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Firefox OS Will Win Big With Developers - Mozilla
judgecorp writes "Mozilla's mobile operating system Firefox OS will win overwhelming support from developers because it dropped XUL in favour of HTML5, says the head of Mozilla Europe in an interview. Firefox OS is more open than iOS and Android, and 75 percent of apps are already written in HTML5."
This just in: Mozilla employee tells us that Mozilla product will be a huge hit!
Why don't we wait until it comes out before making such claims?
Firefox OS? Didn't Netscape try to do that with Communicator 4 and fail horribly?
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Actually it won't.
Developers will look towards the jobs which earn money, meaning the popular platforms like iOS and Android. To even think Firefox OS will in any way take a reasonable portion of the marketshare is a complete and utter joke.
Mozilla missed the mobile boat 2 years ago. Hear that mozilla? It's the sound of a fog horn in the distance, get swimming(which is what they're doing right now).
They should refocus their efforts or they're going to drown.
XUL was lots of fun to work with. There was some pretty easy to develop with tools out there for quickly designing interfaces, but then the javascript still took forever and was a pain to work with. Things like Jquery have made pretty HTML interfaces easy to produce and its definitly going to be the way to go over XUL. RIP XUL
http://interserver.net/
while I'm not sold on the idea that we need another phone OS, I would think the combination of a cheap tablet with an HTML5 based OS on it is a decent alternative to laptops and netbooks for elementary education purposes. Books, interactive exercises, and word-processing abilities all in one. Allow a school to run their own Google Office-style server to keep things local...could be neat (:
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It is going to be really tough for Mozilla to make headway with their own mobile OS. Palm, Nokia, RIM, etc. have all failed in spite of enormous efforts, and the only ones that have succeeded now have complete ecosystems built around their devices.
So, I believe that the chances of Firefox OS succeeding are really slim.
And this is coming from someone who believes that Mozilla saved the Web, and who runs firefox on their phone (which is part of the problem - I already have mobile firefox).
WebOS also promised that you can write apps in HTML/JS and look at what happened to the Touchpad when it took on the iPad.
Developers flock to the platforms with most users, ease of development is only a small factor because the alternatives like iOS, Android and WP have reasonable dev environments. If the market was owned by Blackberry, he would have a point, since it's just TERRIBLE for development.
iOS and Android have big enough flaws that if another group finds that magic bullet, they can win big. The design problem is they have to come at from the approach of competing against and with the big boys and not just making a mobile OS that works. There are plenty of failed OS projects out already that "work."
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
HTML5, while faster than previous incarnations of HTML+JS, is still massively slower than native applications. I predict a very sluggish experience.
OK, maybe. But what percentage of good apps are written in HTML5?
Firefox already uses more memory than any OS I own so what the hell, go for it. Maybe Windows 8 can become a light-weight browser that runs on top of it.
"With Firefox 14, Mozilla will automatically encrypt searches conducted via Google's search engine in the browser's location bar, search box, or the right-click menu. The idea is to "protect your data from potentially prying eyes, like network administrators when you use public or shared WiFi networks," Mozilla said in a blog post. At this point, Google is the only search engine that will support encrypted searches, "but we look forward to supporting additional search engines with this feature in the future," Mozilla said." (From the PC Mag article) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2407263,00.asp
The source for WebOS is available under an open source license: http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html WebOS did not fail. Palm failed to successfully market its products for 20 years. Mozilla can make a lot of headway quickly by using WebOS as a base. With Mozilla's community clout and business position I would not be surprised to see devices running Firefox OS in a year or two.
Because playing for third place is really working out for MS. I honestly don't see what's going to attract users to Yet Another Mobile Platform.
Do you see what I did there?
Assuming your platform will "win big with programmers" is silly. Programmers will work with whatever you give them, and combine it with whatever they know. And no two programmers will have the same approach. Thinking you know what programmers want is like believing you know what women want. As if every woman (like every programmer) would be a cookie cutter copy of the other.
