> In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!<p>This kind of happened before: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS</a><p>What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues—and IIUC Gecko has some of those already.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.slashgear.com/hp-ipad-2-webos-testing-double-touchpad-performance-says-insider-19172970/" rel="nofollow">http://www.slashgear.com/hp-ipad-2-webos-testing-double-touc...</a>
According to this blog post, Firefox OS is <i>already</i> providing native-like performance in a <i>standard</i> JavaScript+HTML+CSS environment. (By "native-like" I mean fast enough that the application will <i>feel</i> native to users.) If this is true, then I would agree Firefox OS is a game changer, because it means that ALL modern web applications can run unmodified <i>at native-like speeds</i> on mobile devices. The number of apps available for the platform is already in the many millions. Very exciting!<p>--<p>Edits: changed "ALL existing web applications" to "ALL <i>modern</i> web applications," which better reflects what I intended to say; added a bit of context in response to robhawkes's comment below.
You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying.<p>Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would <i>love</i> to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer.<p>Give me a platform that costs nothing to develop for and lets me use my existing skills. If there's a website version of my application, let me share components between the two versions instead of locking my mobile version up in your platform's chosen systems programming language and development environment. Firefox OS ticks all these boxes.<p>I just might be the most average developer out there these days: a web developer. If you enable people like me to develop applications for your device without any bullshit, then you automatically have a bigger set of possible contributors than the competition.<p>That is why I am cautiously optimistic about Firefox OS. If you build it, we will come.
I apologise for writing a long post - I have not time to write a short one<p>There is a reason MBAs are taught market analysis. Its important to position your product for maximum effect (usually maximum profit, but that may not be the case here)<p>The arguments for FirefoxOS seem to be<p>1. It's OSS
2. It's Web-technologies only
3. It's aimed at the "emerging" markets' mobile users
4. It runs on cheaper hardware better than the competition<p>1 and 2 are great. And no-one but us cares, except in 20 years when no child has even seen a line of code because OSS gets wiped out as all PCs are replaced by mobile devices.<p>(This is the reason I want this to succeed, and I want laptops to be certified FreeBSD compliant. It matters!)<p>Anyway this is about market positioning, not OSS. So.<p>Its a well-known truism that don't be in the middle of any market - you get squeezed from both ends.<p>The emerging markets have adapted enormously well to only having SMS and no smartphones (see anyone in Mumbai). That is not going to go away, so the true bottom end of the market is SMS capable devices. They will probably just give them away.<p>If Firefox OS says we are not as good as iOS then thay are squarely putting themselves in the middle of the market.<p>Aim higher folks. The world is not segmented into feature phones and smartphones. It is segmented into one market "I want to use a networked mobile app to get laid or get cash." You will never be the bottom end - that belongs to sending cash by SMS, or selling your harvest with a text.<p>So its the top of the market - what the cool kids have.<p>And so, 1 & 2 might just be our saviours. Apple made a great new product that was catnip to the coolest kids in the West. Firefox OS is geeky cool - it might just appeal to the coolest kids not in the West. And they will want to buy the 'best' phone - aim high folks.<p>I hope you succeed.
Mozilla, please don't allow carriers or manufacturers to modify your OS! You need to set the right tone from the very beginning. Otherwise you'll never get that kind of power back later on.<p>Sell it to them as an alternative to Android. That's all they need to know if they want it or not. If they want more, you can go elsewhere.
So it's an OS that requires apps to be written in JavaScript (an interpreted language that was designed by Netscape for web scripting and nonprofessional programmers) and HTML (a markup language designed to display static documents in the browser). None of these technologies were designed to help developers create software applications, so why is this magical?<p>Let's look at few possible reasons:<p>1. JavaScript/HTML/CSS are better tools for developing software than anything else out there. No.<p>2. It's open source. So is WebOS, Android.<p>3. It's more efficient - same software can run on cheaper hardware. No, Java & Objective C are more processor-efficient. If Firefox OS runs on $100 hardware, than iOS can run on $50. The fact that nobody is making an ulta-cheap smartphone is because there's little demand for one (it's like making a shitty Porsche)<p>4. Developers can package existing web applications as native mobile applications. There's already a thing called PhoneGap for that.<p>5. More teenagers know JavaScript than any other language<p>It seems like #5 is the only valid reason. A lot of kids don't know Objective C or Java, so they must love Firefox OS if they just know the web stack. But sometimes you've got to ask yourself - why rewrite an OS in a new cool language? Just because you can? Look how far Apple has come with Obj-C, why constantly replace the hammer? Having said that, the force of teenagers is not to be underestimated.
