Mozilla and Partners Prepare to Launch First Firefox OS Smartphones
blog.mozilla.org
blog.mozilla.org
However, that must've been one of the least inspiring product demo videos I've ever watched. It does nothing on selling me on the virtues of the phone, just running through some extraordinarily anonymous features. I realise it's extremely affordable, but that hardware looks like it does almost nothing well. While I want to develop mobile apps, I don't particularly want to develop for this device, despite the HTML/CSS/JS support fitting neatly in my skillset.
The app store is probably the most curious thing, but that's hidden away and quickly glossed over.
If this starts reaching developing nations, with mobile internet etc, then I could see the benefit, and that's something that I'd love to engage with. At the moment it just seems like a weird brand exercise.
There is no compelling reason to use it, or for it to even exist. It offers no tangible benefits that we can't get elsewhere. What it does offer is pretty lousy.
The only two arguments we see used to support its existence are both badly flawed:
1) Devices running it are "affordable". Maybe this is true in some absolute sense, but relative to other mobile OSes and devices this "affordability" comes at a very steep cost in terms of usability and practicality.
Used Android and iOS devices can also be acquired quite cheaply these days (even in poorer nations), but unlike Firefox OS and its devices these used devices are comparatively powerful and much more practical to use.
2) It's "open". This argument is academic at best. We can already use HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and other so-called "open" technologies on Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS, and many other of the less-common mobile OSes. Android and some of the other mobile OSes are already open source software, so it's not like Firefox OS has any advantage in that sense, as well.
The whole reliance on JavaScript makes Firefox OS even less-open, in my opinion. When it comes to using Android or iOS, for instance, at least we have the option of using mature, non-JavaScript languages. No, I don't really consider CoffeeScript, TypeScript or Dart to be anything but JavaScript with a prettier syntax and/or slightly better type checking.
The effort put into Firefox OS would have been much better spent fixing desktop Firefox, or Firefox running on existing mobile devices. Even putting it toward Thunderbird would've been useful. But it has instead been wasted on an eighth-in-line mobile OS with limited capabilities and a severe lack of usability compared to its competitors.
A platform being open is not merely academic. It makes future open source software exponentionally better just like it did in the past decades. In fact, if this gets mainstream it will be the first to be truly open. Android has an open source license, but Google has never been really open about it. http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/open-sauce/55247-...
And why does relying on a publicly specified language with vibrant ecosystem make the platform less open? You argued that by using proprietary languages? Though I completely agree JS needs to mature... a lot.
I trust Mozilla's vision that they're doing the right thing to move the web forward by putting efforts into desktop or mobile or whatever they find worthwhile.
Without the basic hardware/software ecosystem that android has supported it isn't clear that Firefox OS could (so easily) exist. Modern smartphones have substantially reduced platform openeness and freedom compared to the desktops of old, but the ratchet doesn't only click one way.
But we can't do that, because Firefox OS is clearly inferior to Android in so many significant ways. Its performance appears to be a problem. Its functionality is quite limited. Its "openness" is overstated. It provides an awful environment for developers, in terms of language support, compared to other mobile OSes. Basically nobody is actually using it yet, so there's little incentive to target it. It appears comparatively hostile toward anyone wishing to merely recoup the cost of creating an app, never mind make a profit.
Until Firefox OS gets its act together, it will face criticism and negative comparisons with Android. I hope that people like you are capable of seeing what's truly behind this (that is, the inferiority of Firefox OS compared to Android), rather than misattributing it to "dissonance", or "shilling", or some other nonsensical reason like that.
I'm not misattributing anything and putting words like 'shilling' into my mouth is cheap.
The fact that Android was hailed as open by the community clearly diminishes the impact of the major selling point of Firefox OS.
Even if Firefox OS was on par with Android in all aspects of performance, people would still have no reason to use it, and the argument 'because it's open' is no longer persuasive.
This has become pretty apparent with desktop Firefox, for instance. There have been many poorly-thought-out decisions foisted upon its users lately, without them having any say. This has accelerated since Firefox 4 was released. Just look at the one from today about removing the ability to easily disable JavaScript in Firefox 23, for example. I don't see things being any different with Firefox OS, and I don't consider this to be a form of "openness".