There are only a select few things I've found that programmers esteem and have in common, and it all has very little to do with programming per-se. They are patient. They often have the ability to hyper-focus for hours or (in extreme cases) days on a specific problem, going without food, water, sleep, social contact... in fact, interrupting them may get something chucked at your head. Prolonged and intense programming over a period of days or weeks can result in epic logic failures in their daily life -- "Hey hun, can you go to the store and if they have bread, pick up some eggs?" Programmer comes home with just eggs. They can and sometimes do become obsessed with details of a project (not just computer projects... ANY kind of project) and totally lose track of everything else; time, space, the fact that the house around them is on fire, that the girlfriend (cough, hi) is threatening to bean them if they don't come to bed and cuddle them, etc. Programmers are also endlessly fascinated with a difficult to define quality I call "Niftiness". If something is nifty, they will be drawn to it like a moth to fire. However, what is nifty to one is completely mundane to another... and "Niftiness" is a time-sensitive thing... it degrades rapidly with time.
You'll note that nowhere in there did I mention anything resembling a computer, or anything about programming itself. Programming attracts a particular kind of person; It is not the result of a particular way of doing something.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Or, "Everyone uses HTML5, right? So if we just gut our UI code and write it in HTML5 and tout its HTML5 use enough times on HTML5 news sites and our HTML5 wiki-thing, then we'll get lots of HTML5 fans to use our HTML5 OS. HTML5 HTML5!!!!! *continues to yell 'HTML5' and 'Beefcake' with decreasing coherence*"
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Developers go to where the customers are, no matter how good an OS may be.
Just look how long it's taken for them to start taking Android seriously.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
They are still on HTML5? Shouldn't they by now be on at least HTML23 to get ahead of Google?
HTML23 was soooo 30 minutes ago. Firefox 143 has HTML25.
Oops writing this post took long enough that we are now on Firefox 150.
too processor and ram heavy
good luck trying to toss that at people
WebOS was HTML5, that didn't light a fire with developers. I don't see any tablet maker outside of maybe Samsung with more pull than HP, so the issues with hardware will be even worse.
iOS used to be webapps only, until people realized that touchscreens and HTML weren't a good match. I'm not sure if HTML5 is so much of a leap to make them that much better. I still prefer Mail.app to GMail and GMail uses some of the cleverest HTML ive seen. Even on a phone which guarantees a network card, you can't guarantee a network presence 100% of the time. Local storage will be interesting.
Good luck.
I think Mozilla is absolutely insane coming in to the market so late, but I welcome the competition. As others have pointed out, I am not sure how well it will go over as a Phone OS, but I can absolutely see it as a hobbyist OS. It would be great on tablets, set top boxes (or flash the firmware on your Smart TV), Raspberry Pi.
I already have a few idea's I could use it for. Small personal projects, mostly based around a Raspberry Pi. I use and like Android but FirefoxOS would be better suited from what I have read so far.
I do web development for a living. The idea of HTML5 apps excites me as it is a system I know very well.
Huge win if they come out with an easy to install distro for Raspberry Pi.
Haven't they learned anything? You shouldn't be able to control device fundamentals from the browser, it's a complete security nightmare. Modern OS and browser designs try to sandbox the browser from the underlying architecture with good reason. Remember ActiveX? That was a security disaster. Java is the modern equivalent, I probably patch it more often that I use it. If the Firefox OS ever takes off then the weak security model will probably ensure that it crashes down to earth.
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as ChromeOS did. People still aren't interested in dumbing down their devices to a mere terminal.
This.
Besides, they're not the only ones pitching HTML5 as a dev platform for mobile. Win8 also does that, and it has far more mature development tools to back that.
This sounds like a fantastic project. I really hope they succeed. My two main concerns are security and efficiency. Firefox really seems to be a resource hog on my desktop system. They need to make drastic improvements in efficiency in order to compete in the mobile market. Sure, I have a lot of FF windows and tabs open but sometimes I have to nuke FF because it is consuming a lot of CPU while it seems to be doing nothing.
My other concern is security. FTFA:
Applications can for example, be installed directly from a website, without going through the Marketplace. There will be several application stores and applications can be submitted for free.
