Mozilla Launches Firefox OS Simulator 3.0 | Hacker News Reader

Mozilla Launches Firefox OS Simulator 3.0

thenextweb.com

124 pointsLightning18 comments

Just to clarify the simulator is now version 3.0, not the OS itself.

Here is a link from Mozilla explaining whats new in the new version of the simulator:

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/05/firefox-os-simulator-3-0-r...

Wow, it looks like a really slick OS. I think it'll be neat seeing web-apps as first class citizens - it never made sense to me why we have to use Objective-C or Java just to make some UI or whatever.

Somewhere, a former Palm webOS engineer is reading your comment and crying.

And you can even test your FirefoxOS apps with the Selenium WebDriver API!

Mozilla's talk about testing FirefoxOS, at the Google Test Automation Conference last week: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X41eqcmC2Dk

Writeup: http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/548910/9c5d6bd1bd69f34c/

Demo of automated UI test using Appium to test an app on the FirefoxOS simulator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J0aXDbjiUE#t=34m30s

Having to deal ludicrously overcomplicated environments is what's kept me from writing apps for my own use for my Android phone. I recently took to the decidedly suboptimal choice (on Android) of "simply" writing js/html apps with localstorage as a workaround, so an OS that is designed to actually make apps written that way a first class citizen will be awesome.

Now if only their developer phones were easier to get a hold of.

I was totally ready to impulse buy a Keon last week, but I missed the initial rush on them.

If you're interested in seeing the code for it, it's made with love and open sourced up on github. Please try it out and leave us some constructive criticism in our issue tracker: https://github.com/mozilla/r2d2b2g/issues?state=open

Is there any way to get your hands a dev phone without being a mobile app developer rockstar (I assume they give them away to these guys/girls)? Alternatively is there a method to get your hands on the OS and load it on an android phone to play around with?

The simulator is great and all but I love seeing the finished product on an actual phone.

http://www.geeksphone.com/ Went on sale about a week ago. I think they're sold out though

They put a few more up every day.

Each day they go through the cycle:

  - shop is down, has a white page saying that the shop will
    be up again "in the following hours"
  - the shop goes live
  - the shop sells out
  - the shop is up, but says "Out of stock" on product pages

I think they are afraid of showing real-world performance to soon...

Everything was developed in the open from day 1. We are not hiding anything there. If you get a Keon from Geeksphone, you'll get a good idea of how it performs on low-end hardware similar to the one that will be sold by the first carriers. And it's pretty good I think. (disclaimer: I'm a Mozilla employee working on b2g)

If you can't snag a developer phone, there is support for building it for a limited number of android handsets. Compatible devices: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/... Installation: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/...

It runs ok on a Nexus S http://bluishcoder.co.nz/2013/04/22/running-firefox-os-on-ne...

is Firefox OS based on Android?

I think it has some lower-level Android bits, I don't believe it has Dalvik though...

Did you even look up your question on a search engine before asking it?

The dedicated Wikipedia page has all the information you are looking for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_OS (spoiler: no it is not)

Correction: yes, it is; it uses Android kernels.

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