
Firefox OS – video presentations and slides on the OS, WebAPIs - vectorbunny
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/11/firefox-os-video-presentations-and-slides-on-the-os-webapis-hacking-and-writing-apps/
======
pajju
Mozilla nurtured the web with Firefox. This is yet another great project for
the Mobile ecosystem.

I always wished for myself and for the larger web community a 'Rock solid web
based Open' Mobile Platform. And it is happening fast.

All such advancements are only possible today, as we have faster Javascript
engines, can leverage Cloud services, access to cheaper hardware and much
faster Internet Penetration and adoption than ever before. The web can
function as a strong platform by itself and not a hybrid model.

Also let's not forget the big failure of the over hyped Palm WebOS. Many said
- it was too early; not ready for the market. I too agreed then. :) Lets hope
Firefox has good design patterns and moves agile.

Couple of things I wish everyone knows -

1\. Are all the System level API's ready? Telephone API, Sensor API's et al.
It looks to me, its under prototype and design, what's the current stage?

2\. Can this leverage WebGL and all HTML5 features?

3\. AFAIK, all the front end is around Javascript or some Javascript MVC. Are
there any other programming API's?

~~~
litmus
Seriously, I don't know why exactly but this stuff makes me feel like a dirty
utopian hippie despite all the steely-eyed "realist" devil's advocate
posturing people can summon.

I only wish FirefoxOS devices were around to have been considered for our
retarded "give every child a tablet" program that's underway in Turkey,
especially given the rumors that Mozilla is shooting for the cheap end of the
market. As expected, the tablets for the program are being marketed as a toy.

~~~
hnriot
Probably the use of "retarded", IDK, but that's usually considered non-pc by
Americans. Especially in such close proximity to "child"

~~~
litmus
thanks. to be clear then, the program is "bad and ill-timed" because there is
no educational framework or material ready to support the tablets. so by the
time it does start rolling in, there's a danger that the devices will be out-
dated.

~~~
pstuart
I'm jumping into this game as an experiment to get khan academy working
properly on a Nexus 7.

~~~
litmus
that's great to hear, more power to you.

------
thelukester
Mozilla has lost their way with Firefox, and are becoming like MS. They have a
slow, bloated browser that runs terribly on Android. Instead of trying to make
the best browser for the platform, they created FF OS, locking the user into
their platform and API standards, just like MS tried to do when it bundled IE
in Windows.

I had a WebOS phone and despite loving the beautiful UI and it being ahead of
iOS in many ways like notifications and task switching, I dumped it. HTML5
killed the user experience. I need fast, responsive apps that only Android and
iOS can deliver.

There's no way I'd ever go back to generic, laggy, HTML5 Apps.

~~~
sawrubh
Regarding your comment on HTML5 being "laggy", I think you should take a look
at <https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/11/html5-mythbusting/>

Besides, Mozilla is not trying to tie down anyone to it's platform, because
the platform is basically the Web, which is open to everyone. There are many
things which distinguish it from other platforms like you can host your
"apps", which are nothing more than simple websites, on your own site and not
necessarily Mozilla's MarketPlace. Mozilla is working hard to reduce the
memory footprint and make the apps responsive[1] and by the time it comes out,
I think it's going to have a really good performance.

[1] - <https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=797189>

------
leeoniya
i haven't been this excited about something in a long time. what i wouldn't
give to hack my own phone without learning proprietary platforms.

~~~
slacka
Then get yourself a Nexus Android phone today. The OS is completely open
source, with a whole community built around hacking phones, XDA. You can get
much better performance out of Java than you could ever dream to with
JavaScript. Many of FF OS's hardware APIs are Mozilla specific, no different
than Android's.

~~~
mercurial
It's open source in the sense that the source is available. It's not open-
source in the sense of being a community project. As for Javascript vs Java,
Javascript has come a long way. Recent JS engines are pretty fast. Not to say
that it can't be tricky to maintain a large base of JS code, but that's a
different debate.

I for one am looking forward to it, though the lack of apps compared to the
other two dominant ecosystems will be a problem.

~~~
thelukester
"not open-source in the sense of being a community project." Android is no
less a community project than FF OS. And it does have a great community of
outside developers around it, XDA. Check out the forums.

If you want to contribute back, Google has been good about accepting patches
into its AOSP project. For patches they won't accept, there's always
CyanogenMod.

"JS engines are pretty fast" Good enough for simple text based apps and casual
games, yes. Modern 3D games, not by a long shot. Native code, NDK, or Java
under HotSpot are the only decent options creating for modern responsive 3D
games.

------
y0ghur7_xxx
Sorry for the OT, but I always get a certificate error when visiting that
domain. Am I the only one?

[http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-
checker.html#hostname=hacks.mo...](http://www.sslshopper.com/ssl-
checker.html#hostname=hacks.mozilla.org)

Says the cert is ok, but my firefox complains:

    
    
      hacks.mozilla.org uses an invalid security certificate.
      The certificate is only valid for tbpl.mozilla.org
      (Error code: ssl_error_bad_cert_domain)
    
    

Maybe there is something wrong with my network.

~~~
JimmaDaRustla
Update your browser - happens to me in IE8, but not Chrome 22. Certification
verification is done by the browser, and I believe they store acceptable CA
signers somehow, which is probably out dated.

Edit: Don't quote me, been a while since studying site certificates.

~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
I have the latest ff: 16.0.2.

I even tried

    
    
      $ openssl s_client -connect hacks.mozilla.org:443
    

from a linode vm:

    
    
      CONNECTED(00000003)
      ---
      Certificate chain
       0 s:/serialNumber=I1oZ-yurbFWiPu/xP8HIzW3f9mApQvMv/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Mozilla Corporation/OU=IT/CN=tbpl.mozilla.org
         i:/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA
       1 s:/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA
         i:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA
       2 s:/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA
         i:/C=US/O=Equifax/OU=Equifax Secure Certificate Authority
      ---
      Server certificate
      [...]
      subject=/serialNumber=I1oZ-yurbFWiPu/xP8HIzW3f9mApQvMv/C=US/ST=California/L=Mountain View/O=Mozilla Corporation/OU=IT/CN=tbpl.mozilla.org
      issuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA
    

Any idea?

~~~
superawesome
s_client doesn't support SNI, so this is expected behavior. The client
(s_client) doesn't know how to tell the server what hostname it's requesting
during the handshake... so the server returns the default one. After the
handshake completes, normal HTTP semantics kick in and the client/server have
no problems... but by then it's too late, and the client has already
negotiated based on the wrong cert.

------
jobu
There's no mention of gaming in those slides. Will they be supporting WebGL?

~~~
javis
Yes. There are a couple of WebGL demos that come pre-installed on the current
build.

------
johnmmurray
Oh yay... another OS.

~~~
javis
What's wrong with a variety of OSs?

~~~
darkstalker
Nothing wrong. It's just not hype-worthy because it doesn't contain the words
Apple/Chrome/iOS. So most people will just ignore this.

~~~
shardling
They're not trying to sell a brand, though -- I believe the starting goal is
to get this on low end commodity phones in South America. (Notice how
everything in the original link is also available in Portuguese?) To that end
they already have deals with carriers there.

Since Mozilla actually has the health of the web as their main mission, they
have a role catering to markets that others will neglect.

