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Firefox for iOS on GitHub

github.com

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Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#31

Post by Touche »

micampe wrote: post #10
0x006A wrote: post #5

- How far away from a release is this? - Given that Apple does not allow other render engines. What makes this Firefox?

> What makes this Firefox? I think that's an interesting question. Is a browser defined by its rendering engine or by its features and UI? When Chrome used WebKit, it was clearly understood by everyone to be different from Safari, even though the rendering engine was the same (I know, the differences were big), but a Firefox browser that uses WebKit seems to not be considered Firefox. Personally, while I understand t…

You put the rendering engine and features in opposite corners, which is false. Blink and Gecko have features that WebKit does not. Like WebRTC.

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#32

Post by Touche »

MBCook wrote: post #24
bla2 wrote: post #20

It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView. The rationale is that by using WKWebView they now get Nitro, and they have to "go where the users are" -- but a few years ago, it was a lot less clear that Android would be more prevalent than iOS. Also, iOS seems like a fairly hostile environment for 3rd-party browsers since it's not possible to change the system browser -- that's proba…

> It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView. They don't have a choice, I'm glad to see them do something pragmatic here. On iOS you can ship a WKWebView browser or nothing. Given how big mobile has become it's sad that it took them 6+ years to do this. Lots of people use Chrome on iOS but that only came out 2 years ago. It could have been Firefox.

They have a choice, they can not release a browser for iOS.

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#33

Post by shmerl »

pikachu_is_cool wrote: post #13
0x006A wrote: post #5

- How far away from a release is this? - Given that Apple does not allow other render engines. What makes this Firefox?

Maybe this will be for the jailbroken platform (probably not though :/)

iOS SDK forbids one even to build any other browser legally (which is glaring example of of lock-in insanity). At least that's how the license looks like. Are there any alternatives way to build code for iOS?

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#34

Post by Ar-Curunir »

MBCook wrote: post #24
bla2 wrote: post #20

It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView. The rationale is that by using WKWebView they now get Nitro, and they have to "go where the users are" -- but a few years ago, it was a lot less clear that Android would be more prevalent than iOS. Also, iOS seems like a fairly hostile environment for 3rd-party browsers since it's not possible to change the system browser -- that's proba…

> It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView. They don't have a choice, I'm glad to see them do something pragmatic here. On iOS you can ship a WKWebView browser or nothing. Given how big mobile has become it's sad that it took them 6+ years to do this. Lots of people use Chrome on iOS but that only came out 2 years ago. It could have been Firefox.

It isn't sad. I'm happy that instead of caving into the demands of Apple they stuck out for as long as they did.

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#35

Post by oscargrouch »

maxmcd wrote: post #19
micampe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes this Firefox? I think that's an interesting question. Is a browser defined by its rendering engine or by its features and UI? When Chrome used WebKit, it was clearly understood by everyone to be different from Safari, even though the rendering engine was the same (I know, the differences were big), but a Firefox browser that uses WebKit seems to not be considered Firefox. Personally, while I understand t…

I feel like whenever I read discussions about this on HN it's all about the JS engine. Chrome was on webkit but used V8. And unless something has changed all non-safari browsers and webviews use an inferior JS engine. Edit: (Something has changed, WKWebView now has the Nitro JS Engine, cool beans)

Also, when Chrome was launched, it was the only browser with a multi-process approach to a multi-tab browser world.. Also their approach to threads were right from the beginning, and that converge into a awesome no-lock and no-glitch browsing experience.. After that, every other browser followed them.

So, to be fair, Chrome was much more than V8 (which was also a part of its voodoo)

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#36

Post by snotrockets »

maxmcd wrote: post #19
micampe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes this Firefox? I think that's an interesting question. Is a browser defined by its rendering engine or by its features and UI? When Chrome used WebKit, it was clearly understood by everyone to be different from Safari, even though the rendering engine was the same (I know, the differences were big), but a Firefox browser that uses WebKit seems to not be considered Firefox. Personally, while I understand t…

I feel like whenever I read discussions about this on HN it's all about the JS engine. Chrome was on webkit but used V8. And unless something has changed all non-safari browsers and webviews use an inferior JS engine. Edit: (Something has changed, WKWebView now has the Nitro JS Engine, cool beans)

Chrome's WebKit wasn't 100% compatible with Safari's WebKit. They released from different branches.

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#37

Post by flyosity »

And it's all written in Swift! This is probably the largest application written in Swift so far, and definitely the largest one on GitHub that I've seen. If you're looking to make the transition from Obj-C to Swift (or from any language to Swift) this is probably a solid example to learn from.

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#38

Post by jfaat »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #29
spigoon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, iOS has 42.4% of the smartphone market in the U.S. according to http://www.cnet.com/news/android-loses-some-us-market-share-...

There are other markets than the US and the antitrust laws were employed against Microsoft in the EU.

The US antitrust case[1] referred specifically to browser vendor lock-in.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#39

Post by eclipxe »

JoshTheGeek wrote: post #23
bla2 wrote: post #20

It's a bit sad that Firefox is caving in and shipping a browser using WKWebView. The rationale is that by using WKWebView they now get Nitro, and they have to "go where the users are" -- but a few years ago, it was a lot less clear that Android would be more prevalent than iOS. Also, iOS seems like a fairly hostile environment for 3rd-party browsers since it's not possible to change the system browser -- that's proba…

They have no other choice; Apple won't accept apps with custom web rendering engines.

Rendering engines are okay. Its the Javascript execution engine that is not allowed.

You can render all the HTML you want, you just can't allow untrusted code to be executed.

Re: Firefox for iOS on GitHub

#40

Post by franklinho »

aclissold wrote: post #17
owenwil wrote: post #16

Anyone manage to get it to build? Lots of errors, assumably very far away from being usable.

They're mainly just warnings stemming from dependencies—it compiles just fine in Xcode 6.1.1 after running git submodule update --init and force-unwrapping a bunch of optionals. Interestingly, it appears to do everything BUT display web pages at this point! Looks very preliminary. https://www.dropbox.com/s/o5kmot2fg6i7wmx/Screenshot%202014-...

Yeah, this pull request fixes all of the actual errors that prevent building:

https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/pull/30/files

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