Mozilla to open first-world front in Firefox OS war • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by xiaq » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 11:33 PM UTC

fabrice_d wrote: post #60

xiaq wrote: post #56

Firefox OS, being based on HTML/CSS/JavaScript, sounds a lot more hackable than Android to me. Well, you can hack Android pretty heavily - forking CyanogenMod, writing Xposed plugins, etc., but Java is just obscure and the compile/deploy/debug cycle is too cumbersome for casual hacking. Hence I look forward to Firefox OS as platform I can easily hack, but I am not sure whether it really is. Could someone with experie…

* deploying apps is super easy - either host them on a web server or push them from firefox's webIDE, and remote debugging using the firefox devtools just works. * hacking core apps is totally doable. You need a rooted device to update them though. Currently the best ones would be nexus 5 or sony z3(c). * everything that is displayed is html/js/css. What you call "framework" here is part of the system app ( https://g…

Thanks. Now I am really looking forward to playing with FxOS!

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

#62

Post by icebraining » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 11:48 PM UTC

fabrice_d wrote: post #40

on_and_off wrote: post #14

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.

Not being tied to an app silo is pretty unique. Unfortunately most people are either ok with that or haven't yet realized. Uphill battle for sure.

Not really. Android lets you sideload apps pretty easily, and it even has third-party repositories like F-Droid.

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

#63

Post by leppr » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 11:48 PM UTC

archagon wrote: post #47

leppr wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm pretty sure that's wrong on both counts. Android has the NDK and iOS apps can be written in straight C/C++.

Ok thank you, that information is pretty hard to stumble upon when you don't know where to search. Although on Android you can't seem to be able to build a whole "native app", only some components of it cf this now removed quote from:

http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html

> If you write native code, your applications are still packaged into an .apk file and they still run inside of a virtual machine on the device.

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

#64

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 11:53 PM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #52

ghinda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but Webkit was originally a fork of KHTML, which is LGPL, so they were required/forced to release it under the same license. And based on the their upstream contributions[1] it doesn’t look like it was a gesture of goodwill. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Split_development

The well-known fact that WebKit has an origin story in KHTML is completely irrelevant to the point being made. Apple was the one who put substantial engineering effort into making the mobile web work well, and released their work with the most open licenses they could.

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by z3t4 » Sun, Mar 01, 2015, 11:55 PM UTC

on_and_off wrote: post #9

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?

The startup I work for was approached some time ago by Firefox in order to ship our app on FFOS (our app has ~1 million daily users, so we regularly have this kind of proposals). I did not participate in this firsthand, but from what I gathered from my colleagues, the FFOS SDK is so atrocious that sadly the idea of porting our app to this OS is laughable. On the other hand, we are fully committed to our iOS and Andro…

Isn't the point of JS that you do not need an SDK!? If I need to use something else then notepad to write a program for FFOS - that would be a big turn-off.

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

#66

Post by acdha » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 12:05 AM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #58

xorcist wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That credit should probably go to Google, and to a lesser extent to Firefox (which at least tried). Google used the strong weight of Youtube to make sure all web browsers implemented a replacement, a long and tiresome process that took the better part of ten years. They bought companies and gave patents away along the way. I'm not sure exactly what Apple did. Please enlighten me.

Apple kept Flash off the iPhone, at a time when nearly all web video was in Flash, and when iPhone was the phone to have. There was much gnashing of teeth, but Jobs and Apple stood firm, and demanded the world come to them (which is their way, but in this case what they were doing was for good and not evil). It definitely wasn't just Apple. Google and Mozilla certainly played a huge role, and I definitely consider th…

Google and Mozilla definitely plaid a supporting role but the iPhone was the main act because it was the device which executives wanted to use. In addition to web video, that also pushed HTML5 in general because all of the IE-only internal apps didn't work on the CIO's new pride and joy.

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

#67

Post by Lio » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 12:10 AM UTC

OT: Hmm, something seems very wrong with that CNET page. It loads ok but it's unreadable on iOS.

As soon as I try to scroll it goes haywire. Anyone else seeing that or have a link to a static version?