I sure hope they put a lot of thought and effort into security otherwise it is going to be malware central. I think they are going to need to provide the option of only running digitally signed apps. As long as the user/owner has control of which keys they are going to trust then this won't impinge on the end-user/owner's freedom.
It would also be really good if there was some way for trusted key-holder to disable apps remotely for cases where an app that contains malware gets accidentally accepted. Again, user/owners would have to be able to opt-in to this feature. There also needs to be a way to lock the phones down so a business can have control over what apps are allowed on the phones they give out to their employees. IOW, control should be in the hands of the owner, not the user. If I lend my phone to someone, I don't want them to be able to install apps.
Just because the OS is Free as in Freedom should not mean that all contributors are automatically trusted. ISTM it is important to give user/owners the option of using a web of trust from the get-go. As long as the end user/owner has control over which keys are trusted and whether keys are used at all will keep this security feature from impinging on the Freedom of the device.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Finally -- an OS that CAN'T PLAY MP3's. I'm sure it will be very popular.
Mozilla is floundering hard -- maybe they should just go away.
HTML5 is the last HTML. From here on, all changes will be integrated into HTML5. HTML5 is a process, not a fixed set of specifications. I don't think I'm kidding.
Until Firefox OS gets installed at the factory by handset makers, no one will care. It'll enjoy the same dead-cat thump that Meebo/Maebo did.
Now we have another organization betting the (a) farm on HTML5, which in and of itself if flawed/broken. Even worse is that Mozilla dumped their better and richer XUL for it.
I'd rather see Gecko+XUL turned into a desktop environment to compete with GTK+, KDE, and the like. But that's the smart thing to do, which means Mozilla will never do it.
How is your employer able to do that, exactly? Doesn't your browser give you a big "OMG DONT DO THIS" warning every time you try to connect due to the certificate error?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Will Firefox OS have driver and firmware blobs like almost every other smartphone? If so, I won't be buying.
Mozilla using WebKit? It will be a cold day in hell when that happens.
"I don't think I'm kidding."
So... who would know for sure?
But the presence of those "ecosystems" does not preclude competitors. Nor do they mean that no one else should try.
Specially given that one of the two ecosystem - Android's/Google's - is rather open (due to that phone aren't Google core business - keyword searching is their core technology and they monetize it by leveraging it to serves ads. Anything else they produce is ancillary to that. Developing phone OS and corresponding ecosystem is not a main busness target for Google. It's only a side activity which has the advantage of bringing more people online and thus expanding the number of people they can serve ads to).
Android Apps have been already running on other systems (on the QNX powering some blackberry, on the standard GNU/Linux at some canonical experiences, etc.) and Firefox has been running on Android phones too.
That could also be the point of entry, an overlapping echo system. (Initially, people running Firefox App on Android, and having both access to android apps and newly developped HTML5/Javascript apps. Once the second ecosystem is big enough, non geeks could be interested in a boot-to-gecko phone).
On top of that, if you focus on regions using GSM that don't have their handset choices constrained by the regional carriers you have a far better chance than in backwards markets like the US.
Welcome in Europe.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
But OWAs won't only run on FirefoxOS (if the other vendors implement the WebAPIs).
I don't see Apple fully implementing the WebAPIs and losing the $300* per developer per year revenue stream plus 30% take from App Store sales. It's in Apple's rent-seeking interest to require use of a native app (even if made with PhoneGap) in order to access an iDevice's microphone or camera.
* Breakdown available on request, based on this article.
Most be cold in hell, because Mozilla has had iOS apps for years which use webkit, like:
http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/home/
Because Apple doesn't allow Opera, Google Chrome or Mozilla to port their engine to iOS and "sell" it on in the Apple App Store.
New things are always on the horizon
Yes, the WebSocket protocol and implementation have been fixed more than a year ago.
Although using TLS/SSL, like HTTPS, might sometimes be needed as a workaround when you encounter buggy (usually transparant) proxy-servers.
New things are always on the horizon
The degree to which the GGGP is kidding about the state of HTML5 is itself a continually-evolving standard. It's Agile, Agile, Agile, all the way up!