The same goes for JavaScript. In practice, it really isn't more "open" than C, or C++, or Java, or Objective-C, or C#. Unless you're part of certain teams at a very small number of organizations, you're not going to have any influence at all on JavaScript. This is very different than the situation with, say, Python, where unaffiliated individuals can actually make a difference.
But I wasn't even referring to standards when it comes to JavaScript. That's peripheral to the lack of choice that exists under Firefox OS. It's not a very "open" platform when the only language you can practically use is JavaScript. Android gives us the option of using Java, or using C and C++ via the NDK, for example. That's far more choice than we have under Firefox OS.
Maybe my comment was harsh, but we are discussing reality here, not some academic fantasy. The evidence just isn't there to back up Firefox OS being more "open", or even practical in any way.
I won't discuss the openness of JavaScript vs. that of other languages, since this doesn't seem to be the purpose of your message. Yes, JavaScript is the only way to get code executed on FirefoxOS. However, considerable steps are being taken by both Mozilla and third-parties to ensure that this does not limit (too much) your choices. These days, dozens of languages can be compiled to JavaScript, directly [1] or indirectly [2], including C, C++, Objective-C, Java, C# or Python. That doesn't mean that all your applications can be ported immediately to FirefoxOS, as you'll need some library support that may or may not be available for the platform, but it's hardly limiting.
As for your "academic fantasy" paragraph, well, let's just politely ignore that trollbait.
Caveat: I'm a Mozillian.
[1] https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang... [2] https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki
You couldn't be more wrong. Firefox OS is developed in the open, on GitHub. You can submit pull requests. Others have. They've been accepted. FFOS is implementing a very cool text selection concept that came from the community, for example.
Android is developed behind close doors. Only release versions are opened sourced. Android does not accept patches from non-Google employees.
> Android gives us the option of using Java, or using C and C++ via the NDK, for example. That's far more choice than we have under Firefox OS.
On FF you have the option of using any language that compiles to JavaScript, which has all of the same API capabilities as JS. This is not true on Android, where every attempt to port a JVM language to Davlik has failed (thus far).
I base this on statements made in the #android IRC channel in the past by Google developers working on Android.
As for FirefoxOS, is it possible for a user to install XPIs or XPCOM components on their own handset? I can understand why limitations would be placed on third-party applications obtained through a web service, but not why owners of devices could not install additional components.
I confirm that Mozilla has fixed a number of bugs and/or performance issues in Android. In fact, if my memory serves, Chrome for Android simply couldn't load without our patches :)
However, if my memory serves, getting these patches accepted has proved pretty difficult. I'm not the author of the patches, so I couldn't tell you why.
> As for FirefoxOS, is it possible for a user to install XPIs or XPCOM components on their own handset? I can understand why limitations would be placed on third-party applications obtained through a web service, but not why owners of devices could not install additional components.
Well, given that XPCOM components have 100% access to the file system, hardware, etc. and can easily brick a phone, we didn't really spend time making that footgun user-friendly. So you can easily add an XPCOM component, but only if you build an image of FirefoxOS yourself. Not too hard to do, just probably not the answer you hoped for.
That's very arguably at the very least. As a Ubuntu user at work I can tell you how annoying are all the little bugs, all the drivers issues and hardware incompatibilities.
Yeah, you can tell me that is not linux/open source community fault, but in any case it is preventing to make future software "exponentionally" better.
Other example? I really can't stand GIMP (It is usable but really a good alternative to Photoshop)
1) What laptop are you using? Ever tried building a Hackintosh? Seems to me that either you or your company bought a computer and expected it to just work. In many cases it does so perfectly (for example on my Thinkpad it worked perfectly out of the box), in some cases it doesn't.
2) If you're so annoyed about Ubuntu, why do you keep using it? So you can bitch and moan about it?
A. Use photoshop, and pay the absurd license cost. B. Spend what you would on photoshop to pay some starving GNU developer to implement some features you like from PS in gimp. C. Fix the problems you have with it yourself since it is FOSS and development is open.
As for Firefox OS, I am really excited, because more competition == lower prices and more to choose from. Hehehe!
The alternatives need to be extremely compelling in order to draw users away from very well-established incumbents.
