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The Story of Firefox OS

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Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#61

Post by i80and »

johansch wrote: post #55
i80and wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New software. The version of FXOS that came with the Flame (1.0) was... not good at all. 1.1 and 1.2 added some niceties that started to make it usable as a daily driver phone; 1.3 added async pan and made things feel slick; and 2.0+ were just lovely.

So.. the best of the best kind of browser people at Mozilla optimized the HTML/JS/CSS and reached their target after a while. This makes sense with my experience from Opera Software (who also tried to build a browser OS, but way back in 2003-2004 and quickly retreated after it failed): The main issue here is that writing a performant HTML-based UI is a very complex thing. It works great when people who really underst…

I mean, not to be flippant, but... that's just like your opinion.

Of course not anybody can make a well-performing web app, just like not just anybody can make a well performing Android app. In some ways, yes, it is a little more difficult.

But speaking as a C programmer who was pleasantly surprised by the change, it's not that difficult to make a performant web app. I've never had a problem with it.

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#62

Post by tim333 »

IshKebab wrote: post #56
cpeterso wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp was the big missing app for Firefox OS. In Mozilla's target markets, WhatsApp was huge but the company didn't want to invest any engineering resources to support Firefox OS, understandably. Firefox OS was an unproven OS with no market share and no J2ME support. In response, Mozilla Research started a "j2me.js" project to try running the WhatsApp J2ME app in JavaScript, sharing some code with the Shumway proj…

Wait... WhatsApp has a J2ME app? Like... a Midlet? From the 90s? For real?

It certainly did have http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-...

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#63

Post by johansch »

i80and wrote: post #61
johansch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.. the best of the best kind of browser people at Mozilla optimized the HTML/JS/CSS and reached their target after a while. This makes sense with my experience from Opera Software (who also tried to build a browser OS, but way back in 2003-2004 and quickly retreated after it failed): The main issue here is that writing a performant HTML-based UI is a very complex thing. It works great when people who really underst…

I mean, not to be flippant, but... that's just like your opinion. Of course not anybody can make a well-performing web app, just like not just anybody can make a well performing Android app. In some ways, yes, it is a little more difficult. But speaking as a C programmer who was pleasantly surprised by the change, it's not that difficult to make a performant web app. I've never had a problem with it.

Wait what? It is insanely complex to make a performant web app compared to a performant C app (let's say we're using a traditional UI toolkit as a comparison).

You need to understand the DOM (and how various CSS declations contribute to rendering complexities), the rendering model, reflows, work around them, pre-fetch tricks, etc etc. Not saying anything like this impossible, but I'm pretty sure the claim that "oh all web devs can do this" is invalid. Basically; the performance issue with declarative UIs is that it's really easy to declare something very complex by mistake.

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#64

Post by mgbmtl »

mwcampbell wrote: post #60

Was the Gaia email app any good? Implementing an offline-capable email client in JS must have been a big undertaking in itself.

Yep, it was pretty decent. It did IMAP, I could read/write messages, attach files and it didn't crash. The UI was fine.

(I used a Firefox OS phone as my only mobile device for 2 years)

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#68

Post by openfuture »

jgraham wrote: post #23

I think this slightly understates the "business development" problems with developing a new OS, and a mobile OS in particular. It turns out that there are certain apps that, if they are not available on your platform, are immediate deal breakers for huge numbers of consumers (to the extent that they will ask for them by name in stores and return devices that won't run them). Often these apps lack web frontends (for n…

This has been the story of linux since day 0

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#69

Post by kenshi »

So much of the story and motivation around FirefoxOS seemed to be: "we want to take web browser technology and build a smartphone around it."

Or interpreted another way: "Our agenda is to take technology X and apply it to a problem domain that would not seem like a natural fit for it."

Meanwhile their competitors were trying to out-do each other in trying to produce devices that would satisfy consumers the most (sell more). It was, and remains, a ferocious competition.

If you want success in the marketplace you need to focus on delivering customer value first, and put the technology agenda second (if not way behind other priorities).

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#70

Post by quanticle »

Apocryphon wrote: post #39
LordWinstanley wrote: post #2

> [biggest Achievements] Product — Successfully launched 20 devices in over 30 countries, mobilised the Mozilla community to help run launch parties and created slick branding and marketing campaigns Therein lies the rub. The products were all mediocre-specced handsets from little known manufacturers. So, right from the outset Firefox OS felt like a down-market 'landfill Android' type product. I'd have bought a Firef…

It seems like to get your mobile OS into the door, you need to have your foot into two doors- competitively priced, cheap phones to snap up underserved demographics (in this case, developing world markets), but also a flagship device to enthrall the upper tier of the market and get name recognition. Seems like Ubuntu Touch is also facing such struggles ticking both boxes (they still don't have a flagship product, esp…

    Windows Phone had some impressive Lumia phones with fancy cameras, but I 
    don't recally that they ever tried to fight Android on the lower end of the
    market.
If anything, my impression is of the exact opposite. Windows phone tried to fight Android on low and mid-range handsets and abandoned the high-end to Apple. The later Lumias (the 650s and the 950s) were all in the 3-400 "midrange" that's dominated by Android. Microsoft hasn't put out something that attempts to compete with Apple in quite a long time.
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