That would be the irony of it, that Mozilla, whose browser succeeded because of users opting to "Get Firefox", would succeed in its phone OS venture only through the support of monopolies. Carriers already selling cheap or prepaid plans could offer Firefox OS as an alternative to plain dumb phones.
And watch your native application take two weeks to deploy through the platform's approved app store, while web workers are running on users' devices the next day.
Who pays the MPEG-4 system, AAC, AVC, and MP3 patent royalties for a Firefox OS device?
We also believe that developers will overwhelmingly support our approach, because 75 percent of applications are already designed in HTML5...
Wrong. The ability to make money by writing for a platform generally determines if developers will flock to that platform. Even if the apps are already in HTML5, if it's not worth a developer's time to spend 5 minutes making an app bundle and uploading it, they won't bother, no matter how simple you make it. And platforms aren't free. Even if you could snap your fingers and make a version for Mozilla, that's still yet another platform and yet another group of users you have to support.
Also:
By... adopting standards such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript, we want to attract hundreds of thousands of web developers on OS Firefox. No need to learn the development languages of Apple or Google.
One word (ok, sorta two): PhoneGap
And finally: how did "ZOMG apps can be written in HTML5!!!!!11" work out for Palm?
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nightly 64bit but recently they haven chosen to make the download dialog useless, I can live with that...
Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
I figured someone on Slashdot might direct me to the info. Thank you very much.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
You know Firefox Home is not a web browser right? What makes you think it uses Webkit?
Whoever's on the process standards committee.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Am I the only one who thinks that Android is going to basically overtake the traditional Linux distros as the most popular face of Linux not only on the Phone and Tablets but eventually on laptops and desktops?
There are a lot of advantages to Android over basic Linux. Easy to install apps. Commercially supported apps -- like Netflix. Easy market for businesses to monetize with software sales, etc. Games. Commercial backing by one entity.
Seems to me Mozilla is rather missing the point, or perhaps, is struggling against a perceived future of irrelevance.
My point was that if Mozilla thinks that HTML5 as app framework gives them dome unique technical advantage that would entice developers to write for them, they are mistaken.
OK. Mozilla no longer has to keep XUL up to date which means those awesome listboxen with sortable columns, and various other cool things I loved so much, are back to being a complete and total PITA to write. Outside of that, what has changed? XUL was XML and it required Javascript to do its client side interactivity. HTML5 is a sub of XML and it requires Javascript to do its client side interactivity.
As far as it being an OS that developers like, the Mozilla guys seem to like it. Maybe they will write some really cool stuff with it.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
"According to Mozilla, the B2G platform can run acceptably well in an environment with as little as 256MB of RAM." from http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/mozillas-b2g-to-be-called-firefox-os-will-ship-in-2013/
I can run firefox on a toaster, can firefox run outlook? Fallout 3? visual studio? virtual box running debian? GCC toolchains? chrome when firefox fucks up?
I dont need a shitty computer that uses a browser as its "os", I have plenty of shitty computers that already do more
Media right ?? Thats what usually happens. Personally, I don't think the UI elements introduced in HTML 5 like drag-drop, placeholder, content-editable etc. etc.. won't be much of a use because there are already super stable javascript libraries for that. I am not at all willing to rewrite the existing code just to make my site HTML5 compliant. Other than that, the backend stuff like client side storage, websocket protocol, geolocation APIs are the cool stuff I am looking forward to using.
Personally, I prefer gecko to webkit. So if it's adopted by anyone, and I have a use for it, you'll probably see me writing code for it... provided that they DON'T FUCKING DISABLE SQLITE BY DEFAULT. I mean, seriously. It's like having the best platform in the world, and handing it to the majority of people who use it with the balls cut off. Makes no freaking sense. Hopefully, they've learned from past mistakes.
This signature intentionally left blank.
The mobile OS market is far too saturated for yet another entry. They should stick to what they are good at and leave the OS market to everyone else.
The fact that apps can be written in the exact same programming language for Win Phone 8 and Firefox OS is a point in Mozilla's favour, not against them.
