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Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

cnet.com

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Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#11

Post by on_and_off »

MichaelGG wrote: post #7
SwellJoe wrote: post #2

I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've encroached on more and more of the web and my data on that web. Apple has always been awful for the open web. And I'd rather write JavaScript and HTML than Java.

Android's open enough for me, but what I find unhappy is that Google seems intent on tricking people into revealing more and more information. It often reminds me to turn on history tracking, despite having said no many times. Every time I use the Play store, it tries to get me to enter a phone number. The way it does this is by popping up a dialog, with no buttons except continue . It makes it look like you MUST do…

>MS could fix it all immediately by offering Android app compatibility Err, wouldn't these carry over Android's permission system ?

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#13

Post by _delirium »

on_and_off wrote: post #11
MichaelGG wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android's open enough for me, but what I find unhappy is that Google seems intent on tricking people into revealing more and more information. It often reminds me to turn on history tracking, despite having said no many times. Every time I use the Play store, it tries to get me to enter a phone number. The way it does this is by popping up a dialog, with no buttons except continue . It makes it look like you MUST do…

>MS could fix it all immediately by offering Android app compatibility Err, wouldn't these carry over Android's permission system ?

They could fake it, the way Cyanogenmod does, e.g. return null data to apps if the user doesn't want the app to have a particular permission.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#14

Post by on_and_off »

I really wish to see a great third mobile OS with a marketshare in the two digits. I appreciate the spirit behind FFOS, so I would like to see it take that place. I am not sure of how they want to achieve that though. However, AFAIK, FFOS does not really bring anything new to the table, so I have trouble seeing how it could make an impact in the first-world.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#15

Post by JimDabell »

SwellJoe wrote: post #2

I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've encroached on more and more of the web and my data on that web. Apple has always been awful for the open web. And I'd rather write JavaScript and HTML than Java.

> Apple has always been awful for the open web.

Apple played a massive part in the success of the mobile web and responsive design. The release of Mobile Safari and WebKit was a watershed moment. Before that point, the mobile web largely consisted of separate, pretty awful sites on WML. Afterwards, most mobile platforms had a default web browser based on WebKit, and the mobile web transformed as a result.

I'm not saying Apple are perfect, but saying that they've "always been awful for the open web" is grossly overstating things.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#16

Post by listic »

What is the official way to learn about Firefox OS releases? I can't figure out which version of FxOS has which status, despite being subscribed to mailing lists.

Flame update page [1] has images for 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 and 3.0. LG/KDDI Fx0 has apparently shipped in Japan with version 2.0 [2] on December 25, 2014. All this suggests that at least version 2.0 has been released. Yet Wikipedia page [3] doesn't have release date for version 2.0 onwards, and I don't know where else to look.

[1] MDN: Updating your Flame https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Phone_guide/F...

[2] Mozilla Press Center: Mozilla and KDDI Launch First Firefox OS Smartphone in Japan https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2014/12/mozilla-and-kddi-laun...

[3] Wikipedia: Firefox OS | Release history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS#Release_history

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#17

Post by leppr »

vijayr wrote: post #5
SwellJoe wrote: post #2

I'm unreasonably excited about Firefox OS. Android really isn't open enough for my taste, and my trust of Google has diminished over the years, as they've encroached on more and more of the web and my data on that web. Apple has always been awful for the open web. And I'd rather write JavaScript and HTML than Java.

Is it possible to write good mobile apps in JS and HTML, compared to Android or iOS? I don't know much about mobile programming, but it seems much harder for JS to compete with native apps, no?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think you can write native apps for Android or iOS either. Also recently there's been way more effort on improving JavaScript VMs than Java's.

Re: Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war

#20

Post by Grazester »

leppr wrote: post #17
vijayr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible to write good mobile apps in JS and HTML, compared to Android or iOS? I don't know much about mobile programming, but it seems much harder for JS to compete with native apps, no?

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think you can write native apps for Android or iOS either. Also recently there's been way more effort on improving JavaScript VMs than Java's.

On the latter, why is that? Is it that Java's VM is already very mature and the community doesn't feel that urgency on "improving" it? Another question. What does Java VM have to do with Android?
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