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The Story of Firefox OS

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Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#71

Post by quanticle »

i80and wrote: post #61
johansch wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So.. the best of the best kind of browser people at Mozilla optimized the HTML/JS/CSS and reached their target after a while. This makes sense with my experience from Opera Software (who also tried to build a browser OS, but way back in 2003-2004 and quickly retreated after it failed): The main issue here is that writing a performant HTML-based UI is a very complex thing. It works great when people who really underst…

I mean, not to be flippant, but... that's just like your opinion. Of course not anybody can make a well-performing web app, just like not just anybody can make a well performing Android app. In some ways, yes, it is a little more difficult. But speaking as a C programmer who was pleasantly surprised by the change, it's not that difficult to make a performant web app. I've never had a problem with it.

    Of course not *anybody* can make a well-performing web app, just like not 
    just anybody can make a well peforming Android app.
Now that's a false equivalence if I've ever heard one. Making a well-performing mobile website that does more than display text is really difficult. The tools one uses to build and test websites are all geared towards desktop development. Only recently have we begun to see browser vendors adding support to their dev consoles for mobile devices, and those tools still aren't nearly as extensive as the tools one uses for native app development.

Moreover, both iOS and Android have pretty decent documentation around how to use their APIs and what one needs to do to make an app that responds to user input nearly instantly. For the web... well, to call Javascript performance tuning folklore does a disservice to folklore. It's more like rumor and witchcraft.

    Speaking as a C programmer who was pleasantly surprised by the change
Well, that sort of explains it, I guess. You moved from one platform with crappy tooling to a platform with ever so slightly less crappy tooling. Of course things look like an improvement to you. Meanwhile, to programmers coming in from Java, .Net, or other, more "corporate" languages, the lack of tool support for Javascript makes it really difficult to write good apps in a reasonable amount of time.

Now you might just say, "Well those guys are just shitty programmers." Fine. I agree with you. But somehow, Android and iOS allow even shitty programmers to write functional workaday mobile applications. HTML and Javascript do not (at least, not on mobile). So by that standard, HTML/JS is an objectively worse platform.

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#72

Post by mwfunk »

digi_owl wrote: post #34
cpeterso wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp was the big missing app for Firefox OS. In Mozilla's target markets, WhatsApp was huge but the company didn't want to invest any engineering resources to support Firefox OS, understandably. Firefox OS was an unproven OS with no market share and no J2ME support. In response, Mozilla Research started a "j2me.js" project to try running the WhatsApp J2ME app in JavaScript, sharing some code with the Shumway proj…

As best i understand, Whatsapp's support for anything but iOS is "poor" to put it nicely.

Actually, WhatsApp runs on Symbian and Series 40. Many, possibly most, people who use WhatsApp run it on devices that arguably aren't even smartphones.

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#73

Post by mwfunk »

LordWinstanley wrote: post #2

> [biggest Achievements] Product — Successfully launched 20 devices in over 30 countries, mobilised the Mozilla community to help run launch parties and created slick branding and marketing campaigns Therein lies the rub. The products were all mediocre-specced handsets from little known manufacturers. So, right from the outset Firefox OS felt like a down-market 'landfill Android' type product. I'd have bought a Firef…

That was their strategy though- if they tried to introduce it as an alternative to iOS and Android, it was guaranteed DOA. They felt they could get it off the ground by introducing it as an alternative in poorer countries first. It might not have been a strategy that worked out in the end, but those were intentional choices, not choices made from ignorance or stupidity. Even though it didn't work out, it was probably much more likely to succeed than if they had gone the 'take on iOS and Android on the high end' strategy first. That would have been akin to the Chromebook Pixel- possibly an impressive product, possibly a product beloved by a very small group of people, but ultimately not something that a meaningfully-sized market existed for.

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#74

Post by redsummer »

I bought a Panasonic TV because it was said to have the best UI. It used Firefox OS. The UI was OK - I have nothing to compare it to since I didn't have a TV for 10 years. Anyway, they stopped Firefox OS development soon after. I wonder if I can install another OS?

