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The Promise of Firefox OS

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Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#91

Post by electrograv »

mephju wrote: post #66

This is a real question and no trolling: Why is nobody building a second kind of browser, one which is not based on html and css. A browser which is geared towards app execution and development. A browser which can run apps which can be programmed in a way that is similar to programming Android apps. Where I can for example have a footer without doing some css hacks. DNS and most of our backends could still be reused…

I've thought about this a lot myself.

The language issue ultimately leads you to conclude that we need a browser with a built-in VM, rather than a built-in scripting language. It makes so much more sense, as a clean and elegant solution.

"I know! I'll make my own new browser with an embedded VM and newer cleaner APIs, and revolutionize the web! It'll be amazing, allowing native-like performance from the browser. WebGL will finally achieve performance feasible for high quality games, the need for full native apps would be tremendously diminished, etc. etc."

JVM is a well known example of a cross-platform VM, which tried to enter the browser via Applets. I think Java Applets failed because they were slow, ugly, clunky, and usually looked horrible and disturbed the web experience. Kind of like flash ads, but worse.

Microsoft Silverlight is kind of similar, but using the CLI rather than the JVM. As a plugin, it still wasn't seamless. And it had cross platform compatibility issues (not a fault of the CLI though).

The GUI issue (bloated DOM, hacky HTML/CSS) leads me to conclude that we need a new API stack for rendering GUIs that satisfies both web and application use cases without massively sacrificing memory and performance like the DOM seems to excel at.

But here's the thing:

Creating a new browser with a new VM and new GUI stack, all from scratch, is almost an insane undertaking. Sure, it's one I could almost see myself trying (being a perfectionist ADHD OCD coder) as a hobby, but I know better than that if I want to actually ship anything.

Ideally, I'd like to see some day a kind of "Mono Browser" - a browser that basically runs CLI code "scripts" in an otherwise traditional HTML/CSS stack for backwards compatibility. But the primary feature would be a new GUI stack completely disjoint from HTML/CSS for people who want to create blazingly fast and native-like snappy UIs.

It's fairly critical though to expose this new GUI stack, because otherwise it's just CLI-scripting-in-the-browser. CLI in a regular browser would be great IMO, but not a significant enough change for end-users to upgrade to the browser. Moreover, such a API stack would be extremely useful for cross-platform developers even of native apps. It would essentially compete with web-based cross platform frameworks like PhoneGap, and native ones like QT (though QT IMO is ugly and old fashioned vs web rendering).

So a great deal of work lies ahead in creating this GUI stack. This is something I'm kind of intermittently working on in my spare time. Unfortunately I'm usually kept quite busy on research work towards a PHD, but now and then I make a little progress. But if you know of others working on something similar, feel free to point me in that direction to collaborate.

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#92

Post by cheeaun »

marknutter wrote: post #76
ricw wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(in response to marknutter's comment below, for some reason the reply button was previously not available. HN bug?): You can (and we do): iOS: http://xamarin.com/monotouch android: http://xamarin.com/monoforandroid You should give it a shot. And as much as I like HN and its content, its mobile UX is pretty shabby (dare I say incompatible? ;)).

I actually use http://cheeaun.github.com/ , which is entirely web based and works wonderfully well. No updating of the app required, no mini-browser within the app, etc.

I think you mean http://hackerwebapp.com/ ? ;)

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#93

Post by pcwalton »

chris_wot wrote: post #64
pornel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JavaScript is the standard bytecode.

I'm not following: Javascript is an interpreted language, not a bytecode standard. You can't compile Javascript to bytecode and run it anywhere.

"Javascript is an interpreted language"

Huh? JavaScript JITs have been around for 4 years now.

