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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?
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.
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 (:
Yuma, AZ...You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.
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
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.
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.
No and yes.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
as ChromeOS did. People still aren't interested in dumbing down their devices to a mere terminal.
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.
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."
"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 ]
No and yes.
Ah, thanks. That clears things up.
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
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.
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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.
Firefox os they are talking about here will run on mobile devices. It is not meant to run specifically software out of the cloud. The HTML5 apps might be local and probably many (if not most) of them are. After all, there are plenty of situations where you want to use your mobile device in a disconnected environment. For example listening to music in an airplane. Or taking notes in a forest. Etc.
FTFY.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
There is an XHTML5 standard - it's the HTML5 standard, but using strict XML syntax.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Online sarcasm was deprecated in 1986. Look it up.