
Yesterday I Wrote My First Firefox OS App - kvz
http://kvz.io/blog/2013/08/12/yesterday-i-wrote-my-first-firefox-os-app/
======
jvehent
ZTE phones are coming this friday for $79:
[http://stores.ebay.com/ztemobileus](http://stores.ebay.com/ztemobileus)

This is the phone that was launched in Spain. The Ebay version will be vanilla
FxOS, unlocked and upgradable!

~~~
ippisl
When you can buy something that looks like a decent(512MB, 4.5",dual core)
android phone[1] at less than $100, and many similar models are coming from
china , why bother with this phone ?

[1][http://www.pandawill.com/simdo-d98-smartphone-
mtk6577-dual-c...](http://www.pandawill.com/simdo-d98-smartphone-mtk6577-dual-
core-android-40-45-inch-qhd-screen-4g-tf-card-
white-p76921.html?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=ql&utm_campaign=41955)

~~~
bad_user
You've never used Android 4.3 on 512 MB of RAM, right? I have and it is
unusable. The base OS and the base apps, like the stock Android browser do
run, but nothing is left for other apps. A minimum of 1024MB is needed.

Also that phone is $100 in the US. To get the price in EU or most other
markets multiply with an amount between 1.5 and 2

~~~
ippisl
Gingerbread(2.3) on 512MB works fine.Yes 2.3 isn't the latest, but it offers
much more than FxOS.

The price is the price at a Chinese webstore including shipping. Not sure
about european custom fees, but wouldn't they apply to buying on ebay ?

~~~
doublec
An android phone without 'Google Apps' does not offer much more than FxOS in
my opinion. I test drove an AOSP build of android for some time, without
Google Play and other 'non-free' Google apps, and there's not much you can do.

Very few application vendors provide .apk's to install outside of Google Play
and they don't provide them from other markets available internationally.
f-droid has some applications but not a huge amount.

Basic functionality like Facebook, Twitter, 'sharing' photo's to social
media,etc don't work if you can't install those apps.

What I ended up doing was installing Firefox (Mozilla provides apk's and it's
available from f-droid) and using web apps.

Firefox OS on the other hand provides all this functionality out of the box.

~~~
mkesper
Everyone is invited to contribute to F-Droid:
[https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/How_to_Help](https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/How_to_Help)

------
munchor
I too have written an "app" for Firefox OS[1]. It was a game I had written for
browsers using the HTML5 canvas and porting it to Firefox OS was as easy as 1,
2, 3.

This, for me, is what makes Firefox OS promising - apps are simply HTML pages
that work pretty much as computer webapps work.

[1]: [http://munchor.tumblr.com/post/46774157520/party-build-
for-f...](http://munchor.tumblr.com/post/46774157520/party-build-for-firefox-
os)

~~~
PommeDeTerre
How is being able to do a small subset of what Android and iOS devices (among
others) have been able to do for many years now seen as "promising"?

I can somewhat see the price argument, but that's tenuous, at best. Even in
developing nations it's possible to get used or older, yet still relatively
modern and still useful, Android and iOS devices quite inexpensively. They can
run HTML5/JavaScritp/CSS apps, in addition to native apps.

Otherwise, only offering a small subset of functionality that has been offered
by other devices for years now doesn't make me think of a word like
"promising" when describing Firefox OS. Instead, I think of terms like,
"extremely limited", "outdated", "obsolete from the start", and "pointless".

~~~
threeseed
Simple.

1\. Most people don't need or want complexity like what you see from the
typical low cost Android devices. Remember most of these people are still
upgrading from Nokia style feature phones and aren't after a computer in your
pocket (just yet).

2\. Android in particular is really nasty at the low end. The quality of
experience you would get from a tightly optimised and simplified Firefox OS
would be immeasurably better. Again. You don't need to have X, Y and Z instead
just have X implemented really, really well.

3\. The barrier to entry and cost for developing HTML/JS apps is far lower
than Java and Objective-C. You really do need a decent PC/Mac to program for
either. And we all agree that custom, locally developed apps is vital.

~~~
kllrnohj
> 2\. Android in particular is really nasty at the low end. The quality of
> experience you would get from a tightly optimised and simplified Firefox OS
> would be immeasurably better.

Firefox OS is _worse_ here, not better. Gingerbread runs far better on low end
hardware than Firefox OS does. The later Android stuff is more demanding
(particularly in RAM), but the performance target (60fps everywhere, low
latency) is also much, much higher than what Firefox OS is capable of
achieving.

Firefox OS is less efficient than iOS, Android, or WP. By a _lot_.

~~~
azakai
Numbers?