Most of the discussion so far has focussed on the development environment (APIs, languages, etc) and performance issues.<p>I would therefore like to raise the question “how will Firefox OS encourage a consistent and usable experience across applications?” Gnome[1], iOS[2] and Windows have comprehensive human interface guidelines and the systems tend to be user-friendly as a result.<p>The latest WHATWG HTML standards do make an attempt to improve user interface consistency by adding new, specific tags. While this will help to some extent, I do not think it will solve the underlying problem. Web developers are accustomed to creating whatever interfaces they like with little regard to usability considerations including consistency with other websites. Different colours, typography, borders, page structures, navigation styles, etc between websites and applications produces a difficult user experience.<p>[1] <a href="http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.5/" rel="nofollow">http://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.5/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/usere...</a>
Mozilla seem almost apologetic about Firefox OS.<p><pre><code> "aiming at middle market"
"performs well on low end hardware"
</code></pre>
I think this is a mistake in positioning - this is still
an expensive piece of hardware for most of the world
(50 USD is not low-end if minimum wage in Brazil is
322 USD /mth)<p>Instead this has the potential to be "the best" phone
in most emerging markets - the most desireable OS,
because it can appeal to the very same people who iPhone
appealed to - the cool and influential geeks and designers.<p>Shout from the rooftops guys, its high-end, high-value,
cool. Let the network providers sort out how to put
50 USD worth of hardware into the hands of boys and
girls in the favelas. Just make sure everyone wants one.<p>And that means not apologetically aiming for the middle market.<p>Aim higher.<p>* <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_country" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_countr...</a><p>edit: this was an edit on my other post here, but it is so different in tone it just was better reposting.
Yes. I was introduced to Firefox OS in detail at Mobile 2.0 the other day, and I instantly fell in love. This is what the world needs: an open platform designed for the people who don't already have an Internet connection, let alone an iPhone. If they succeed in their mission, and current partnerships with telcos like Telefonica suggest that they will, then they could quite possibly change the world. I'm sold, and completely on board.
He mentions it being a "hackable dream for developers". I wonder if we're ever going to get something that's hackable by users. Or in other words, bridges the gap between the common user and the elite app-store backed developer…<p>With all its sensors and social and personal applications, there seems to be a high potential for individual customizations and connections, probably more than what your average PC-of-yore office suite would warrant. Yet there's nothing like VBScript or (A)Rexx on mobile devices. (Some of you might remember Apple's NewtonScript, from their superior mobile device they're still trying to ignore)<p>Part of that is that it's all in the hand of the people financially benefitting from it, i.e. us developers. You could easily make a new site/app that connects social platform A and social platform B. Which is part of why we've got that huge mess of redundant, barely interoperable cloud ad sellers and allowance pinchers.<p>What if teens could trade JavaScripts to do the same? Script their calculator app to better fit their teacher's views and their curriculum? Connect their text messaging app with the hip new microblogging platform. Set up little JS "cron jobs" whenever they enter a certain WLAN range (or GPS quadrant)…<p>Apart from security issues there's little technological reason to prevent this. But it seems all over the place we've moved away from interoperation. From what I see, end-user scripting is pretty low. Nobody's talking about document-centric desktops anymore (ah, OS/2, how I miss thee). It's all about apps and services, maximum hype, maximum profit.
This is actually a question for you guys... I realized that this can be very revolutionary for us as developers (making our lives way easier).<p>What I can't see is how this would "going to change everything" from an user perspective. I only can see this as increasing the amount of apps in stores very quickly. But stores already feel very dense with numbers like 500k apps.<p>Can anyone tell me what I am missing? because I can't see this changing everything.
