, it tries to get me to enter a phone number. The way it does this is by popping up a dialog, with no buttons except continue. It makes it look like you MUST do this (there's no indication you can back out), even though it's optional. That's deceptive. And of course, the idiotic permissions system. Want to check to see if a user's on the phone? Gotta also get access to who they call and their IMEI and other permanent identifiers. Basically, all the time I'm on my Android device, I feel like I've gotta be extra cautious, that Google's out to screw me over. Unfortunately, MS is just flubbing their system by pumping it full of crap. (They were paying devs in 3rd world countries $2000 to push out junk apps. They refuse to take down garbage/scams. They even published fake Windows Updates on the store, and other stuff that falsely claims to be by MS.) MS could fix it all immediately by offering Android app compatibility. I'd switch in a minute. I use Firefox as my browser, mainly because of this. I wish I could switch to another smartphone platform.
- on_and_off 12y ago
  >MS could fix it all immediately by offering Android app compatibility Err, wouldn't these carry over Android's permission system ?
  - _delirium 12y ago
    They could fake it, the way Cyanogenmod does, e.g. return null data to apps if the user doesn't want the app to have a particular permission.
- veeti 12y ago
  >MS could fix it all immediately by offering Android app compatibility. Did you also switch over to the Blackberry and Jolla?
  - jbigelow76 12y ago
    I'd like to see a critical mass of AOSP vendors emerge that would convince Android devs to look beyond the Play store. MS shipping their own flavor of Android, along with Amazon and then BB and Jolla offering Android app compatibility could begin to turn that tide. Especially with MS being able to offer some "foundational" type apps (Bing maps, email client, MS Office, Cortana) that could address some of the holes in not utilizing Google Play services. I don't see it happening though, MS would have to declare that their unified Windows 10 OS is a failure before it even launches.
JimDabell 12y ago
> Apple has always been awful for the open web. Apple played a massive part in the success of the mobile web and responsive design. The release of Mobile Safari and WebKit was a watershed moment. Before that point, the mobile web largely consisted of separate, pretty awful sites on WML. Afterwards, most mobile platforms had a default web browser based on WebKit, and the mobile web transformed as a result. I'm not saying Apple are perfect, but saying that they've "always been awful for the open web" is grossly overstating things.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  OK, I'll give them credit for strong-arming the web into giving up its addiction to Adobe Flash. That was a win for the open and standards-based web.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    That credit should probably go to Google, and to a lesser extent to Firefox (which at least tried). Google used the strong weight of Youtube to make sure all web browsers implemented a replacement, a long and tiresome process that took the better part of ten years. They bought companies and gave patents away along the way. I'm not sure exactly what Apple did. Please enlighten me.
    - SwellJoe 12y ago
      Apple kept Flash off the iPhone, at a time when nearly all web video was in Flash, and when iPhone was the phone to have. There was much gnashing of teeth, but Jobs and Apple stood firm, and demanded the world come to them (which is their way, but in this case what they were doing was for good and not evil). It definitely wasn't just Apple. Google and Mozilla certainly played a huge role, and I definitely consider them much better web citizens than Apple (Mozilla best of all, obviously), but a lot of sites switched to HTML5 video only because they wanted to be watchable on iOS devices.
      - acdha 12y ago
_jomo 12y ago
I like Android (the AOSP) in itself, but I very much dislike how Google ships it with a lot of their own (proprietary) apps that can't be uninstalled (the usual way). Some of Google's features may be nice, but I don't want them to track me and get all my private data from my phone. I'm using CyanogenMod without all the Google apps. It's nice, but the experience just isn't as nice as you have it with Google-Android. Most of the features could be done without tracking users, however.
- Brakenshire 12y ago
  I also use CyanogenMod without Google Apps, albeit using MultiROM so I can boot into vanilla Android if I need to.

abrowne 12y ago

I like that they are targeting the low end, both in developing countries and now in the US. I need a phone for email/sms/phone, and I use the browser, calendar, calculator, and authenticator, but really that's about it. I don't want a 5-inch device in my pocket for this use case!

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

With Firefox OS you could also write C or C++ (possibly Rust eventually) thanks to emscripten and asm.js. But, crucially, asm.js makes them portable. No compiling for different architectures.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Kankuro 12y ago
My experience: I considered porting Ankidroid (a flashcard app) from Android to FirefoxOS (because it is a must-have for my phone). Its storage is based on SQLite, which is ported into Javascript via emscripten. Problem: it only support in-memory operations. Because my SQLite file is 70Mo+ large, it is not an option. In SQLite you can write a abstraction layer for the I/O, but the operations are synchronous, and all the I/O operations in Firefox OS are asynchronous (so it would require modifying heavily the library). So I gave up, and maybe I will start the day FirefoxOS provides supports natively SQLite. Sad thing: Firefox addons have native support for SQLite.

vijayr 12y ago

Is it possible to write good mobile apps in JS and HTML, compared to Android or iOS? I don't know much about mobile programming, but it seems much harder for JS to compete with native apps, no?

