For phone users there is a completely rewritten Java based UI. This results in a much faster startup time and we have Flash support. Two of the largest complaints in the market feedback.
Mobile is the first place where it is trivial to implement due to hardware decoders. Desktop still has the decision to either pay MPEGLA for a license and ship something like libx624 on all platforms or decode using the system installed codecs when present.
Google already has a h.264 license due to YouTube. Apple probably does not pay anything as they control several key patents involved in decoding h.264. Even if they do pay they would get a royalty distribution from MPGLA for their patents that are in the pool.
There is a big difference when you build a browser around a phone and building a browser from the ground up on a diverse set of phones. Our early work on boot2gecko is showing a large difference between running Linux with a Dalvik vm and then a browser with a JS vm and just running Linux with a browser and a JS vm. That being said we are in the middle of a major rewrite of Firefox mobile with a Java front end. See my reply to the grandparent of this thread for details.
We are working on a Java front end for Firefox mobile. Performance on devices that were marginal at running XUL Firefox mobile is much improved. There were a couple design decisions that made Firefox mobile slow to startup. First it was a testbed for Firefox multiprocess work. Secondly shipping as a full NDK app as complex as Firefox could not compete with Java app startup time due to library unpacking. This was exacerbated on phones that had a poor filesystem such as the Galaxy S.
If you want to give the Java native version a try it can be downloaded from http://nightly.mozilla.org/ It will require you to enable installing of non-market apps on your phone.
Re:Still no Flash in mobile ...
on
Firefox 10 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This is working fairly well on Nightly and Aurora. On Beta (11) soon.
Adding Flash to Firefox was a considerable amount of work. Adobe and Google rather drastically re-wrote NPAPI. The only documentation on how Flash worked on Android is the Android source. This work represents several hundred person hours to get it working.
TBH Flash support is in the current release version has a pref for flash on 2.2 and 2.3 but the experience is rather poor, hence it being disabled with no UI to enable it. about:config change plugin.disable to false. Judge Flash progress against the Nighty or Aurora builds. The Beta 10 or release 10 builds are not representative of the Flash experience for 11+.
Debian tends to have large and historical patches that make large upstream patckages fit the Debain way. For example I'm takling about packages such as OOo/LibreOffice, Apache httpd, Mozilla Firefox, etc. Arch goes in the other direction, make as few changes to the upstream package as possible.
The Adobe reader plugin for Mac is a Safari specific plugin. It does not use the standard NPAPI plugin architecture that nearly all other non-IE plugins use.
The dev for pdf-mac stopped updating their code early in the 3.6 release cycle. There is a edit you can do to make the 1.2.0 version run in Firefox 7 but you need to run Firefox in 32 bit mode. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110622163401497
Mozilla has no control over Google's toolbar team. If they don't want to support a browser there is nothing Mozilla can do. The Google toolbar is closed source binary extension.
These decisions that may seem random or ill thought out to you have data behind them. A surprisingly large number of people would be happy with a back button, a bookmark menu and a way to bookmark a site. Now these might not be the same users that Firefox has but there are a lot of people who only use those functions.
This is not about making more money. Mozilla is not driven by that economic model. Mozilla sees the walled gardens of the current crop of smartphone and similar devices operating systems as a threat to personal freedom and the heath of the internet. This project is an exploration partly to see what technical gaps exist that web application needs access to function in a similar manner to a desktop application.
There are already companies and working groups trying to accomplish this. Rather than have the specs written without any exploratory work. Mozilla is proposing to build out B2G to evaluate where those problems and shortfalls are. To me this seems like a better idea than having device manufacturers who want to expose the world. Is the user on 4g, wifi, what is the access point name, what is the user paying per kb, etc.? Or having working groups building out a spec absent of actual web developers.
Android is being looked at as it has open source code e.g. the Linux kernel and device drivers that work on the majority of phones produced today. The whole point of this is evaluate what applications on the web need. Instead of one application written 3 or 4+ times for each of the Smartphone operating systems one would write one HTML app and it would run on modern Trident, Gecko, Webkit, Presto, etc.
I don't think you understand who you are talking to. Secondly as a non-profit selling Firefox is not a primary goal. It is then ends to a mean of promoting open source and open standards on the web. https://www.mozilla.org/about/mission.html
Slashdot Mirror
Please read https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Zombie_compartments and file a bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi if you cc :kbrosnan I will do my best to forward it to the correct people.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-firefox-android-use-permissions-it-requests not sure if the most recent changes made to it for the Beta are live.
For phone users there is a completely rewritten Java based UI. This results in a much faster startup time and we have Flash support. Two of the largest complaints in the market feedback.
No it does not. Addons need to be re-written for mobile. Jetpack/Addon SDK make this process simpler but it still takes some work.
Mobile is the first place where it is trivial to implement due to hardware decoders. Desktop still has the decision to either pay MPEGLA for a license and ship something like libx624 on all platforms or decode using the system installed codecs when present.
