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Introducing node-firefox

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Re: Introducing node-firefox

#41

Post by jay_kyburz »

tga wrote: post #21
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 sinc…

A bit off topic, but how easy is it to set up NW.js to just go looking for a index.html in a specific location? Say sitting next to an exe in windows in the the app folder in OSX.

I was thinking I'd like to try and get my web app in Steam but don't really want to mess around with building Chromium ect ect.

Edit: just read this and I think it answered my questions. http://strongloop.com/strongblog/creating-desktop-applicatio...

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#42

Post by gitaarik »

jtwebman wrote: post #40

Are people building Firefox OS Apps?

I created a very simple Firefox OS App. You can look up the departure times of trains in the Netherlands:

https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/ns-times?src=search

https://github.com/gitaarik/nsapp

As it's just a webapp and it doesn't use any phone specific API's you can also run it in any browser. Here I just hosted is as a website so you can try it out if you don't have a Firefox OS phone:

http://nsapp.televisionsmostpopularartinstructors.com/

Of course it's meant for phones so the design doesn't really work out for desktop browsers, but you get the idea.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#43

Post by juliob »

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.

Is this part of a ridiculous trend where major software developers pick whatever name they want for their language, tool, library, what-have-you without caring if there are other projects with that name, if the name is confusing, if the name is too generic (and thus hard to do a web search for), etc.?

This might be some sort of bias on my part but I seem to see this more and more often. Programmers are known to be bad at naming but these days it seems they don't even try. How about just following a simple rule: pick a word that doesn't exist in the dictionary or on the web at all. Just make up a combination of letters. Please.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#44

Post by synchronise »

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.

Yeah I thought it was going to be a way to port NodeJS apps to run natively on FirefoxOS...

Still want something like that though.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#47

Post by bucketsofdirt »

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.

I remember a while back Mozilla came out with Prism, which was basically Node-Webkit w/out the Node.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#48

Post by wodenokoto »

yeldarb wrote: post #24

Can anyone sum up what this is? I got through the first 6 paragraphs and still don't have a clue.

It's a command-line / programmatic interface for deploying FirefoxOS apps to your test environment. Before the easiest way to deploy an app was clicking a button in a piece of software called WebIDE, but now you can do that from the command-line, inside your test-case script or where ever you want it.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#49

Post by coldtea »

Mahn wrote: post #17
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.

That would be node-gecko (if it existed), wouldn't it? But yes, it's a bit misleading, by node-firefox I was expecting the full blown browser written in javascript myself.

>That would be node-gecko (if it existed), wouldn't it?

Only if it followed exactly the same naming logic down to a t.

But it didn't have to, node-firefox would also be a perfectly apt name for something like node-webkit based on gecko too -- and not suitable at all for what it actually is now.

Re: Introducing node-firefox

#50

Post by josteink »

> Also, support on platforms other than Mac OS is largely lacking.

I realize you have to start somewhere, but for a foundation which claims to value freedom first, it seems like first targeting a fully open platform like Linux with a cross-platform toolkit like Gtk or Qt would make more sense.

TLDR: Not going to spend $1000+ to get a new machine which runs a lesser free Unix just to run Mozilla-tools.

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