
Firefox OS is a developer's best friend - damian2000
http://binary-choice.blogspot.com/2014/08/firefox-os-is-developers-best-friend.html
======
LowDog
I'm really glad Firefox OS is getting attention and this post highlights the
features that Mozilla should be advertising in more developed countries
instead of just focusing solely on appealing to developing nations.
Competition is good and there really needs to be another player in the game
apart from Apple, Google, and Microsoft. We especially need a completely
transparent and open mobile operating system like Firefox OS, so I really hope
this project succeeds.

I would also really like for Mozilla to focus on higher end hardware and to
also address some core features that are completely absent from the OS. Some
issues regarding these missing features have been sitting open for YEARS on
Bugzilla, and it has prompted me to start learning how to develop for the OS,
but I have a long while yet before I can make any meaningful contribution.

I got a ZTE Open C as my first smart phone, and I was really impressed with
how capable it is, but there are some incredibly annoying issues that seem
like they are never going to be addressed. For one, the screen brightness
returns to 100% every single time I wake my phone up front standby. I really
hope Mozilla partners with more manufacturers down the line because I've heard
nothing but negative things about the Geeksphone and ZTE phones, and my
experiences so far confirm these findings.

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wesleyy
I wonder if firefox purposely chose to adopt a developer-first strategy with
its mobile OS, similar to Stripe. I know that this strategy works, at least
somewhat, on me, as I recently needed a payment processor for a hackathon and,
knowing nothing about payment processors and after some quick googling for the
most developer friendly payment API, I went with Stripe. Though, it's probably
going to be a lot tougher for Mozilla to use this strategy effectively in such
a consumer facing product, especially when the mobile OS market is already so
saturated with mature ecosystems.

~~~
ewzimm
Mozilla isn't operating far outside the ecosystem though. By releasing an
Android-based OS with programs that run on web standards, it's pretty easy to
add compatibility for most popular things that people do on their phones.

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daveloyall
Firefox OS sounds great, but I don't think that's what this post is really
about.

It is about OP gaming his/her carrier's promotional gimmick to get free data
usage added to his account, 2mbit (mbyte?) at at time.

I did something like this once, I wasn't caught, but nonetheless it didn't
turn out well.

Back in 2005, AT&T would do something like take a dollar off my bill for each
dropped call.

At the time, I happened to work in a building that had some kind of Faraday
cage built into the walls (EMSEC), so I had a reliable mechanism for producing
dropped calls on demand.

I would just dial the local Time & Temp line on my way to the front door, and
then when I stepped inside, the call would drop and I would get the dollar
credit. This worked, until it didn't.

After about a month, my phone service was terrible and I was unable to place
or receive international calls. I ended up talking to tier-III tech support
and was informed that the cell tower closest to me was rejecting my device so
I was talking to a more distant tower. (I never learned why that prevented
international calls.) Apparently the tower had automatically weighed and
measured my device and found it lacking!

After the tech reconfigured the tower, my cell phone service was good again. I
chalked it up to karma and ceased to commit that particular form of fraud.

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darklajid
Hrm.. While I mostly blame Vodafone for this exploitable and weird offer, I
question the idea of using this hack to advertise Fx for developers.

It's novel mostly because of the strange environment, not due to the couple of
lines of code to implement the hack.

And finally, I have a hard time believing that you couldn't do something
comparable with Tasker etc. - or with a tiny Android app of your own (but I
haven't tried managing calls so far, I might be off).

~~~
limmeau
Just the same as Emacs scripting and Eclipse plugins. You can do the same with
both, but the initial friction of bootstrapping a Plugin Project, declaring
this year's flavor of OperationDescriptorFactory, etc. discourages plugins for
one-off tasks.

Actually, the last platform I've seen that was ad-hoc scripting friendly was
Symbian with PyS60. Now if there was a Firefox phone with a decent camera...

~~~
icebraining
For Android there's QPython[1], it's fairly close to PyS60, in my experience.

[1]
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hipipal.qp...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hipipal.qpyplus&hl=en)

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pudo
I think one basic problem with Firefox OS being a "developer-first" thing is
the devices it's being shipped on. Of course, a $33 phone is a very cool thing
to be able to do.

But as a developer, a lot of my disposable income is going to be directed
towards gadgets and a $33 phone is just a decade behind the types of phones I
would actually use myself.

I think that to attract developers, Mozilla should aim to find a partner that
will ship a current-generation phone with Firefox OS. Asking people to install
it themselves on a Galaxy based on a slightly screwed-up wiki page isn't
exactly what I want for my personal every-minute-of-the-day phone.