From what we've seen so far, it's very doubtful that Firefox OS is capable of doing this. In terms of functionality, it is far behind what other mobile OSes have offered for years. What's worse, what it does offer is already offered by its competitors. It also offers much less flexibility when it comes to how developers can build their apps. It doesn't really compete in terms of cost, as used Android and iOS devices are widely available at very reasonable prices, even in developing nations. Finally, the claims about it being more "open" are specious, at best.
It's very difficult to find anything compelling about it. Regardless of what criteria is considered, it just doesn't offer any advantages. Widespread uptake just does not happen when this is the case.
This is a similar position to the one Microsoft is taking with WP7 through the less expense carriers in the US, the speed and responsiveness of WP7 is put up against Android 2.3 on a low capability CPU and GPU. WP7 seems to have been designed to render the "tile" display fast on lower quality graphics hardware.
If Mozilla and partners are positioning these devices against entry level devices from companies like Motorola and ZTE in less developed countries they could do well.
You didn't see our orphan-powered fax machine initiative then.
"Its unresponsive screen makes typing a laborious process requiring painstaking precision. Every action from swiping to tapping onscreen controls takes a beat until you see results, so using the phone for a prolonged period steals minutes of your time. Lag carries into the camera, which is slow to launch, snap, and reset."[1]
For $90, I would rather have a refurbished iPhone 3GS. A 3GS has 16GB of internal storage vs this phones 512MB and runs Apple's latest iOS 6. With native performance you get a silky smooth experience from the homescreen to apps even on budget hardware.
[1] http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57591716-94/firefox-os-phon...
Also an iPhone is the opposite of a free phone, so this is no competition for Firefox OS.
Now, I'm a big anti-apple/open source proponent too, but just having that as a selling point isn't gonna win them a whole lot of users; just look at what happened with the OpenMoko project.
After watching the demo, I think it might've made a decent competitor back when Gingerbread was still fresh, but now I'm not so sure. If there's one thing I do admire about Apple, it's that they seem to really only release stuff that's 'fully baked', even if not everybody agrees with the decisions they make.
Now of course, we live in the world of apps and the iPhone has become what it was always destined to be: a mediocre-to-crappy, yet socially acceptable, gameboy. Ha-ha, only serious.
No really, having all those things in one touchscreen device was pretty cool, and certainly pointed the way to the future. The predictable myth-making around Apple is as boring as ever though.
It's just I can remember when the myth-making was around the iPod and "it only does one thing, and it does it really well", and suddenly the iPhone comes along and does everything and anything, usually (though not always) quite a bit worse than dedicated devices. And suddenly perfection gets redefined (yet again) to whatever Apple is currently doing.
Unfortunately, they overbaked Maps.
Trust is the baseground of any purchase.
[1] no pun intended, although given my Keon's case colour, it is quite a good one :)
You might be surprised (as I was) but Windows 8 is the most responsive mobile OS I've ever seen. Maybe it's even the best mobile OS at the moment.
You can get a new Nokia Lumia 521 for about $150. A very underestimated phone.
You can really see problems with the 521 on IE. The browser performance reminds me of Android 2.3.
Now, the Lumia 9xx series is rock solid. But I haven't been able to give up my 4s (Nokia should really be giving them away)
Windows 8 explicitly blocks the installation of any browser other than Internet Explorer (+ skins) on ARM. This is not due to a technical reason. This is due to the fact that Microsoft imitates Apple's policy that prevents any browser other than Safari (+ skins) on iOS [1]. While anti-trust rulings have forbidden Microsoft from doing this on PCs, Microsoft claims that ARM-based computers are not PCs and that the anti-trust rulings therefore do not apply. I therefore suspect that Microsoft will continue with this behavior unless a court of justice decides that ARM-based computers are also PCs. Hence my above comment.
And if anyone wonders why we need open platforms for mobile devices, that's a pretty good reason.
One source among many: http://www.linuxstall.com/microsoft-blocks-chrome-and-firefo...
[1] Yes, technologically speaking, Chrome for iOS is a reskinned Safari bundled with utilities.
You can't have IE in Kid's Corner (the guest mode) so you'll want UC Browser as an alternative. There are also alternative phone dialers since you can't have the default phone dialer in Kid's Corner.
