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There is something magical about Firefox OS

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Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#151

Post by SeanDav »

davej wrote: post #98
klausa wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Off Topic

@gcb.

Just curious gcb, you know you are hell banned but keep on posting - why is that? Have you tried appealing?

Of course I can only see you because I keep "show dead" on.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#152

Post by bryanlarsen »

timparker wrote: post #144

I just wish Firefox wasn't coping iOS. Slide open, 4 x 4 grid with a dock, swipe between panes. It's just sad that companies think this is the 'standard' for any phone os and stick to it. Metro gets some respect from me for taking a fresh approach, this, unfortunately doesn't.

Why don't you criticize Toyota for using a circular steering wheel and similar feeling clutches, brake pedals and gas padels while you're at it?

Slide open: given a large touch screen, what's the easiest interaction that has a low likelihood of being accidental?

panes: there are basically two possible metaphors that work well: paged or infinite scrolling. Is it copying if random chance would have a 50% chance of choosing the same answer?

swipe between panes: given a paged screen, what gesture but the same one used for turning pages in a book makes any sense at all?

4x4 grid: given a 3-4" screen and given an icon the size of a human thumb, how many icons fit?

dock: given a paged, gridded metaphor and a need to have the most commonly used functions always available, does anything make any sense but to keep a set of icons pinned and visually distinct? Sure, they could have moved them to the top or to the side or to the middle or something, but that's just change for the sake of change.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#153

Post by lifeisstillgood »

andrewcooke wrote: post #42
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #30

Mozilla seem almost apologetic about Firefox OS. "aiming at middle market" "performs well on low end hardware" I think this is a mistake in positioning - this is still an expensive piece of hardware for most of the world (50 USD is not low-end if minimum wage in Brazil is 322 USD /mth) Instead this has the potential to be "the best" phone in most emerging markets - the most desireable OS, because it can appeal to the…

it doesn't really work like that. emerging markets have people as rich as rich americans and they know about, want, and own iphones. (i live in s america and would love the kind of thing being described. but i am pretty odd and currently use a dumbphone that cost $20 - i know plenty of people with fancy phones here. so i would like what you suggest to work, but in practice i think people would perceive it as aimed at…

I think that getting my cool, trend-leading designer friends is possible - apple is not undefeatable. And while google is not very evil, Mozilla is nearly saint-like in comparison.

So, yes we do all live in the same global media village, but things will change. It will be harder to knock Apple off top spot in the US or UK because of the installed base. But the battle for hearts and minds is at the top of the market - if you dont compare yourself to apple, no one else will.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#154

Post by pfisch »

robhawkes wrote: post #100
pfisch wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Those are not high end games. Those are casual games that look like they would run better and would work in a wider array of browsers in flash. Also I am mistaken, you can include webgl.

I meant NaCl and other kinds of techs that are really just a bridge that lets code written in C++ or with XNA or Unity run in a browser.

Also that link doesn't work.

I mean, it just doesn't really seem like html 5 is a serious option yet for game development. I'm not saying you can't make a casual kind of game in it. I'm just not sure why you would vs flash for a simple game, or the many much more powerful options which let you deploy to a wider audience(like Unity, Unreal, XNA, even Source).

The only reason I can think of is because it is in javascript, but no one should pick an engine based on the programming language it is written in.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#155

Post by bryanlarsen »

pkolaczk wrote: post #132
robhawkes wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is nothing surprising in it. 3D rendering is done mostly by hardware (OpenGL), not JS. But try to code something more sophisticated computationally for CPU, not a one function long microbenchmark where the JIT can guess all the types because code is simple. Something like simulating a complex mechanical or electrical system or some discrete optimisation stuff. Then it quickly turns out carefully hand crafted JS…

The JIT should very easily be able to guess all the types in a complex mechanical or electrical system, or in discrete optimization. Matrices are fairly consistently typed.

I don't think that JS would do much worse than "naive C" in such a situation. To do well on these sorts of problems, you need to pull in a library that properly uses the CPU's vector unit or the GPU, no matter whether you're using C or JS.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#156

Post by needle0 »

I saw a talk on FxOS (then B2G) earlier this year, and asked a question about how FxOS will handle native SDKs, considering practically every single mobile OS that used VMs to run apps had eventually capitulated and provided native SDKs for speed and codebase compatibility. The Mozilla guy who responded was very adamant on keeping HTML/CSS/JS the one and only dev environment for the OS.

Perhaps JS optimization has come far enough that speed is not a problem, but how is FxOS going to handle codebase compatibility for bringing large preexisting native-code projects (eg. games) into it? Compiling the entirety of Unreal Engine 3 in Emscripten, for instance, seems a bit far-fetched.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#157

Post by marknutter »

akrymski wrote: post #137

So it's an OS that requires apps to be written in JavaScript (an interpreted language that was designed by Netscape for web scripting and nonprofessional programmers) and HTML (a markup language designed to display static documents in the browser). None of these technologies were designed to help developers create software applications, so why is this magical? Let's look at few possible reasons: 1. JavaScript/HTML/CS…

People use javascript not because of what it was originally created for but because of what it has become and is currently being used for. But most of all, because of its ubiquity. Last time I checked, Objective-C doesn't run in a web browser.

Your whole post smacks of elitism. What's with the "More teenagers know JavaScript than any other language" and "A lot of kids don't know Objective C or Java" comments? Are you just trolling, or trying to be insulting?

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#158

Post by dhx »

Most of the discussion so far has focussed on the development environment (APIs, languages, etc) and performance issues.

I would therefore like to raise the question “how will Firefox OS encourage a consistent and usable experience across applications?” Gnome[1], iOS[2] and Windows have comprehensive human interface guidelines and the systems tend to be user-friendly as a result.

The latest WHATWG HTML standards do make an attempt to improve user interface consistency by adding new, specific tags. While this will help to some extent, I do not think it will solve the underlying problem. Web developers are accustomed to creating whatever interfaces they like with little regard to usability considerations including consistency with other websites. Different colours, typography, borders, page structures, navigation styles, etc between websites and applications produces a difficult user experience.

[1] http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.5/

[2] https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/usere...

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#159

Post by colig »

I enjoyed reading this. I mostly know Java and not so much Javascript, but there's something delightful in the idea the writer lays out. As much as I like Android, it isn't really 'hackable' by the average user, and Firefox OS seems capable for that.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#160

Post by kibwen »

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're right, the difficulty isn't the language in use. Languages are easy. But learning each of the platform-specific APIs is a much more daunting task. Learning web-based APIs are no less daunting, but given that a huge proportion of new developers are starting out with web dev, being able to leverage their existing knowledge is a powerful advantage.
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