~~~
DanBC
But then those developers will develop for that new phone, creating a bunch of
stuff that will not run on the older phones.

Since those older phones are Mozilla's target market it would be an odd choice
to make.

It's a little bit like the WWW where people (rightly) develop on very powerful
hardware but often (wrongly) fail to test on a range of normal hardware. (This
is also ignoring the fact that stuff written for the WWW should not need
testing because it should all be standards compliant etc).

~~~
Someone1234
To your last point: It is extremely hard to test your HTML/etc sites on a
range of hardware unless you happen to work for someone with deep pockets and
a dedication to broad support (e.g. Google).

Is there a cost effective way to do so? Other than just getting a RaspberryPi
and seeing if that can render it?

~~~
scarecrowbob
I do a lot of testing to support web apps in IE variants using a VM... I
generally assume that this would be possible for testing lower performing
machines as well.

Also, I do some testing for android and iOS browsers in xcode and the android
sdk, (I have an actual iPhone and android tablet, too).

It's not hard or expensive, it just takes a whole lot of time, especially when
you're trying to actually fix bugs.

------
niutech
Another benefit is that Forefox OS is fully open source, so you know it is not
spying on you and you can customize every aspect of the OS.

~~~
Pwntastic
The phone OS may be open source, but is the sim? The sim card can run
applications directly without the phone being aware of it.

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plicense
"On{x}" can be used to achieve the same functionality on Android. The JS might
be a bit verbose, but its as simple as the Javascript code that the OP has
written.

I used to set auto-reply messages etc to my girlfriend with On{x} to my
girlfriend. I even wrote some JS to auto-call her at specified timing, just to
wake her up.

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SixSigma
A developer's phone would operate as a modem.

~~~
daveloyall
No, that's what I thought at first, but actually OP is gaming his/her carrier:

    
    
        Vodafone has a promotion where it offers you 2Mb for every
        call you give or receive, that is over one minute long.

~~~
SixSigma
56kbps is 0.42 megabytes per minute.

If each of his minutes spent transferring nothing gets him 2mb I suppose he is
1.58mb up if he can maximise his transfer.

~~~
daveloyall
Ok, now I see your point.

However, I think that you can't negotiate a 56kbps link (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V.90_%28recommendation%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V.90_%28recommendation%29)
) over a cell phone.

Ordinary copper telephone service has enough bandwidth to transmit a full
range of audio signals, in fact more than the voice can produce or the ear can
hear. Modems exploit this fact.

But cell phones employ lossy compression, and if I understand correctly, one
of the "first things to go" are the higher frequency noises. Why transmit what
the ear can't hear?

Oh, somebody smarter than me has addressed this question:
[http://superuser.com/questions/748154/use-a-smartphone-
as-a-...](http://superuser.com/questions/748154/use-a-smartphone-as-a-dial-up-
modem)

~~~
SixSigma
Ah yes, I had forgotten about that. I seem to recall that older ones had modem
functionality, I certainly recall having a fax feature at some point.

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sobkas
Only if there was a ssh client for it...

~~~
niutech
There is one - [https://support.mozilla.org/en-
US/questions/1006954](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1006954)

~~~
sobkas
If using a ssh client involves setting up anytermd daemon then it's not a ssh
client but an anyterm client.

There is a difference between two.

ps. line like this makes me eager to base my security on it:

../scripts/mk_static_content.sh anyterm.html anyterm.js anyterm.css copy.png
paste.png copy.gif paste.gif > static_content.cc

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yowmamasita
Simple yet powerful

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frowaway001
I'd say that Firefox OS biggest issue is its reliance on JavaScript.

~~~
ngokevin
And Android's biggest issue is its reliance on Java...

And Apple's biggest issue is its reliance on Obj-C...

They're just languages. At least JS runs more ubiquitously.

~~~
frowaway001
Neither Android nor iOS force you to use Java/Obj-C.

Both just expect bytecode/native code as an immediate target.

JavaScript is an terrible target to compile to.

> At least JS runs more ubiquitously.

Yes, I think that describes the issue. Nobody would care about how terrible JS
is if it wouldn't be so popular.

~~~
voxic11
What are you talking about, pretty much everything can compile to JS these
days.

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tsbardella2
This is why we cant have nice things