~~~
kllrnohj
Go look at any hands on video or flash it yourself on a device that runs
Android. It's clear as day that Firefox OS is far from fast and responsive on
hardware that Android doesn't have issues with. And this makes a ton of
logical sense, as it would be a goddamn miracle if Mozilla managed to make web
technologies an order of magnitude faster and more memory efficient than
anyone else.

Or hell, just run Firefox on your existing Android device - that's all Firefox
OS is in reality. Mozilla makes a bunch of claims about how it's "closer to
the metal" or some such nonsense, but it isn't. It's not like Android runs all
native code in a VM - it's as "close to the metal" as you can get, with the
exception that system calls go to the kernel. Just as they do in Firefox OS.
Particularly since Firefox OS is built on top of Android.

~~~
rhelmer
> It's not like Android runs all native code in a VM - it's as "close to the
> metal" as you can get

Can you please explain how Dalvik[1] isn't a VM? Sorry if I am missing your
point.

Are you referring to the NDK[2]? I haven't used it but my understanding was
that Dalvik is still used for UI and basic process control, while calling out
to native code via JNI.

[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_%28software%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_%28software%29)

[2] -
[http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html](http://developer.android.com/tools/sdk/ndk/index.html)

~~~
kllrnohj
I was referring to the NDK. The NDK is perfectly capable of input & drawing -
it's what many games use, for example. It's also what Firefox uses. Well,
Firefox is a hybrid - a mix of Java and native. But the web parts are all
native running outside of dalvik and drawing directly to a surface via OpenGL.

------
Mikeb85
What Mozilla is doing with Asm.js and Firefox OS is nothing short of
impressive. Web apps that can be downloaded from anywhere, and cached offline
with full access to native APIs? This is the democratization of app
programming at its finest, especially since JS has become a 'platform', and
now even has a bytecode target (asm.js).

Not to mention, offering unlocked phones at such low prices, with potential
feature parity (at least when the app ecosystem gets better) to iOS and
Android is huge. I would personally love to never sign another long-term
contract...

------
untog
As a counter point to the (justified) positivity: Firefox OS is still rough
around the edges. The app I threw together (basically just packaging a mobile
site) doesn't look right on the higher-resolution phones, as Mozilla haven't
sorted out the scaling yet. The OS itself feels really very slow.

But it's an interesting project. Just not ready for the primetime yet.

~~~
DonGateley
If it is rough around the edges now then it always will be. Witness the
Firefox browser. There is a huge backlog of problems with it yet they have the
resources to start something new.

~~~
bad_user
Did you really create your account to post this? Wow.

I really don't get the negativity around Firefox OS or the Firefox browser. In
regards to Firefox, I consider it the best browser right now; Chrome has many
problems of its own and considering the resources that Google has, you'd think
they would find a way to make Chrome be less of the resource hog that it is or
to provide something like the awesome-bar or extensions for the Android
version - and don't even get me started on iOS or Safary.

Truth of the matter is, Firefox OS directly benefits Firefox the browser, in
ways that Android will never benefit Chrome - all APIs that are experimented
in FxOS will make it in the browser, XUL is gone, the architecture is multi-
process and better sandboxed, etc...

------
TimJRobinson
I ported my game [http://www.towerstorm.com](http://www.towerstorm.com) to
FirefoxOS over the weekend too (at campjs). It was surprisingly easy, the only
difficulties was making it run on such a small screen and dealing with no
longer having window.location or navigation buttons.

------
dpeck
Like many here I picked up one of the Peak developer preview phones with every
intention of dogfooding it, creating some basic apps to get familiar with it,
and enjoying something simpler.

But, and I feel like I'm back in 2007 saying this about the first iphone, the
lack of copy and paste is a deal breaker. Going back to a phone without it and
not being able to copy a url into an email, paste a friends phone number to
some one else in a txt, or have a reasonably useful password manager is much
too far of a step back for me to take these days.

I'm hoping this is something the core team puts in before too long,
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=747798](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=747798),
but until then the phone is really useless to me for day to day.

~~~
bad_user
The Firefox browser on Android does have copy/paste and this is relevant
because Mozilla wants to make Firefox a portable mobile platform for apps, so
it is safe to assume that FxOS should have feature parity with the Firefox
Android soon.

~~~
dpeck
is copy and paste support a function of the application on android? eg,
something it has to specifically allow? seems that copy/paste/clipboard
support for firefoxos is going to have to be implemented at the is level and
not each individual app, there's already hacks for the latter but the former
is what is actually needed

------
Robby2012
I've also developed a Firefox OS App. I've done a compass and a lantern and I
love Firefox OS because it's so awesome and easy to develop an app with HTML5.

By the way, I have a Geeksphone Peak and it works great, next month they're
launching Geeksphone Peak+, it seems promising. Geeksphone is making much much
better phones with FFOS than ZTE.

