There is something magical about Firefox OS

> In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!

This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS

What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues—and IIUC Gecko has some of those already.

[1]: http://www.slashgear.com/hp-ipad-2-webos-testing-double-touc...

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#5

Post by antidaily » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 10:45 AM UTC

Looks pretty but painfully slow in that demo video.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#6

Post by dshankar » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 10:47 AM UTC

zacharyvoase wrote: post #4

> In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript! This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues—and IIUC Gecko has some of those already. [1]: ht…

Doesn't the article you link to point our performance issues with the TouchPad _hardware_?

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#7

Post by ngokevin » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 10:49 AM UTC

zacharyvoase wrote: post #4

> In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript! This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues—and IIUC Gecko has some of those already. [1]: ht…

WebOS had a proprietary Javascript SDK or something lame. Firefox OS runs on pure HTML5 standards.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#8

Post by macavity23 » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 10:50 AM UTC

It's an interesting project, and I'm all for competition, but honestly I don't see the value proposition for an OEM to put this on a phone instead of Android. Rendering JavaScript faster is great, but does that really outweigh all the benefits of the Android ecosystem?

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#9

Post by masklinn » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 10:51 AM UTC

zacharyvoase wrote: post #4

> In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript! This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues—and IIUC Gecko has some of those already. [1]: ht…

> This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS

Yeah, and I find the complete and utter lack of any mention of WebOS in TFA troubling.

> What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues

Your link points to insufficient hardware though, not software issues. Hardware which seems to have been the main recurring problem on all WebOS machines (according to reports, there were also issues with the software being shipped far too early for v1.0, against the wishes of the engineers working on it)

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#10

Post by kayoone » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 10:53 AM UTC

"Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!"

Scary thought ;)