How is this going to handle updates? Obviously the UI/html5 portion will be trivial to update, but Firefox gets updated every six weeks. Is the system core going to lag behind the rest of the Firefox ecosystem, or ami I going to have to rely on my carrier or manufacturer to push out system updates every six weeks?
Open Web Device
51–60 of 97 posts
Re: Open Web Device
#52Wow. Judging by the number of nay-say commenters, it's obvious they should have included a hands on video. Sadly each one I've found seems to be a fairly different build. The one The Verge has is decent.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/27/2827682/mozillas-boot-to-g...
Re: Open Web Device
#53It looks like all "apps" are web pages. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they can make it run things like Angry Birds. And how well they deal with background tasks. On Android I can upload my photos in the background, or play music through Spotify (or my MP3 app) while I'm doing other things. Will I be able to do similar things here?
And how well they deal with security. I look forward to the day when a malware-distributing webpage can pwn millions of phones without being detected... EDIT: uh, downvotes?
> And how well they deal with security. I look forward to the day when a malware-distributing webpage can pwn millions of phones without being detected...
Exploits are always possible on any platform, of course, but the web is sandboxed by design and has been hardened against attacks for many years. It's as secure or more than other platforms like Java or the iOS app model.
Re: Open Web Device
#54How is this going to handle updates? Obviously the UI/html5 portion will be trivial to update, but Firefox gets updated every six weeks. Is the system core going to lag behind the rest of the Firefox ecosystem, or ami I going to have to rely on my carrier or manufacturer to push out system updates every six weeks?
I see updates as being crucially important as all the system functionality is exposed as html/css/javascript.
I'm also curious how/if they sandbox the device's browser and still keep within their proposed paradigms. Is a malicious website going to be able to exploit my system using XSS?
Re: Open Web Device
#55How is this going to handle updates? Obviously the UI/html5 portion will be trivial to update, but Firefox gets updated every six weeks. Is the system core going to lag behind the rest of the Firefox ecosystem, or ami I going to have to rely on my carrier or manufacturer to push out system updates every six weeks?
I'm curious about this too. The FAQ mentions they will update the core browser like Firefox normally does, but I wonder if that means they also need to update the web browser frontend (written in HTML/JS) at those times as well.
Re: Open Web Device
#56It looks like all "apps" are web pages. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they can make it run things like Angry Birds. And how well they deal with background tasks. On Android I can upload my photos in the background, or play music through Spotify (or my MP3 app) while I'm doing other things. Will I be able to do similar things here?
"HTML 5" has the web workers API for background tasks. They don't work while you visit other pages, though. I guess they'll have to introduce a new API for that.
> "HTML 5" has the web workers API for background tasks. They don't work while you visit other pages, though.
Web workers should continue to work while you visit other tabs. But not if you browse away from the page with the worker.
Re: Open Web Device
#57Wow, what a thing to wake up to! At the heart of the Open Web Device is Mozilla's Boot2Gecko project. I just joined up with Mozilla on B2G a couple weeks ago and it's been an honor to work alongside so many amazing people, with a great goal: building a truly open mobile ecosystem. If you guys have any questions about B2G itself, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
web standards is greate but what if I want to port my multiplayer game that uses bluetooth for the communication between devices. How will B2G handle bluetooth and can my B2G app use it?
WebBluetooth is being worked on based on the WebAPI spec. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674737 It's fairly early still, but the goal is that you'll be able to (given permission) use Bluetooth from your apps just like if you wrote them natively.
Re: Open Web Device
#58It looks like all "apps" are web pages. I'm looking forward to seeing how well they can make it run things like Angry Birds. And how well they deal with background tasks. On Android I can upload my photos in the background, or play music through Spotify (or my MP3 app) while I'm doing other things. Will I be able to do similar things here?
And how well they deal with security. I look forward to the day when a malware-distributing webpage can pwn millions of phones without being detected... EDIT: uh, downvotes?
I didn't down/upvote you, but you were likely downvoted because there was a perceived lack of anything of value in your comment.
Re: Open Web Device
#59Can someone explain what this is all about and why this is interesting, for non-savvy?
This is about creating an open standard for APIs a phone OS would need to implement so that pretty much any app people have on phones right now can be implemented with web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript). Essentially, any web page can be an app; apps that need access to some sort of hardware capabilities that web pages don't normally have access to would need to have a permissions system of some sort, of course.
It's also about then shipping actual phones with an OS implementing these APIs installed, creating an "app store" to aid in app discovery and whatnot and whatever other pieces of infrastructure are needed to actually get this open standard used.
One long-term goal, of course, is being able to switch phones (or carriers, or phone OSes; whatever choice the consumer wants to make) without losing all your apps; hence the need for an open standard.
Re: Open Web Device
#60Wow, what a thing to wake up to! At the heart of the Open Web Device is Mozilla's Boot2Gecko project. I just joined up with Mozilla on B2G a couple weeks ago and it's been an honor to work alongside so many amazing people, with a great goal: building a truly open mobile ecosystem. If you guys have any questions about B2G itself, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.
Isn't this similar to Apples initial idea with the first iPhone? Everything would be a "Web App"
More similar to the (initially announced) Palm Pre. It was supposed to be a device which runs Web Apps natively, and you write your applications in HTML + JS, using their "Mojo". Well, developers weren't having it, so they eventually allowed C / C++ as well. I'd predict the same with this device. Since it's running Linux kernel, I can pretty much guarantee that you will be able to run C / C++ apps on the device, and developers will choose that more often than not.