>There are a few <i>intense games, like Biolab Disaster</i>, that perform stunningly on even the £50 low-end device that I'm testing on — we're talking between 40 and 60FPS.<p>.<p>You have to be kidding me, my amiga 500 (released 1987, 7mhz) offers similar games to that (but better graphics). That puts it literally 20 years behind modern smartphones today, where the cutting edge games are in a similar position vs xbox 360 games.<p>.<p>Firefox OS clearly isn't going to appeal to anyone looking for gaming on release-- However, i do <i>not</i> want to shit on it, unlike many..<p>I think it is a <i>great</i> idea, could do wonders for openness as well as the advancement of web technologies, and the web as a platform. I can certainly see FFOS devices becoming a standard smartphone for 'regular folks'.. web browsing and the kind of things that web-apps could easily do; media playback, calendar and clock apps.. i'm sure this covers 80% of all smartphone apps today anyway. As time goes on and performance (and web features) continues to increase, with 3/4 smartphone platforms (plus 3/4 more 'desktop' platforms), the appeal of developing once for all platforms is going to become an overwhelming advantage.<p>It is very different to webOS, which suffered from limited, expensive devices, constricting user base, which failed to inspire developers. Is it the most computationally efficient way of doing most things? no. Does it offer other advantages that could offset this? absolutely.
The mozilla project has really pulled it's socks up of late, some of the stuff from the labs:
<i>Very awesome</i> Shumway - <a href="https://github.com/mozilla/shumway" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mozilla/shumway</a>
<i>Very awesome</i> PDF.js - <a href="https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/pdfjs/" rel="nofollow">https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/pdfjs/</a>
IHeartCode - <a href="https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/iheartcode/" rel="nofollow">https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/iheartcode/</a>
Prospector Experiments - <a href="https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/prospector/" rel="nofollow">https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/prospector/</a>
Gladius - <a href="https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/gladius/" rel="nofollow">https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/gladius/</a>
EntropyWave - <a href="https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/entropywave/" rel="nofollow">https://mozillalabs.com/en-US/entropywave/</a><p>And by all accounts FF itself has had some serious work done to sort close the performance gap between it and Chrome.<p>I love Chrome, it's a top notch browsers, only the omnibox (addressbar) seems be deliberately designed to inflict pain and suffering on the user. You could be forgiven for thinking that it's been deliberatly in some kind of bizarre social experiment. Does anybody here prefer it to the Firefox Awesomebar?<p>I'm seriously considering switching back to FF. God.
Can we please stop putting JavaScript everywhere? It's not a good language and people have a tendency to produce frailer code with it than they would otherwise.
Are web technologies on the phone really the best way to empower users? Sure Firefox and Linux are open source(and I love them for that), but what about online apps? User does not have any control over the web page. If web page changes or disappears he can do nothing(and it can happen with no warning). Storing local copy of webpage may not be possible(because huge part of app may be on server side). Even proprietary desktop apps are better[1] because they do not change on each startup and you could always try to reverse engineer them. Web app also can store user data on server giving him no way to recover and it gives more spoofing opportunities.
Sure we can try to teach users about to choose open source web pages, or pages that can work in offline mode, but unfortunately most web pages does not fit these categories.<p>I'm impressed by what Firefox OS managed to achieve using web technologies, but I posted this as a warning that users may chain themselves to some proprietary webapp even stronger than to native one. Hopefully Firefox Os will force more webapps to provide offline mode.<p>[1] Of course DRM tries to take away this advantage from desktop apps.
I think the only major advantage of Firefox OS is that it helps you run full HTML5 apps.<p>The apps are cached, auto-updated, and easy to code. They run on the phone and on the desktop alike. That's it. The only OS that really compares, is actually Chrome OS, except Chrome OS has not been ported or made to run on phone hardware.<p>If it's not fast enough, it will not work. If it is, it has a small chance of making a difference.