My main gripe with Windows Phone isn't the OS, but the phones themselves. They just don't look that nice, and they retain the old-fashioned "brick" feel of old Nokia phones.
I have a Galaxy Nexus now, but if Microsoft were to release their own Nexus-like range of phones that were both high-spec and looked great I'd happily switch.
I own the HTC 8X, which I don't think is very brick-like either. I love the textured back, and my friends and colleagues love the way it looks and feels.
However there are still some downsides you need to be aware of if you planning on getting one:
[1] Windows is highly paranoid about security (Irony), no application can access the call logs, messages or even basic settings such as brightness etc. So don't expect to find apps that customize your phone to your liking.
[2] Apps - Saw your friend using that awesome Starbucks app and want it? Nope you won't find it on the store like many many others. To make it worse, Google is hellbent on never creating apps for Windows Phone. Luckily there are better or acceptable alternatives for most of their core products.
[3] Phones - Not many choices. If you want a solid phone stick with the Nokia brand. The exclusive apps will itself win you over.
Yeah I listed one pro and three cons, that is definitely a pro MS post. According to you, anyone who says anything good about MS or Google is a shill. Glad we aren't living anymore in the 90's M$-hate slashdot era.
>resurgence
If 8+% market share is "resurgence", I have no idea what you are going to say about Firefox or Ubuntu Mobile OS.
also, good job with that strawman you put up there. you sure knocked it down real well.
Yes, the same applies for you calling everyone who doesn't share your view a "shill". So according to my posts, I am pro MS, pro Firefox, anti Chrome, pro Google etc. I sure hope I dint invalidate the "pro MS" with the cons this time. Has it every occurred to you that maybe people talk positively or negatively about product X or Y, not because they are a shill, but because they can relate to it or have some experience with it? I humbly request you to change your mindset from the pre-2000 slashdot era, grow up and stop calling everyone who doesn't share the same views as you a "shill".
Check out your Argumentum Ad Hominem! [1]
> "shill"
> shill
> "shill"
are you quoting me when you say "shill"? where did I use that word? If I didn't use it, doesn't that make this a Strawman Fallacy? [2]
>I humbly request you to change your mindset from the pre-2000 slashdot era
Perfect example of Association Fallacy [3].
> grow up
followed by an Appeal to emotion! nice! [4]
-
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
> "native performances" still makes sense if you are talking
> about building physics engines or whatever kind of heavy
> simulations, but not for 90% percent of the smartphone
> apps today.
Update: after watching this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu8q-oISbas I do not understand how anyone can call UI responsive and maintain a straight face. Or I do not know what are you comparing it to. Just take a look how the contacts app works :(
Other than that, the phone itself performs it's basic functions just fine and the battery life is quite good if you don't touch any of the "smart" features.
Having said that, the device is a developer preview and I like Mozilla and their mission and I hope they will succeed with subsequent versions.
For one thing, the link you provide doesn't contain that quote anywhere that I can see. Perhaps you intended to post a different link?
Secondly, I have been using a Firefox OS developer preview phone for several months (one less powerful than the ZTE, I believe), and the UI is extremely snappy. As all 1.0s it still has rough edges that I only hope will be softened by future upgrades, but I find the user experience generally pleasant.
Finally, you can certainly grab a refurbished iPhone if you prefer. iOS 6 is certainly visually nicer than Firefox OS 1.0. But the whole point of FirefoxOS is freedom from silos. One of the consequences is that the appstore will not simply drop support on you whenever Apple (or whoever owns your silo) decides that they want to force you into buying a new phone. Unless I'm mistaken, another of the consequences is that any application bought on FirefoxOS will still belong to you if decide to move to an Android phone or to your Windows/MacOS/Linux personal computer (sorry, no iPhone support, Apple wouldn't want that kind of thing to happen). Oh, and of course, with a Firefox OS phone, you can just write and deploy your own apps without having to ask anybody's permission. I wrote a (small) game during a conference and released it a few days later, before the Marketplace was even open. If visual effects are more important to you than this kind of freedom, yes, by all means, go ahead and buy a refurbished iPhone.
Caveat: I'm a Mozillian.