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#75

Post by criddell »

Kimm0n0 wrote: post #5

I would love to purchase a good quality phone with Firefox OS. The project seems a perfect fit for our time built around web technologies. Hopefully someone can pick up this project.

I always wondered why they target the low end of the market. There are so many compromises and constraints that the only redeeming feature ends up being the price.

Why not try to make the best phone?

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#76

Post by xicoloco »

cpeterso wrote: post #33
jgraham wrote: post #23

I think this slightly understates the "business development" problems with developing a new OS, and a mobile OS in particular. It turns out that there are certain apps that, if they are not available on your platform, are immediate deal breakers for huge numbers of consumers (to the extent that they will ask for them by name in stores and return devices that won't run them). Often these apps lack web frontends (for n…

WhatsApp was the big missing app for Firefox OS. In Mozilla's target markets, WhatsApp was huge but the company didn't want to invest any engineering resources to support Firefox OS, understandably. Firefox OS was an unproven OS with no market share and no J2ME support. In response, Mozilla Research started a "j2me.js" project to try running the WhatsApp J2ME app in JavaScript, sharing some code with the Shumway proj…

WhatsApp was the only reason I didn't buy a Firefox OS phone here in Brazil. You need to have WhatsApp to get laid.

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#77

Post by pjmlp »

IshKebab wrote: post #56
cpeterso wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WhatsApp was the big missing app for Firefox OS. In Mozilla's target markets, WhatsApp was huge but the company didn't want to invest any engineering resources to support Firefox OS, understandably. Firefox OS was an unproven OS with no market share and no J2ME support. In response, Mozilla Research started a "j2me.js" project to try running the WhatsApp J2ME app in JavaScript, sharing some code with the Shumway proj…

Wait... WhatsApp has a J2ME app? Like... a Midlet? From the 90s? For real?

Not from the 90s, on many countries feature phones are still a thing, and they do run J2ME.

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#78

Post by slim »

> Qualcomm, the first chipset manufacturer we were working with, would not license their firmware and device drivers to us directly, it had to be through a carrier or OEM. This meant that we legally couldn’t ship complete builds

What? Why are chipset manufacturers not permitted to sell to anybody?

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#79

Post by hajile »

IshKebab wrote: post #57
JohnBooty wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is addressed in the linked article in great depth. I don't think the poor performance of WebOS means that approach is fundamentally doomed, especially since FirefoxOS was a few years later... a few years during a period of massive year-over-year increases in mobile computing power. Long story short: relative to Android, they were bypassing the whole Java layer. Gecko (which is pretty mature + optimized) was esse…

Lol what? Relative to Java which is maybe 50% slower than native... they used Gecko, which is at least 100% slower than native in practice. There are huge obvious well-explored reasons why this can't be fast.

In number-related calculations, JS does quite well on its own. With asm.js, performance quite close to C was possible.

Re: The Story of Firefox OS

#80

Post by hajile »

pavlov wrote: post #38

I don't understand why they decided that Firefox OS would be a good fit for low-end hardware, when they had empirical evidence of how poorly webOS performed. Firefox OS and webOS are essentially the same concept. Palm built theirs for 2009 top-end hardware, and it turned out that the hardware just wasn't quite enough to run a browser engine for the entire UI... And then Mozilla goes ahead and tries to do the same thi…

Chrome (and v8) launched in 2008. When webOS came out, we were still early in the performance wars. Since then, browsers have become far faster using the same hardware. Layout engines have also gotten far faster (and added a lot of features). To make things worse than necessary, webOS used outdated versions of Qt webkit and v8. Unfortunately, it seems that nobody on the webOS team ever got permission to focus on non-feature work like speeding up performance (seriously, 2 minute startup time when you only have three devices?)

The UI/UX for webOS was fantastic. I really wish FF (or really anyone) would have used that UI/UX as nothing since has come close.

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