Yea well there is something not magical about it too which is normal users do not care what you write your apps in.<p>We already have 3 good options for OS, We have the cool iOS, the ios copy, android, and the alternative from microsoft.<p>What we have here is a glorified Android that you can write apps in js, yay, 100 bucks it will never take off.
I saw a talk on FxOS (then B2G) earlier this year, and asked a question about how FxOS will handle native SDKs, considering practically every single mobile OS that used VMs to run apps had eventually capitulated and provided native SDKs for speed and codebase compatibility.
The Mozilla guy who responded was very adamant on keeping HTML/CSS/JS the one and only dev environment for the OS.<p>Perhaps JS optimization has come far enough that speed is not a problem, but how is FxOS going to handle codebase compatibility for bringing large preexisting native-code projects (eg. games) into it? Compiling the entirety of Unreal Engine 3 in Emscripten, for instance, seems a bit far-fetched.
Terrific stuff.<p>I still think there is a use case for a static C like language (with explicit memory management) for some kernels.<p>The same way that WebGL has HLSL, it would be nice if there was a WebCPU API with C as the 'shader' language.<p>(Alternative is LLJS approach - but that has other issues).
This looks like a terrible idea for a mobile OS, where every cycle should count. What about battery life? I think that for now, and foreseeable future, the only reasonable choice for mobile devices are native code based apps and system.
Javascript performing well on mobile is NOT magic, its just good engineering.<p>The big problem I see with Firefox OS is that it is not going to take much to make the entire "App Store" full of app's that perform horribly, and in return that will make Firefox OS look bad as a result.<p>Abstracting away all the complexities of making JavaScript/HTML/CSS perform well on mobile into a set of API's that anyone can use regardless of skill doesn't seem feasible to me but I could be wrong and If they have actually pulled this off, great! But it's still not magic.
I hope Firefox pulls this off - native app programming is a complete pain in the ass (especially with multiple platforms). You'd have thought us programmers would've figured this out years ago - seeing as all languages are turing complete and in turn should all run everywhere, all the time, at equivalent speeds (it's all assembly/machine code in the end).<p>Can anyone try out:<p><a href="http://anirudhjoshi.github.com/fluid_table_tennis/" rel="nofollow">http://anirudhjoshi.github.com/fluid_table_tennis/</a> on the Firefox OS and tell me its performance?
I want this, but for UNIX.<p>I want a standalone operating system that runs on android hardware that gives me low level access, via unix commands and stdio, to phone functions.<p>So I don't want the javascript dialer, I want /usr/bin/dialer ... I don't want the javascript sms client, I want to run:<p>/usr/bin/sms --retries=4 --number 800-555-1212
> Hi Joe, I can't make it to the meeting^D
... sent.<p>So yeah. This article reminded me how much I want something very much like ffox OS, but for unix core principles, like stdio, and not for open web apps (nice as they are).
Sounds a lot like webOS; huge amounts of potential, only to be plagued by 'being ahead of the game'. Probably still 5 years out, sadly. I really like the idea of a JavaScript OS.<p>Why was webOS not mentioned in the article? They have a very nice linux stack, telephony, and radio interfaces as well. Not to mention it's been open sourced (both OS and framework)<p><a href="https://github.com/openwebos" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/openwebos</a>
<a href="http://enyojs.com" rel="nofollow">http://enyojs.com</a>
Can you Mozilla guys focus on making it so that HTML5 apps can install from web pages with an Install button and then show up on the home screen like a normal app? Please. So that HTML5 developers don't have to rely on people creating bookmarks or typing web addresses and can give users a similar experience as native.
Giving how shockingly similar Firefox OS is to webOS (now also open source), I would have much rather that they support that OS instead of reinventing the wheel.<p>Some strange strategic decisions coming out of Mozilla inc. these days, I would much rather see them focus on their browser instead (and Thunderbird!).
Really excited to play with this. Also excited to see the people working on it are really geeked. It's going to get really interesting as a web developer over the next couple of years. If you can use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to manipulate an OS, then wow. Can't wait to see where this goes.
