Can we please stop putting JavaScript everywhere? It's not a good language and people have a tendency to produce frailer code with it than they would otherwise.
There is something magical about Firefox OS
101–110 of 276 posts
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Battery life is very, very good. I can leave this thing on for days and it's still running. Now obviously that's not running too much in the background but there is no reason why a JavaScript phone would have a detrimental effect on battery life. You should try it out sometime, it's really not 'terrible' when you get hands on. But your opinion is one I see a lot and we're hoping to change it in the future, slowly ;)
Have you made any actual power measurements using say powertop etc? webOS can be left on for days and days IF you turn all the radios off, underclock, undervolt... Given that most smartphones last for at most a day with actual usage (not sitting there in sleep mode), I would like to see more quantification as to what the usage pattern is that enables you to leave it for days and days.
The short answer is no, I haven't used anything scientific to measure this… just my eyes.
I'll make sure that we release test results as they are performed, probably on the Mozilla Hacks blog or likewise.
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#103Mozilla, 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.
If it's an alternative to Android that doesn't let Carriers "add value" then it's an alternative they won't use. Open Source, in this case, becomes a race to the bottom in every respect.
We need carriers to be dumb pipes we buy data plans from; then this entire class of problem goes away. Until then, any platform that doesn't let carriers charge us different amounts for bits from different places is going to die on the vine.
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#104Looks nice but it's not fluid.
It will be, we're actively working on performance now. We have no reasons to believe that we can't get it 'fluid'.
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#105Really excited to play with this. Also excited to see the people working on it are really geeked. It's going to get really interesting as a web developer over the next couple of years. If you can use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to manipulate an OS, then wow. Can't wait to see where this goes.
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#106Mozilla, 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.
We are working on that, but there is only so much we can do if we want this to be open. If carriers want to use the Firefox OS branding and our system then there will be certain limitations on what they are expected to do in return.
This is new to us, but I'm confident we'll come up with something satisfactory.
Saying that, we can't stop someone taking the code from GitHub and producing their own non-Fx OS system and not referring to Fx OS.
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#107>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 game…
Thanks for the comment, I appreciate it.
If you start comparing these mobile HTML5 games with any device or platform that was originally build to run games well then you'll always see issues – though we are working on improving that. Games on the Web are probabably never going to be quite the same, and nor should they be.
Still, things are improving each and every day and I think that's the most important thing here. We know things aren't perfect and we also know that we're no where near the limit of performance yet.
I'm really excited to see what those advantages you mention turn into in the future. There is a lot of potential here, way beyond performance and how things compare to other devices.
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#108Can we please stop putting JavaScript everywhere? It's not a good language and people have a tendency to produce frailer code with it than they would otherwise.
What makes you say this?
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#109Mozilla, 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.
We are working on that, but there is only so much we can do if we want this to be open. If carriers want to use the Firefox OS branding and our system then there will be certain limitations on what they are expected to do in return. This is new to us, but I'm confident we'll come up with something satisfactory. Saying that, we can't stop someone taking the code from GitHub and producing their own non-Fx OS system and…
I think the key is making it easy for users to 'reset' the device to stock FxOS. I would hope the firefox brand was strong enough to keep carriers from releasing their own variants to avoid mozilla's requirements.
Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS
#110He 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…
Scripting layer for Android if fairly close to what you are talking about:
http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/
It does not seem to be explosively popular. But it has to be sought out and installed and all that stuff, so who knows.