If I can already get all of that with Android, and so much more (such as decent performance, the ability to develop apps in languages other than JavaScript, access to a huge number of existing applications, and so on), what is it that should be compelling me to use Firefox OS instead?
Furthermore, various incidents since the release of Firefox 4 have also shaken my trust in Mozilla. Time and time again, we've seen decisions made with very limited community input, and apparently little regard to the impact that they'll have. I'm talking about how the approach to releases was changed in a way that broke extensions time and time again, for a long time. I'm talking about how the status bar has been removed, and the menu bar was hidden by default. I'm talking about how the protocol isn't shown in the URL bar. I'm talking about the latest incident from today, where the preferences dialog option for disabling JavaScript will apparently be removed in Firefox 23.
Incidents like those make me very skeptical of the "openness" claims we hear time and time again with respect to Firefox OS.
Firefox had to be switched to a faster release model to keep pace with Chrome. That's what competition does. Firefox adapted and excelled. Some extension developers took a while to catch on and understand the new process. But as there are 6 weeks of time to test each new version and generally extensions don't change unless there is an API change, it's not much of an issue. Any commercial developer that falls down on this is simply irresponsible.
The status bar is there and shows up whenever it needs to (during loading or hovering over a link). There's no need for it to be there the rest of the time. Any old-school extensions that had UI elements in the status bar simply moved to the toolbar.
The protocol is shown in the URL bar whenever it's something besides http (so for ftp, https, chrome, etc). http is redundant as it's assumed. Same reason we don't use it when giving web addresses via other media.
You can still disable JavaScript in the about:config window and using all kinds of extensions to add UI elements if you want a quick toggle. It's being removed since it's not very useful anymore as much of the web requires JavaScript. Lots of developers don't even bother testing sites for when JavaScript is disabled anymore (nor do they really need to as no one disables it except a core group of a couple million geeks and these folks know that if a site breaks, they need to whitelist it in NoScript).
It is true that power users can install apps without going through the Android Play Store. Regular users (i.e. your customers, if you are a developer)? I wouldn't be so sure. That's your first clue that Android is not the pinnacle of mobile OS.
For most users, Android is effectively a silo. Worse than that, it is a silo in which all your otherwise private data belongs to a single company. As a user, this is a pretty big clue to me that Android is not the platform I want for me, or for my children.
As for developing apps in languages other than JavaScript, well, here are "a few" other languages that you can use: https://github.com/jashkenas/coffee-script/wiki/List-of-lang... . This includes C, C++, C#, Python, Java, etc. Heck, even I have developed a language in that list :)
Caveat: I am a Mozillian (and I'll stop writing this at the bottom of my messages, I grow tired of it).
On Android, I can use Java, C, C++, C# (via Xamarin), JavaScript, or the languages that compile down to JavaScript.
Yet somehow Android "is a much worse platform in terms of language choice"?
In each case there's some variant of Linux, on top of that is a JavaScript and web browser implementation, and on top of that is the application implemented in JavaScript.
The use of something like PhoneGap in the Android case, to package the JavaScript code, markup, styles and to interface with the native browser, is quite peripheral. The majority of end users won't care, as long as the app works.
In the end, the fact remains that developers can use JavaScript to develop apps for Android. But these Android developers also have numerous other options available to them, including Java, C, C++ and C#. This final part is not true for Firefox OS. That inherently means that Android is a much better platform in terms of language support, contrary to what you're suggesting.
Now, on one side, the default language is Java + proprietary APIs. Through the NDK, this can be extended to native stuff and through Cordova/Phonegap, this can be extended to HTML5-ish stuff. On the other side, the default language is JavaScript + portable-but-not-available-everywhere APIs. Through Emscripten, this can be extended to native stuff and through the list I posted earlier, this can be extended to gazillions of languages. While you seem to prefer Java, it really strikes me as roughly equivalent in terms of freedom of choice for the language.
Both platforms are impressively richer than iOS, one defaults to Java, the other to JavaScript, news at 11.
Every Emscripten demo I've seen so far has either not worked, or been horribly slow. As far as I'm concerned, it really isn't a viable option at this point for anything remotely serious. It may be an interesting experimental idea, but it still needs a massive amount of work before it's seriously usable.
