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There is something magical about Firefox OS

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Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#91

Post by robhawkes »

newman314 wrote: post #65
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 also suffered from execution issues (as a company). They were forever rewriting things under the hood as a fair number of things were duct-taped together. For example, they moved from a Java based solution to JS using v8 from webOS 1.x to 2.x. Hopefully, Firefox OS will not suffer from the same issues. And I would certainly like to hear more about the under-the-hood architecture. It's pretty eye candy but thing…

You might be interested in this: https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/Architecture

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#92

Post by mtgx »

Mozilla, please don't allow carriers or manufacturers to modify your OS! You need to set the right tone from the very beginning. Otherwise you'll never get that kind of power back later on.

Sell it to them as an alternative to Android. That's all they need to know if they want it or not. If they want more, you can go elsewhere.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#93

Post by robhawkes »

mhd wrote: post #79

He mentions it being a "hackable dream for developers". I wonder if we're ever going to get something that's hackable by users. Or in other words, bridges the gap between the common user and the elite app-store backed developer… With all its sensors and social and personal applications, there seems to be a high potential for individual customizations and connections, probably more than what your average PC-of-yore of…

Theoretically, this is definitely possible and something that I'd love to see. I know we have some guys within Mozilla working on things that are more 'hackable' for the general user, rather than developers.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#94

Post by robhawkes »

bthomas wrote: post #89
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by your statement about "the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer." Perhaps that's true for a hobbyist. But any professional software developer should already be familiar with at least one (if not all) of those languages, and should be able to pick up the others with very little work. Once you know C#, for instance, y…

Could they have used Firefox OS as an opportunity to bring another language to the browser, rather than javascript to native? ie. if you could write [Objective C/Java/C#/etc] libraries for Firefox OS and they could be compiled and served to a browser client.

Perhaps not entirely what you're after, but Mozilla's Emscripten project will allow that: https://github.com/kripken/emscripten

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#95

Post by robhawkes »

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #66
h2s wrote: post #55

You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying. Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would love to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultane…

I'm confused by your statement about "the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer." Perhaps that's true for a hobbyist. But any professional software developer should already be familiar with at least one (if not all) of those languages, and should be able to pick up the others with very little work. Once you know C#, for instance, y…

You'd be surprised at what JavaScript can do nowadays… https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#96

Post by polshaw »

>There are a few intense games, like Biolab Disaster, that perform stunningly on even the £50 low-end device that I'm testing on — we're talking between 40 and 60FPS.

.

You have to be kidding me, my amiga 500 (released 1987, 7mhz) offers similar games to that (but better graphics). That puts it literally 20 years behind modern smartphones today, where the cutting edge games are in a similar position vs xbox 360 games.

.

Firefox OS clearly isn't going to appeal to anyone looking for gaming on release-- However, i do not want to shit on it, unlike many..

I think it is a great idea, could do wonders for openness as well as the advancement of web technologies, and the web as a platform. I can certainly see FFOS devices becoming a standard smartphone for 'regular folks'.. web browsing and the kind of things that web-apps could easily do; media playback, calendar and clock apps.. i'm sure this covers 80% of all smartphone apps today anyway. As time goes on and performance (and web features) continues to increase, with 3/4 smartphone platforms (plus 3/4 more 'desktop' platforms), the appeal of developing once for all platforms is going to become an overwhelming advantage.

It is very different to webOS, which suffered from limited, expensive devices, constricting user base, which failed to inspire developers. Is it the most computationally efficient way of doing most things? no. Does it offer other advantages that could offset this? absolutely.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#97

Post by brendanobrien »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #84
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by your statement about "the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer." Perhaps that's true for a hobbyist. But any professional software developer should already be familiar with at least one (if not all) of those languages, and should be able to pick up the others with very little work. Once you know C#, for instance, y…

It's not a function of knowledge. It's a function of time.

Couldn't Agree more. A professional dev should know one of these languages well. They should be judicious enough with their time to know that it doesn't make sense to "just pick up" a language for job-related work.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#98

Post by davej »

klausa wrote: post #12
masklinn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 we…

Well, considering that the same chipset (APQ8060) was also used in some variants of Galaxy S II, I really don't think so that Touchpad hardware was that bad. And the fact that after installing Android 4.0.4 on it, it feels like whole new machine (speed-wise) - I really blame webOS here.

I have a Touchpad that dual-boots into WebOS or Android ICS. I love WebOS but I find Android to be much smoother and snappier. The memory management of Android is also much better.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#99

Post by MatthewPhillips »

robhawkes wrote: post #95
PommeDeTerre wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by your statement about "the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer." Perhaps that's true for a hobbyist. But any professional software developer should already be familiar with at least one (if not all) of those languages, and should be able to pick up the others with very little work. Once you know C#, for instance, y…

You'd be surprised at what JavaScript can do nowadays… https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread

Also HexGL: http://hexgl.bkcore.com/

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#100

Post by robhawkes »

pfisch wrote: post #67
h2s wrote: post #55

You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying. Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would love to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultane…

You can use C# for all three with monotouch. But honestly it doesn't matter much. Objective C is very similar to C# which is very similar to Java. It is really just slightly different syntax. And you can always just embed a webview and use html + js if you really want, though that is much harder to work with and less versatile imo. That is the reason I am not cheering for firefox OS. Why on earth would I want to be l…

There are loadds of high-end games written in JS: Cut The Rope. Bejeweled. Angry Birds. As well as many more lesser known ones that push things as far as possible.

You say "doesn't include WebGL", but WebGL is just the visual output… a game like BananaBread requires epic performance from JavaScript aside from WebGL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread

WebGL is one of the main reasons why we can do so much more with JavaScript games so it's silly to cast it aside. Canvas is more than capable for most things, but WebGL is the future of the high-end that you're talking about.

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