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#94

Post by film42 »

RobAley wrote: post #41
shadowmint wrote: post #23

So... it's 2013, and I'm sitting here with my blazingly fast nexus 4, and the web sites I visit are... slow. terrible. broken. spammy. Half of them have 'popups' that try to banner at the bottom of the screen, but end up flailing wilding and either taking up the entire screen, or just helpfully sitting exactly over the middle of the page. A lot of them try repeatedly to direct me to a specific page, or a native app w…

You (as with most of us) probably spend so much time on the web now, shuttling around many many different websites, that you don't notice (or remember) that a large proportion of the myriad of native software, beyond a few well polished examples, exhibits flaws that while different are just as annoying, slow, buggy and otherwise irritating. Bad websites are just like bad software. There's a chance that my making it e…

I think a good way or restating your point is that, the better web gets i.e. more advanced frameworks with better testing suites, the harder it is to screw up.

A point I'd like to make: At the end of the day though, mobile _can_ be fast, but it just doesn't compete with native, yet. When I take a web project after concluding an iOS app, I miss being able to run tests and deploy to my phone or iPad in one place and easily. I miss how formal native code feels over a javascript stack. I hope this changes one day, and I love what Firefox OS is promising, but until then, I will be working with native solutions.

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#95

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

andrewflnr wrote: post #88
mephju wrote: post #66

This is a real question and no trolling: Why is nobody building a second kind of browser, one which is not based on html and css. A browser which is geared towards app execution and development. A browser which can run apps which can be programmed in a way that is similar to programming Android apps. Where I can for example have a footer without doing some css hacks. DNS and most of our backends could still be reused…

It would have to be huge piece of software, and nobody would use it. That is, it would be very difficult to get adoption. That said, some of us are thinking about it. It seems like this ought to have made it onto PG's list of frighteningly ambitious ideas.

It has been done several times with some degree of success:

- Java Applets

- Microsoft Silverlight

- Adobe Flash

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#96

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

brudgers wrote: post #53

In the abstract FireFox OS is appealing. But the likely realities aren't. It's hard not to assume the ease with which Firefox the browser can be installed by my Mom when thinking about the OS. But doing so is plain wrong. For most end users it will be as tied to a particular device by the manufacturer as any other mobile OS. And the likelihood that the end user will, as a practical matter, be able to load Firefox OS…

You're missing the point of Firefox OS. They don't want to make an OS, they want to make the web a good platform for apps.

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#97

Post by natural219 »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #95
andrewflnr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have to be huge piece of software, and nobody would use it. That is, it would be very difficult to get adoption. That said, some of us are thinking about it. It seems like this ought to have made it onto PG's list of frighteningly ambitious ideas.

It has been done several times with some degree of success: - Java Applets - Microsoft Silverlight - Adobe Flash

Premature, propietary, propietary.

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#98

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

natural219 wrote: post #97
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has been done several times with some degree of success: - Java Applets - Microsoft Silverlight - Adobe Flash

Premature, propietary, propietary.

Them being proprietary had nothing to do with their success.

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#99

Post by camus »

At the end of the day , the only user will care about is the app store and performances. If the apps are great and run fast then people will not care how they are made. That's the only thing we should care about.If FFos doesnt deliver on these levels then it wont work. There is already an os for cheap celphones , android. Cheaper hardware means crappy software.

Re: The Promise of Firefox OS

#100

Post by mephju »

electrograv wrote: post #91
mephju wrote: post #66

This is a real question and no trolling: Why is nobody building a second kind of browser, one which is not based on html and css. A browser which is geared towards app execution and development. A browser which can run apps which can be programmed in a way that is similar to programming Android apps. Where I can for example have a footer without doing some css hacks. DNS and most of our backends could still be reused…

I've thought about this a lot myself. The language issue ultimately leads you to conclude that we need a browser with a built-in VM, rather than a built-in scripting language. It makes so much more sense, as a clean and elegant solution. "I know! I'll make my own new browser with an embedded VM and newer cleaner APIs, and revolutionize the web! It'll be amazing, allowing native-like performance from the browser. WebG…

Great to hear someone is looking into this even though it's only a side project!

But I am not sure the GUI engine would really take THAT long. How long did the Android guys need for their GUI solution?. It would be interesting to know that.

And no, I actually don't know people working on projects like this :)

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