------
treenyc
Where can you get the $50 version of the phone that he mentioned?

~~~
michael_h
I think it may be a typo? The Keon is still 91 euros
([http://shop.geeksphone.com/en/phones/1-keon.html](http://shop.geeksphone.com/en/phones/1-keon.html)).

~~~
sadris
Also it says its "Not available now"...

~~~
vvpan
Yeah it hasn't been available since the first time it came out, and no
mentions of it coming back. Makes me sad.

------
gbraad
My experience: I wrote a google authenticator app in 'HTML5' a year ago and it
just worked on FirefoxOS.

It is the whole purpose of the OS. Is this news?

------
daleharvey
Whie these articles are great (and thanks for it), One of the biggest reasons
I am excited about Firefox OS is the aim for these articles to not exist, if
you do a good job building a mobile friendly web app then on Firefox OS it
should 'just work'

The amount that this has proved true already is amazing, I have loved doing
Firefox OS app days and seeing people spending a long time building phonegap /
mobile web based applications and seeing it just work on Firefox OS, there is
still a lot of work to be done but it really is the ubiquitous platform dream
of mine come true.

~~~
jemeshsu
Not sure if HTML is the ubiquitous programming platform for client side. It's
a dream since 1990s (write once for all clients) but fail to compete decidedly
by native clients of iOS/Android in this era. It's going to get worse for
specialize smart devices such as smart watch, smart glass, smart car panel,
real smart TV etc.

~~~
daleharvey
I am slowly transitioning to a web based IDE, my email, spreadsheets, chat
client, all my communications platforms, my maps are all written in web
technologies, not my entire phone is powered by web technologies (which
includes most of the functionality on my desktop)

I have 3 non web based apps that I use on a daily basis (iterm, emacs,
spotify), emacs I am moving away from, spotify I will move to the web based
player once we have hardware media keys support.

My ubiqutous web based dream is very close to true, I think momentum and
history suggests that it is going to carry on moving in that direction.

------
rayaway
XIAOMI MI phone: 4.7 IPS, 312 ppi glorilla second gen screen, 1.5GHz MT6589T
CPU, 1GB Ram, 4GB storage, support at most 32G TF card, 8mega pixel camera,
1.3 mega pixel front camera, 2000mAh battery, Android 4.2.2 MIUI V5 Os

And guess what? Sold only 799RMB at China which is about 135 dollars.

For simplicity, if I cut every feature listed half, and just assuming the
price drops to half too, say 70 dollars. Compare to FFOS phone, which one will
user pick?

This calculation surely is wrong. But my point is, the hardware is really
cheap today, which makes the sweetest point of FFOS phone - the price - not
that sweet.

------
josteink
I'll be getting my phone(s) when I get back from vacation in about one week
(imported from Spain).

Can't _wait_ to get a look this thing! Finally something new and refreshing in
the mobile-sector.

------
eertami
Is FxOS usable as an everyday phone at this point?

~~~
mhd
Lots of minor features that are missing, but I expect most of that to be taken
care soon, if it isn't already in some branches. Right now, there are lots of
minor niggles that make me miss my iOS/Android devices of the past (heck, even
my old Palm Pre). But the basics do work, you can take calls, multi-task,
browse, tweet etc.

Right now what bothers me most is the lack of badges on icons, I'd really like
to quickly see how many calls or messages I've missed, without going to the
notification pull-down. A 24 hour clock wouldn't hurt either, and the
organisation of the Music players is a bit off (no albums under artists,
pretty but useless main view etc.). In my release you can't control it from
the lock screen, either, but I think that's going to be in the next version,
judging from the wireframes.

~~~
eertami
Mmm ok. I currently use an N900 so I'm a little used to features missing, I
think FxOS is a slightly safer bet than Maemo!

------
asselinpaul
I have written an app for the Firefox OS too, the experience was good but at
the end of the day, the hardware feels too cheap and the OS isn't responsive
enough.

If there is anyone in London looking for a phone, send me a mail.

------
franze
i coded this for use on the Keon (FFOS geek phone) and demo-ed it at the local
JS meetup [http://replycam.com/m/](http://replycam.com/m/) (also on github
[https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/masel](https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/masel))
will extend it someday do also encode/decode SMS messages ... but as i will
never probably come around to it, just steal the idea, fork the project (it's
zlib license, as soon as i come around to write a readme)

------
Tichy
That geekphone seems to cost 150€ at the moment. 50$ would be really exciting.

~~~
vanni
No, the 149€ (tax excl.) model is the Peak+, now in pre-order. The post makes
use of the Keon, not available now, but listed at 91€ (tax excl.)
[[http://shop.geeksphone.com/en/phones/1-keon.html](http://shop.geeksphone.com/en/phones/1-keon.html)]