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

#68

Post by SwellJoe » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 12:10 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #34

SwellJoe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tinkered with Android development when the original Google Developer Phone came out (aka G1). And, after years of not paying it any attention, because my focus was on server development, I've started learning my way around it again. It's not even the same world. So much of the tedium of developing in Java has gone away, due to better libraries, much better tooling, and just all around a bigger/better ecosystem. Mak…

> JavaScript is the path a lot of people want to walk for making mobile apps. Web OS and Windows Phone support for JavaScript are a living proof people don't really want to.

I'm not sure that's the entire story of what's happening. There are a lot of factors that play into whether a new platform succeeds, and it is never just the way one makes apps for it that makes or breaks the platform. Obviously, there are people who will use any technology, no matter how poor, if it means they can make money in a growing market. iOS showed that; while the APIs for iOS are quite well-designed, ObjC is not particularly wonderful environment for GUI apps compared to many modern alternatives. But, a huge user base means people will learn ObjC in order to make apps for it. In fact, the only reason ObjC is relevant at all is because Apple put in on their phones and tablets. But, even Apple can't keep it alive forever...Swift is obviously their answer to more modern development approaches.

This has played out in many other markets, including desktops and servers, where higher levels of abstraction won mindshare over time as technology (both hardware and software) advanced to make it feasible. When I started using person computers (8 bit machines), software of any seriousness was written in assembly. The next generation (16 bit machines) brought good C and Pascal compilers, and applications built with those tools. Only now are we seeing serious talk of replacing C/C++ with something else for systems programming (maybe Rust, maybe Go, etc.).

Being right but at the wrong time is just as bad as being wrong. Maybe WebOS was right, but at the wrong time...maybe apps made in JavaScript five years ago weren't snappy enough on a phone. Maybe the tooling wasn't there. Maybe the VMs weren't good enough. Maybe they are, now.

I don't know. But, Mozilla has shown itself capable of taking on the biggest companies in the world with open web technologies, and holding their ground tenaciously. I believe they have the clarity of vision and the technical chops to pull it off.

Finally, I just want a Firefox phone. So, I may have rose-colored glasses. I think Firefox is the bee's knees, and I think Mozilla truly represents one of the most positive forces for good in technology today. I want Firefox OS to win. If it can't win, I want it to be a serious contender.

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

#69

Post by Brakenshire » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 12:16 AM UTC

mmahemoff wrote: post #57

Brakenshire wrote: post #55

I help a lot of middle aged and elderly people who are not all that tech literate, and get asked a lot for recommendations, and I definitely think there is a niche for something between feature phones and smart phones. A lot of people are not interested in putting in the investment of time and money to get up to pace using Android or an iPhone. There's quite a big step to using those devices, for instance in managing…

I agree there's a good opportunity for simpler phones that still get some of the benefits of smartphones rather than a 10 year old Nokia. That said, I don't see much in the article to suggest this is what Mozilla is going after. Yes, some of the devices will be cheap, but there are plenty of cheap Android and Windows phones too. Even if an OS did target just this market, the problem would still be a lack of apps. The…

They do talk about that market to a certain extent in the article, which I was glad to see.

I think on limited apps, it's worth saying that beyond a relatively small number of apps like Facebook or WhatsApp, someone moving from a feature phone won't necessarily have any interest in existing apps on other systems. In general they won't want Google Maps or Waze or Telenav Scout (and won't ask for those while buying the phone), they want to type 'directions' or 'weather' and have something useful come up.

That lowers the barrier to entry, although of course there is still the basic requirement that enough useful apps are there, which imo doesn't yet currently apply on FxOS.

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

#70

Post by jbigelow76 » Mon, Mar 02, 2015, 12:18 AM UTC

aubergene wrote: post #54

I was given a Firefox OS phone at Mozfest last year. I lost my other phone earlier this year and so used it exclusively for four weeks. I'm sorry to say it's pretty terrible at this stage. I was using v2 of Firefox OS. The problems are broadly that it was slow, unreliable and poorly designed. It would just become completely unresponsive a couple of times a week, requiring the battery to be removed to restart. There a…

Maybe Mozilla just needs to launch their own Android AOSP implementation and provide developers with a way to build fully native Android apps with JavaScript.

Or is AOSP not going to run on the kind of hardware FFOS is targeting?