In the end, they're merely an abuse of JavaScript, rather than providing proper support like NDK provides for C and C++ under Android, for instance.
Asm.js is still just JavaScript. Emscripten isn't currently production-grade software, and it still just compiles down to JavaScript.
I hope you understand that either of those options is still a case of using JavaScript. Are you seriously disputing that?
We can develop production-grade applications using Java, C, C++, C# and JavaScript for Android. We can only do a very small fraction of that when using Firefox OS. Firefox OS clearly provides far fewer viable options than Android does.
>Emscripten isn't currently production-grade software, and it still just compiles down to JavaScript.
took you two sentences to contradict yourself and move the goalposts again. Nowhere were we talking about "production grade".
> I hope you understand that either of those options is still a case of using JavaScript. Are you seriously disputing that?
That's a strawman fallacy. [1]
http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/geeksphone-keon/4505-645...
Hard as it is for me to admit, MS did an amazing job with Windows Mobile 8. For low-end hardware it gives a silky smooth OS performance. On the apps side though, I wasn't too impressed with the Nova 3 and Asphalt 7 on the phone I tested. I'm not sure if this is a fault of the OS, hardware, or just that iOS developers have more experience optimizing for that platform. Given the same hardware, I'd put money on iOS, Win8, and even Android (w/ NDK) outperforming Firefox OS.
So I'll take your bet :)
Why is that hard to admit?
OK cidadel under ASM.js was pretty cool and memory boat seemed under control. Nice job BTW! So I set FF as my default browser. Next day I come to HN and open some CSS3 hair demo in a new tab. Next thing I know my browser is completely unresponsive. Until I find the offending tab and close it. Back to multi-process Chrome as my default.
As a Mozillian can you please explain why Mozilla is wasting their resources trying to power budget phones with a bloated outdated browser? Fix your browser, and by then, maybe the mobile hardware will be fast enough to justify the performance hit from running everything inside a JavaScript VM.
> As a Mozillian can you please explain why Mozilla is wasting their resources trying to power budget phones with a bloated outdated browser?
Do you really expect anyone that isn't a developer to be running on a desktop in 2018? Really?
I have several answers to that. Firstly, budget phones running everything inside a JavaScript VM works today. We have now proved it. Almost every optimization/new technology we have achieved along the way has also been made available to Firefox for Android and Firefox Desktop, so it's hardly an exclusive or. One of these new technologies is the much-wanted support for multi-process. It is not ready for deployment, far from it, but it is now field-tested, so I hope that we will all be able to benefit from this feature soon.
Also, if you are a developer, you are certainly aware that this is not how things work. You simply cannot wait until a product is perfect before getting started with another product, because this is the road to never releasing anything, ever.
Finally, glad that you returned to Firefox, however briefly :), and glad that you liked some of the experience. I hope we'll have you back once we have finally released a multi-process version. Or once you grow weary of Google owning all your data :)
It's great that Mozilla is experimenting with new tech like FF OS, but It takes a great deal more resources to turn an experiment into a shipping product. And it's clear from the state of their desktop browser that their focus in on FF OS.
It's clear that Mozilla is resource limited. I was also pushing for Thunderbird to replace Outlook, but after Mozilla's announcement that they were ending feature updates, that is never going to happen now.
I tried figuring out the CSS needed to fix it, but was unable to locate any real documentation on it.
Fortunately, despite our limited resources, we manage to improve the Firefox browser considerably, too.
- We finally beat Chrome in terms of performance: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-27-firefox-21-ope... - We have recently added the so-called "Social API", which is a way for websites to extend the browser. - We have recently added asm.js. - We keep extending and improving the developer tools. - We keep adding support for new HTML5 tags/objects including WebAudio, the Clipboard API, the Web notification API, etc. - WebRTC has finally graduated. - etc.
It seems that you care a lot about multi-processes and, sadly, we don't have that yet. Doing it right (i.e. much better than Chrome, we hope) takes time, but we are working hard on it.
