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Introducing node-firefox

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Re: Introducing node-firefox

#21

Post by tga »

camhenlin wrote: post #16

I am kind of disappointed in the naming of this. There's another project named Node-WebKit: https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/tree/master It allows you to build a native app using node and webkit. Reading the name of this project got my hopes up, thinking I was going to have the option of using Firefox instead of Webkit as my rendering engine. Oh well.

It's worth pointing out that Node-WebKit got renamed recently to NW.js (as it's now based on io.js and Chromium).

You are right though, I also expected to see a similar project to NW.js but coming from Mozilla. Another shot at packaging offline web apps would have been interesting, especially since I don't know of good alternatives to NW.js.

As things stand, it's difficult to get excited about anything FirefoxOS since it has such a small number of users.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#22

Post by cmpb »

camhenlin wrote: post #16

I am kind of disappointed in the naming of this. There's another project named Node-WebKit: https://github.com/nwjs/nw.js/tree/master It allows you to build a native app using node and webkit. Reading the name of this project got my hopes up, thinking I was going to have the option of using Firefox instead of Webkit as my rendering engine. Oh well.

It's actually somewhat of a theme in the node community to prefix your project name with 'node-', e.g. [1]. In this case, however, Mozilla is still going against that custom by also prefixing the package name itself with 'node-', which is a bit redundant.

[1] https://github.com/node-gitlab/node-gitlab

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#23

Post by servobut »

fabrice_d wrote: post #15
Ygg2 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather see the node-servo version ;) As far as I understand, Servo will come with a WebKit embedding API, so the possibilities are pretty much endless.

Servo uses spidermonkey as JS engine, so I don't think it brings anything in a "run js headless" context.

Although it's possible that some of the changes required to integrate Spidermonkey and Servo might make the former easier to embed?

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#25

Post by giancarlostoro »

lastontheboat wrote: post #20
treeform wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or some thing like node-js but using SpiderMonkey instead of V8. Name really does not fit and blows up expectations. node-firefox-simulator would be more apt.

https://github.com/zpao/spidernode

No longer maintained, sadly.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#27

Post by jordanlev »

daleharvey wrote: post #19
adrusi wrote: post #6

Maybe this isn't the best place to ask, but how is the performance of Firefox OS? Its mostly marketed for low-cost devices, how well do apps based on web tech actually run on these relatively slow SoCs? Firefox for android performs admirably for webpages on my nexus 5, but I have yet to find an interactive web app, whether in Firefox or packaged as a Cordova app (and therefore WebKit+v8), that doesn't feel very slugg…

I work on Firefox OS so probably worth taking bias into account. On low end devices fxos runs reasonably well but with noticeable lag, we have put in huge amounts of effort on the low end to make that possible. On high end devices the 'native' fxos application are incredibly snappy and there has been very little done to improve performance on high end devices. Most of the stuff we have done is common sense, some you…

> look into how far you can use appcache to store resources offline

Maybe this question isn't specific to firefox OS, but... what is the benefit of using appcache -- doesn't the browser already cache assets that it has loaded?

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#28

Post by binarycrusader »

I was hoping (sadly) that based on the name, this meant there was a port of node.js to spidermonkey by the Mozilla team. Other posters have mentioned this as well.

This is sort of a "lazy web" request, but does anyone know why node.js needs v8 specifically? Would it really be that hard to support node.js on spidermonkey?

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#29

Post by mbrubeck »

binarycrusader wrote: post #28

I was hoping (sadly) that based on the name, this meant there was a port of node.js to spidermonkey by the Mozilla team. Other posters have mentioned this as well. This is sort of a "lazy web" request, but does anyone know why node.js needs v8 specifically? Would it really be that hard to support node.js on spidermonkey?

There was a "Spidernode" project started a while ago: http://zpao.com/posts/about-that-hybrid-v8monkey-engine/

I believe it fizzled out partly due to lack of contributor time and partly because the mainstream Node maintainers were wary of fragmenting the Node.js ecosystem/community.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#30

Post by daleharvey »

jordanlev wrote: post #27
daleharvey wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on Firefox OS so probably worth taking bias into account. On low end devices fxos runs reasonably well but with noticeable lag, we have put in huge amounts of effort on the low end to make that possible. On high end devices the 'native' fxos application are incredibly snappy and there has been very little done to improve performance on high end devices. Most of the stuff we have done is common sense, some you…

> look into how far you can use appcache to store resources offline Maybe this question isn't specific to firefox OS, but... what is the benefit of using appcache -- doesn't the browser already cache assets that it has loaded?

It tries to, but browsers generally load a lot of assets meaning high chances of eviction etc along with the problems in dealing how servers / browser deal with cache directives.

I mean try it against 2 fairly comparable static sites - http://backbonejs.org/ + http://pouchdb.com/, keep on refreshing them, that case is gonna give you the highest cache hit rate you can get and its still noticeable.

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