je_bailey 12y ago
It all depends on the hooks that Mozilla provides to the JavaScript developers. These hooks are the way that the web page can interact with the phones built in hardware. If these API's are sufficient then there is no reason that these apps can't execute as well as an app on any other phone.
on_and_off 12y ago
The startup I work for was approached some time ago by Firefox in order to ship our app on FFOS (our app has ~1 million daily users, so we regularly have this kind of proposals). I did not participate in this firsthand, but from what I gathered from my colleagues, the FFOS SDK is so atrocious that sadly the idea of porting our app to this OS is laughable. On the other hand, we are fully committed to our iOS and Android app (in objc & java) and are mostly satisfied by these two SDKs. It might be an unfair comparison though, Google and Apple have had way more time than Mozilla to improve their respective SDKs.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  I tinkered with Android development when the original Google Developer Phone came out (aka G1). And, after years of not paying it any attention, because my focus was on server development, I've started learning my way around it again. It's not even the same world. So much of the tedium of developing in Java has gone away, due to better libraries, much better tooling, and just all around a bigger/better ecosystem. Making apps for Android, even without starting with a third party framework or tool, is vastly less time-consuming than it used to be. I believe it's fair to say Firefox OS SDK will get better. I suspect we'll see interesting things happen just because it is primarily JavaScript+HTML5. There are a half dozen (or more) projects to make it possible to make Android and iOS apps in JavaScript, and they're popular, despite having dramatically less support and tooling available (as much as I hate Java, and I really do hate Java, Android Studio almost makes it tolerable). I haven't seen the Firefox OS SDK yet, though I plan to check it out, and pick up some kind of dev phone soonish, but I would bet that it's at least on par with some of the early JavaScript+native frameworks cropping up lately. Stuff like Ionic, React Native, etc. All of those are new and sloppy and don't have settled toolchains, etc. But, the desire to work in JavaScript instead of ObjC or Java is pretty strong for many people, as evidenced by the huge quantity of people doing it despite it probably being more effort than coding in the standard language of the platform. I think it's kinda like desire paths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path JavaScript is the path a lot of people want to walk for making mobile apps. Firefox OS is the first to make it the primary way to develop apps for the platform. I suspect the application developer uptake will be very rapid; probably more rapid than previous platforms, and more rapid than the actual user uptake. This is a platform that allows you to use your existing web development skills right out of the box...and there are a lot more web developers than Java or ObjC developers in the world.

MichaelGG 12y ago

Android's open enough for me, but what I find unhappy is that Google seems intent on tricking people into revealing more and more information. It often reminds me to turn on history tracking, despite having said no many times. Every time I use the Play store, it tries to get me to enter a phone number. The way it does this is by popping up a dialog, with no buttons except continue. It makes it look like you MUST do this (there's no indication you can back out), even though it's optional. That's deceptive. And of course, the idiotic permissions system. Want to check to see if a user's on the phone? Gotta also get access to who they call and their IMEI and other permanent identifiers. Basically, all the time I'm on my Android device, I feel like I've gotta be extra cautious, that Google's out to screw me over. Unfortunately, MS is just flubbing their system by pumping it full of crap. (They were paying devs in 3rd world countries $2000 to push out junk apps. They refuse to take down garbage/scams. They even published fake Windows Updates on the store, and other stuff that falsely claims to be by MS.) MS could fix it all immediately by offering Android app compatibility. I'd switch in a minute. I use Firefox as my browser, mainly because of this. I wish I could switch to another smartphone platform.

on_and_off 12y ago
>MS could fix it all immediately by offering Android app compatibility Err, wouldn't these carry over Android's permission system ?
- _delirium 12y ago
  They could fake it, the way Cyanogenmod does, e.g. return null data to apps if the user doesn't want the app to have a particular permission.
veeti 12y ago
>MS could fix it all immediately by offering Android app compatibility. Did you also switch over to the Blackberry and Jolla?
- jbigelow76 12y ago
  I'd like to see a critical mass of AOSP vendors emerge that would convince Android devs to look beyond the Play store. MS shipping their own flavor of Android, along with Amazon and then BB and Jolla offering Android app compatibility could begin to turn that tide. Especially with MS being able to offer some "foundational" type apps (Bing maps, email client, MS Office, Cortana) that could address some of the holes in not utilizing Google Play services. I don't see it happening though, MS would have to declare that their unified Windows 10 OS is a failure before it even launches.

JimDabell 12y ago

> Apple has always been awful for the open web. Apple played a massive part in the success of the mobile web and responsive design. The release of Mobile Safari and WebKit was a watershed moment. Before that point, the mobile web largely consisted of separate, pretty awful sites on WML. Afterwards, most mobile platforms had a default web browser based on WebKit, and the mobile web transformed as a result. I'm not saying Apple are perfect, but saying that they've "always been awful for the open web" is grossly overstating things.

SwellJoe 12y ago
OK, I'll give them credit for strong-arming the web into giving up its addiction to Adobe Flash. That was a win for the open and standards-based web.
- xorcist 12y ago
  That credit should probably go to Google, and to a lesser extent to Firefox (which at least tried). Google used the strong weight of Youtube to make sure all web browsers implemented a replacement, a long and tiresome process that took the better part of ten years. They bought companies and gave patents away along the way. I'm not sure exactly what Apple did. Please enlighten me.
  - SwellJoe 12y ago
    Apple kept Flash off the iPhone, at a time when nearly all web video was in Flash, and when iPhone was the phone to have. There was much gnashing of teeth, but Jobs and Apple stood firm, and demanded the world come to them (which is their way, but in this case what they were doing was for good and not evil). It definitely wasn't just Apple. Google and Mozilla certainly played a huge role, and I definitely consider them much better web citizens than Apple (Mozilla best of all, obviously), but a lot of sites switched to HTML5 video only because they wanted to be watchable on iOS devices.
    - acdha 12y ago

_jomo 12y ago

I like Android (the AOSP) in itself, but I very much dislike how Google ships it with a lot of their own (proprietary) apps that can't be uninstalled (the usual way). Some of Google's features may be nice, but I don't want them to track me and get all my private data from my phone. I'm using CyanogenMod without all the Google apps. It's nice, but the experience just isn't as nice as you have it with Google-Android. Most of the features could be done without tracking users, however.

Brakenshire 12y ago
I also use CyanogenMod without Google Apps, albeit using MultiROM so I can boot into vanilla Android if I need to.