Oh, and if you want to add yourself to our resources, don't hesitate to ping me :)
Google Chrome gets installed into the APPDATA directory. In that location, any process running on the system under the current user can alter Chrome's files, since it isn't within Program Files and isn't subject to UAC/admin. This makes a standard Chrome install inherently less secure than Firefox, Opera, etc installed according to Windows' guidelines within Program Files. Google makes available another Chrome installer that installs into Program Files, but it isn't promoted to users (so they're unaware of the security differences) and it can't be updated without UAC/admin rights.
It looks like my browser was not updating because of a 1.5 year old bug #711475 which is still marked at “New”. If it hadn't been for my interest in asm.js, I'd still be sitting at version 17 or 18, despite auto-updates and background service both being checked.
Not auto-updating the browser is a much bigger security risk than your hypothetical issue for Chrome.
Or did I misunderstand what feature you are referring to?
There is nothing technical in the browser engine that prevents Gecko from being multi-process; support for it is actually integrated quite deeply into the engine, more like WebKit2 than Chromium. The reason that Firefox isn't multi-process is purely an application-level issue, not an engine-level one.
As I explained, the engine is not "bloated" or "outdated", at least in regards to multi-process or auto-update. Firefox OS uses the Gecko engine, but not the Firefox front end. The Gecko browser engine has full support for both of these features.
You wont get a generation of still-unemployed-at-30 spaniards to buy your €600 phone when they have trouble getting ends to meet. A €60 smart-phone however, that stands a chance.
BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone, which are nearly irrelevant compared to Android and iOS, are absolutely huge compared to Firefox OS, Tizen, and the other mobile OSes.
Firefox OS and Tizen will have absolutely no impact on Android.
Not that I think either will really take off.
There's also the theory that Samsung will probably want to stop being dependent on Google, and use its own OS. That could be a game changer.
Mozilla is leveraging a large existing developer base and relying on the brand power and capabilities of Firefox that they have full control over. Their choice of market is interesting too, as it seems to be largely served by low-cost hardware stuck with outdated Android installs with no upgrade paths on the horizon. Meanwhile, Google is distancing itself from Android as a product and instead pushing own devices as "the" Android experience, leaving the low-cost hardware market with stale software.
These seem like thought-out strategic moves Mozilla is capable of pulling. It'll be interesting to see how things play out.
Can you disable Javascript?
Besides being the phone all others are compared against, iPhone is standardized to fit a variety of 3rd party components; lenses, camera mounts, car mounts, etc.
Dependability is another aspect that should not be neglected to save a few $. If it's something you depend upon every day, you don't want to be disappointed when it matters most.
I guess a free Firefox OS phone would be great for homeless or families too poor to afford a decent phone.
Or people who value freedom over eyecandy. Or people with principles and ideals. And maybe even people who can see outside the San Francisco hipster smug.
People with long term visions, like the people who originally created the WWW had. We definitely need more people like that and we need the tech crowd to support them.
Your comment adds nothing of value.
Chances are that all the apps you have invested in and the data you have put into them will be lost if you migrate to another phone or eco-system.
Firefox OS, by ensuring that everything is HTML-based and pretty much delivered as web-pages means that you can never have your data and apps locked in the same way you can on Android and iPhone.
Firefox OS delivers freedom in such complete form that no other platform can compete. Firefox OS is in fact so open that if you in the end get fed up with it (for whatever reason), you can still take all your apps, all your data and move on to whatever you want. You will lose nothing.
You have to admit that is something pretty unique.
Well, in theory :-)
1) Only to other Firefox OS phones that support the same WebAPIs that your apps require. Mozilla is working hard to push those APIs through W3C and encourage others to implement them. But that is a slow process and it remains to be seen if the other players want to do that.
Until that happens, Firefox OS is just as proprietary as any other platform. Sure, it is technically more open, but you are still locked in to a specific runtime implementation where you can't easily move away from.
2) Only if those applications are completely standalone and do not depend on server side components. Developer goes out of business or loses interest in the app? Good luck reverse engineering minified JavaScript or reimplementing a backend that the app depended on.
Firefox OS is great and it is a long term plan. But to claim it solves all problems we have now with mobile software goes too far in my opinion. Those same problems will just exist on any new platform.
(Yes, yes, the web is the platform. See point 1)
In theory, it will work anywhere, eventually. But today, almost every single FirefoxOS applications can run unchanged on Android (using Firefox for Android). Most of them can also work on laptop/desktop (using regular Firefox). That's already way better than whatever Android or iOS offer.