Google already has a h.264 license due to YouTube. Apple probably does not pay anything as they control several key patents involved in decoding h.264. Even if they do pay they would get a royalty distribution from MPGLA for their patents that are in the pool.
There is a big difference when you build a browser around a phone and building a browser from the ground up on a diverse set of phones. Our early work on boot2gecko is showing a large difference between running Linux with a Dalvik vm and then a browser with a JS vm and just running Linux with a browser and a JS vm. That being said we are in the middle of a major rewrite of Firefox mobile with a Java front end. See my reply to the grandparent of this thread for details.
We are working on a Java front end for Firefox mobile. Performance on devices that were marginal at running XUL Firefox mobile is much improved. There were a couple design decisions that made Firefox mobile slow to startup. First it was a testbed for Firefox multiprocess work. Secondly shipping as a full NDK app as complex as Firefox could not compete with Java app startup time due to library unpacking. This was exacerbated on phones that had a poor filesystem such as the Galaxy S.
If you want to give the Java native version a try it can be downloaded from http://nightly.mozilla.org/ It will require you to enable installing of non-market apps on your phone.
This is working fairly well on Nightly and Aurora. On Beta (11) soon.
Adding Flash to Firefox was a considerable amount of work. Adobe and Google rather drastically re-wrote NPAPI. The only documentation on how Flash worked on Android is the Android source. This work represents several hundred person hours to get it working.
TBH Flash support is in the current release version has a pref for flash on 2.2 and 2.3 but the experience is rather poor, hence it being disabled with no UI to enable it. about:config change plugin.disable to false. Judge Flash progress against the Nighty or Aurora builds. The Beta 10 or release 10 builds are not representative of the Flash experience for 11+.
Debian tends to have large and historical patches that make large upstream patckages fit the Debain way. For example I'm takling about packages such as OOo/LibreOffice, Apache httpd, Mozilla Firefox, etc. Arch goes in the other direction, make as few changes to the upstream package as possible.
The stock Android browser is not Chrome. It uses Webkit but otherwise the development is completely separate.
The Adobe reader plugin for Mac is a Safari specific plugin. It does not use the standard NPAPI plugin architecture that nearly all other non-IE plugins use.
The dev for pdf-mac stopped updating their code early in the 3.6 release cycle. There is a edit you can do to make the 1.2.0 version run in Firefox 7 but you need to run Firefox in 32 bit mode. http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20110622163401497
If you are experiencing crashes please provide crash ids. https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Mozilla%20Crash%20Reporter
Please provide crash IDs then. https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Mozilla%20Crash%20Reporter
Mozilla has no control over Google's toolbar team. If they don't want to support a browser there is nothing Mozilla can do. The Google toolbar is closed source binary extension.
Ubiquity is now a community project. You can find the community updated version at https://bitbucket.org/satyr/ubiquity/downloads
These decisions that may seem random or ill thought out to you have data behind them. A surprisingly large number of people would be happy with a back button, a bookmark menu and a way to bookmark a site. Now these might not be the same users that Firefox has but there are a lot of people who only use those functions.
http://blog.mozilla.com/metrics/2010/04/14/menu-item-usage-study-an-update-to-the-initial-analysis/
Re:re: #1 Bookmark keywords have been a part of Firefox since pre 1.0 as it was a Netscape feature.
Re: #2 since Firefox 4 address bar search now does a normal Google search again as it did pre 1.5.
This is not about making more money. Mozilla is not driven by that economic model. Mozilla sees the walled gardens of the current crop of smartphone and similar devices operating systems as a threat to personal freedom and the heath of the internet. This project is an exploration partly to see what technical gaps exist that web application needs access to function in a similar manner to a desktop application.
There are already companies and working groups trying to accomplish this. Rather than have the specs written without any exploratory work. Mozilla is proposing to build out B2G to evaluate where those problems and shortfalls are. To me this seems like a better idea than having device manufacturers who want to expose the world. Is the user on 4g, wifi, what is the access point name, what is the user paying per kb, etc.? Or having working groups building out a spec absent of actual web developers.
Android is being looked at as it has open source code e.g. the Linux kernel and device drivers that work on the majority of phones produced today. The whole point of this is evaluate what applications on the web need. Instead of one application written 3 or 4+ times for each of the Smartphone operating systems one would write one HTML app and it would run on modern Trident, Gecko, Webkit, Presto, etc.
Except that the engines were the Saturn V stage one. All I can say is that was a piece of shit article. I feel dumber for even looking at it.
Microsoft was throwing stones in a glass house. Their Siliverlight implementation has the same problem http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/676134/dos-vulnerability-in-silverlight-5s-3d-similar-to-webgl-dos-vulnerability
I don't think you understand who you are talking to. Secondly as a non-profit selling Firefox is not a primary goal. It is then ends to a mean of promoting open source and open standards on the web. https://www.mozilla.org/about/mission.html
One trick pony that produces code that other applications use as a foundation. NSS, Spidermonkey, XULrunner, NSPR, Bugzilla...
Funds open source groups developing code for accessibility, teaching web standards, creating open standards...