They're banking on cross-compatibility between the other platforms to ensure that they get a decent ecosystem very quickly. That's presumably what both Mozilla and MS picked HTML5- maximum cross-platform capabilities.
(I've never used it)
Well, then I guess it links to Mobile Safari a webkit browser.
And their was this other recent project that I can't remember right now...
New things are always on the horizon
I have a question. Ever since HTML5 came out, I've been looking to see whether there's also been an accompanying XHTML5 standard. Is there? One thing I've been curious about - while going from HTML4 to HTML5, it would have been a good opportunity to merge both HTML and XHTML, and make the latter the standard, and then build in all the new tags.
How can I take you seriously when I don't experience this?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Isn't Facebook going back to a more closed language build b/c HTLM5 just didn't work very smoothly for more complex apps? Course WebOS was supposed to take off as well because anyone could write an HTML5 app.
Yeah everyone is so impressed by HTML5...it really isn't that revolutionary I don't think at least. It has been around for a while, but does bring some interesting things to the table. I love that it makes rounded corners so easy, back in IE days you used to have to use a script that made your page slower than a pentium 2 i swear.
With the decline of firefox and the rise of chrome, they should really be worried..
The problem for them is, the ammount of Android/iOS devices out there, people already invested a lot of money in those OSses and aren't willing to part with those apps and games they already paid for.
Also there aren't any real devices yet which support FirefoxOS and I don't really think the major companies will support it, too much fragmentation.
I just hope (as an Android user) Google is going to optimize the dalvic much MUCH better, as de mono/moonlight devs proved that porting Android to C# improves the speed by almost 80%, that tells me as a developer that the dalvic is really a slow piece of crap.
HTML6 will include sarcasm detection for the ironically impaired.
DuckDuckGo integrate nicely into Firefox and it defaults to encrypted search. Been using it for at least a year and it's par (sometimes worse, sometimes better) with Google.
JigJag
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
XUL is the minion of Gozer. Gozer will be pissed if Mozilla drops XUL. They're taking a big risk here. Is their supernatural insurance paid up?
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the libraries (next versions) will use the native controls, when your browser supports it.
Online sarcasm was deprecated in 1986. Look it up.
A lot of apps on iOS and Android are already build with HTML5. Usually with a native wrapper, which you obviously wouldn't need with Firefox OS.
Even then, the company which ordered the app still needs to "go through the hassle to port" it to Firefox OS. If the company was too cheap to actually hire the necessary work force to make full blown app, chances are that "porting the app to Firefox OS" (even if in practice it boils down to ripping out the wrapper and making sure the HTML5 works as well on Firefox OS's Gecko engin, as on iOS' and Android's Webkit engines) specially for an OS with such a small market share.
It has been seen before: HTML/Javascript was one of the possible solutions on Palm's/HP's webOS and still, not everyone re-published their "webapp-with-a-wrapper as a glorified app" on Palm Pre.
My logic is that, for that to happen, you need a sufficient market share, and for sufficient market share you need to attract users. /.ers, other geeks, etc. *could* be attracted by the shear technical merit of a platform device.
normal users tend to either buy what everything else has, or to buy at least smartphones with a big enough choice of app (no matter if 99% of said apps are just fart sound boards and other useless crap).
So I think that we end-up with a sort of loop. One way of breaking free out of the loop would be the ability to run more types of application. Hence the idea of Android apps and pure HTML/Javascrip apps on the same device.
Once there are enough of them, the situation reverse:
HTML/javascript becomes interesting become its cross-platform (Android, Firefox OS, iOS, webOS, blackberry, etc... all have rendering enginges which are HTML5 capable. In adition Android can also run the exact same browser. And HTML/Javascript are already first class citizens on webOS [and recent blackberries, I think]), and because it can also nicely integrate with existing web infrastructure, also it leverages the existing know-how (Javascript, etc.) that a lot of developpers already have.
And suddenly, developping HTML5 applications becomes much more interesting for application which are rather simple in design and doesn't require complex interraction with the hardware.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]