A really minor point- why is it that the phone icon nowadays has defaulted to a handset turned to that angle, with green as the color? That looks similar to the phone icon in some of the Samsung phones that look more like iOS.<p>Is green and at 2 o'clock simply how we think of calling someone now?
I just wish Firefox wasn't coping iOS. Slide open, 4 x 4 grid with a dock, swipe between panes. It's just sad that companies think this is the 'standard' for any phone os and stick to it. Metro gets some respect from me for taking a fresh approach, this, unfortunately doesn't.
It's an interesting project, and I'm all for competition, but honestly I don't see the value proposition for an OEM to put this on a phone instead of Android. Rendering JavaScript faster is great, but does that really outweigh all the benefits of the Android ecosystem?
Is there any bridge between JS and native code?<p>Yes, I know it is hard to support development and debugging of a hybrid of script and native code, but regarding battery life and computation intensive apps, JS is not an option. Unless this OS is for really low end phones.
I enjoyed reading this. I mostly know Java and not so much Javascript, but there's something delightful in the idea the writer lays out. As much as I like Android, it isn't really 'hackable' by the average user, and Firefox OS seems capable for that.
Can it run in a virtual machine? Some folks might not want to give up their current super fast and reliable OS for one that runs only one complex, often insecure and sometimes error-prone application. In a VM I think this could be very useful.
<i>Firefox OS is the start of something huge. It's a revolution in waiting. A breath of fresh air. A culmination of bleeding-edge technology. It's magical and it's going to change everything.</i><p>I'm glad you didn't use any hyperbole.<p><i>it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript!</i><p>And you thought a Java-powered operating system was crappy...<p><i>So you might be thinking, "This sounds great, but why use JavaScript to build a phone?" And you'd be right, that's a really important question to ask. The good news is that there are plenty of reasons why this is a good idea, besides making Web developers weak at the knees.</i><p>I'm pretty sure this is the <i>only</i> reason to do this. Nobody but web developers are going to give a shit. Grandma doesn't care what OS her iPad runs on. It just needs to work really well. I am wondering how you're going to get real-time priority on threads for the phone app over your slow HTML5 game threads if they're run by the same interpreted scripting engine.<p><i>Why the huge performance improvements over browsers in Android on identical devices? It's because of the lack of stuff going on between Gecko and the hardware, meaning things like JavaScript can run at full pelt. So much for JavaScript being slow!</i><p>What lack of stuff ? What's going on in this "JavaScript OS" that is different than in a Java OS? What calls are not happening? What memory is not being allocated? What graphics are not being displayed? What the hell are you talking about?<p><i>What Firefox OS aims to do here is to use the native everywhere-ness of the Web to provide a platform that allows applications to be enjoyed on a mobile device, a desktop computer, a tablet, or anywhere else that has access to a browser. Wouldn't you want to be able to pick up your Angry Birds game on the desktop where where you left it on your phone? I certainly would!</i><p>I think you actually missed the point of the quote right before that paragraph. It's an incredibly powerful idea to make a mobile platform that's as free-to-use as a web browser. A security nightmare, yes. A competing-open-product-that-implements-unsupported-features nightmare, yes. But it could change things, for better or worse.<p><i>Because Firefox OS is constructed using HTML, JavaScript and CSS it means you only need basic Web development skills to reach in and completely change the device experience. You could literally change one line of CSS and completely change the way the icons on the homescreen look, or re-write some core JavaScript files that handle phone-calls.</i><p>I could have sworn I heard of something like this before... Web Oh Ess or something?<p>Has the whole world gone nuts? What the hell was wrong with just having a web browser and native apps side by side? You could use your web apps for a universal free experience, and for apps which need a lot of performance <i>like games</i> you would write a fast, minimal native app. Now we're reinventing a reinvention of the wheel, poorly.<p>Have you people even used S60? That shit was easily skinnable, had tons of developer resources, a free marketplace (once you signed your app), it was fast, stable, cheap. Now it's dead of course (thanks Android) and all we have to fill the space is bloated incompatible buggy crap.