> 2) Only if those applications are completely standalone and do not depend on server side components. Developer goes out of business or loses interest in the app? Good luck reverse engineering minified JavaScript or reimplementing a backend that the app depended on.
On this point, I agree with you. The parent post was overpromising.
> Firefox OS is great and it is a long term plan. But to claim it solves all problems we have now with mobile software goes too far in my opinion. Those same problems will just exist on any new platform.
I, for one, don't claim that. But I am convinced that Firefox OS is a great step forward, and that's all we can ask, really.
Caveat: I am a Mozillian.
People believe they are getting something free and open when they buy Android.
These fine distinctions aren't going to make a difference in anyone's mind since the Geek vote already went to Android.
Now that wolf has been cried, it's too late.
And in every Android topic there is at least one commenter saying that Android isn't truly open.
I understand that in developing nations like Ethiopia or India this might be significant but in Spain?
Well, you can argue that there is always a choice. And most of them take it, by leaving everything behind and moving to Germany or other central european country. Until they don't want them there anymore.
It seems if they are able to bring down prices by introducing this "no-contract cheap phone option" into the market (which may be a good thing), then nothing stops the same exact manufacturer from releasing the same exact hardware running Android for the same exact price sine the OS doesn't play into the cost in either case.
However, the real cost saver is the fact that, in my experience, FirefoxOS largely outperforms Android on many tasks, and generally is usable on hardware that is much cheaper than anything Android requires to run these days.
Hmmh, but all I see is WebApp, WebGL, JavaScript, HTML, ... I don't see 'native' -> How would I implement an offline navigation? (which is currently really not possible in JavaScript)
Or is it just not possible to create a resource intensive or tricky application in FireFox OS?
Perhaps this is what you're looking for: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/HTML/Using_the_appl...
If you could provide examples of what you mean by "resource intensive" or "tricky", it might be easier to help you.
Such applications have to use the RAM or disc access provided by the OS. A simple cache will not do it. Although I could imagine that JavaScript is fast enough these days you still need access to lots of memory and load several hundred MB from somewhere/disc
Bulk loading/saving big binary data from/to IndexedDB is basically as fast as accessing the file system. Using TypedArray or (upcoming) BinaryData, JavaScript can also manipulate binary data pretty quickly.
I haven't attempted doing any serious graph processing in JavaScript, but these days, JavaScript is extremely fast at tree manipulation (much faster than OCaml, which has long been the fastest high-level language for this kind of thing), so I would imagine that it's quite suited for the task.
If you are serious about this, you should come and chat on irc.mozilla.org, channel #openwebapps for instance. We'll be happy to help you get started, plus that kind of discussion is often how new features and optimizations get started.
JavaScript is no less capable of supporting these APIs, look at Node.js for instance, it has most of the server _APIs_ you find in other server implementations that use different languages as a base (and the Firefox platform has many of them already, with many more to on the way!)
But you cannot - please correct me when I'm wrong - create offline navigation on a FireFox OS when using only the provided APIs. At least I don't see a way how it should scale beyond a smallish city.
I'm still not convinced. I can see the potential for games via WebGL + storage. But especially navigation software looks not really possible.
1. Knowledge resources available to team and experience of the organization in the subject matter far exceed what the WebOS team had.
2. Was free/open and somewhat collaborative almost from the beginning. I say "somewhat collaborative" because the priority of the team was to create an operating system for a phone, with other forms (like a computer connected to other devices) taking a far backseat.
However, I agree in that, despite optimizations, it has a long way to go to compete with Android which almost "owns" the market it is after.
Politically, the timing is fairly good this announcement, though. Right after Google's black eye over privacy concerns, people might be slightly more likely to embrace Mozilla products. But, who knows. Competing in Android's turf is going to be a serious uphill battle.
It will succeed if:
1. They really embrace community input and provide incentives for people to get involved. That is part of being Mozilla. They don't need to be Apple or Google.
2. They need a charismatic leader with the vision of Jobs, someone with the design talent of Jony Ive, and someone that is capable of recruiting and organizing community talent like _______ (a name doesn't come to mind).