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There is something magical about Firefox OS

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Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#231

Post by maxym »

omarqazi wrote: post #194
cs702 wrote: post #77

According to this blog post, Firefox OS is already providing native-like performance in a standard JavaScript+HTML+CSS environment. (By "native-like" I mean fast enough that the application will feel native to users.) If this is true, then I would agree Firefox OS is a game changer, because it means that ALL modern web applications can run unmodified at native-like speeds on mobile devices. The number of apps availab…

Watch the video. That's not native performance. It will never be native performance, because there will always be the layer of the rendering engine between your application and device. The best they'll ever do is "close enough to native that you don't notice", and they're certainly not there yet. And the number of apps is already in the millions? Give me an example of one app out there that's in the same ballpark of…

The HTML5 version of Cut the Rope is one example:

http://www.cuttherope.ie/

Here are some other high quality HTML5 games:

http://worldsbiggestpacman.com/ http://www.wordsquared.com/ http://www.pirateslovedaisies.com/ http://browserquest.mozilla.org/

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#232

Post by wisty »

im3w1l wrote: post #216
Joeri wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think C will always be faster. A JIT-compiled language can theoretically be optimized better than a precompiled binary, because the JIT engine can recompile hot code based on observed behavior on the actual system with the actual data.

Theoretically, a c-compiler could produce self modifying code.

Also, this theoretical c compiler could make use of implicit hints (like which variables to place together in memory), making it faster than JS (except asymptotically, when the JIT has run long enough to figure everything out).

But the original point is basically right - one day JITs will be faster.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#233

Post by dhx »

mbrubeck wrote: post #192
dhx wrote: post #158

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 m…

UX design guidelines are coming; the designer who is working on them gave a talk at MozCampEU last week. (Only the slides are available for now, but a more detailed write-up should be posted soon.) https://wiki.mozilla.org/MozCampEU2012/Design-Principles-beh...

Thanks for the link to the presentation.

As is the case with other mobile platforms I noticed a wide array of button styles. Small symbolic buttons in applications such as the photo gallery and messages screen, large glossy buttons for the radio and calculator, blue rectangular buttons for the time and date selection screen and a long red button for cancelling a call. Some applications are dark and 2D, others are light, colourful and 3D.

I do like a lot of the work shown off in the presentation but still get the feeling that applications/screens on the phone are not tightly integrated or connected. This isn't criticism of Firefox OS. Rather it is an observation that I have for all mobile platforms I have used.

I will look out for the detailed write-up to get the details of what is planned.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#235

Post by krakensden »

a3_nm wrote: post #226
nathan_long wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The Firefox OS license for carriers should be "you can modify our OS however you like, but you must take no steps to keep users from installing a clean one, nor penalize them for doing so."

> This. The Firefox OS license for carriers should be "you can modify our OS however you like, but you must take no steps to keep users from installing a clean one, nor penalize them for doing so." If Firefox OS is to be open source (OSS-compliant), then you can't impose this sort of restriction.

Why? Mozilla does that today, as does Android- if you don't comply with their guidelines, you can use the code, but not the trademark.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#236

Post by nightpool »

mtgx wrote: post #222
azakai wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two orders of magnitude? That can't be explained by the difference between C and JS. There must be some other difference, like which algorithms are used, or that the C one relies heavily on inline assembly or such. The expected difference between C and JS should be more like one order of magnitude in the worst cases (and much better in the best).

If you're working on Bananabread, can you check why it's not working on Chrome, the latest stable version? I get an Oops message. I use Windows 7 x64, Core i7 laptop with Nvidia 555m GT .Also just installed Nvidia's latest driver, though I haven't rebooted yet. Could that be it?

Have you enabled mouse-lock in chrome://flags ? It talks about this on the page, if you're curious.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#238

Post by omarqazi »

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #207
omarqazi wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch the video. That's not native performance. It will never be native performance, because there will always be the layer of the rendering engine between your application and device. The best they'll ever do is "close enough to native that you don't notice", and they're certainly not there yet. And the number of apps is already in the millions? Give me an example of one app out there that's in the same ballpark of…

There is always a rendering engine unless you're writing pixels to the buffer directly. The thing is that Cocoa/CocoaTouch's rendering and compositing is much faster than Webkit's. Why that is, is left as an exercise for the reader.

Webkit uses iOS's rendering and compositing libraries to render information on screen. That's why it will never be faster than those libraries.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#239

Post by dumbdumb »

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…

Angry Birds is written in Lua.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#240

Post by fzzzy »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #171
robhawkes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it! To be clear, I'm not educated in business so my thoughts are my own (potentially naive) conclusions. However, there are some very sound business decisions behind us chosing to go with Brazil first, and to go with cheaper, low-end devices. I'm sure they know what they're doing more than I do! As an aside, we do have versions of Fx OS running on high-end devices and it ru…

Its good to see you on here (I tend not to see authors of posts on HN - maybe its me) Fantastic work - and if you dont mind answering dumb questions, what device would you recommend getting if I fancy playing (B2G_build_prerequisites has a list of a few - but I have no idea how to be sure I get specifc models, or if I can buy an Otoro in UK. Basically, really horrible starting questions :-) Happy to be told just goog…

Otoro is a prototype device not generally available. One of the listed models of Nexus S is your best bet right now. There may be something else in the near future, we're trying to firm up a target phone that is available for general purchase.
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