Yesterday I Wrote My First Firefox OS App

Re:Yesterday I Wrote My First Firefox OS App by slacka on Monday August 12, 2013 @12:23PM (#6200025)

1. So you limit complexity by limiting them to running everything inside of Firefox. Mozilla knows what best. Deny them access to fast native apps on entry level hardware. Sounds like the GNOME 3 philosophy.

2. I have the original Galaxy S and it runs CM 10 Jellybean like butter. Sure bloated skins like touchwiz can slow down phones, but there's nothing wrong with AOSP on similarity spec'd hardware.

3. So you're saying people who can't afford a low-end PCs will be developing web apps with their $79 FF OS phone/tablet? LOL. I can hardly wait for this new paradigm in mobile development.

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Re:Yesterday I Wrote My First Firefox OS App by mwcampbell on Monday August 12, 2013 @12:50PM (#6200198)

I also wonder about the wisdom of taking low-end hardware, where every bit of efficiency at the software level matters, and shackling it by not allowing third-party native code.

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Re:Yesterday I Wrote My First Firefox OS App by slacka on Monday August 12, 2013 @01:10PM (#6200328)

All of the early early reviews are confirming our suspicions. For example this one from the verge: "Lag is a major concern — apps took multiple seconds to load, to change toggles, and to make UI transitions"[1] Or this one from CNET: "unresponsive screen makes typing a laborious process requiring painstaking precision. Every action from swiping to tapping onscreen controls takes a beat until you see results, so using the phone for a prolonged period steals minutes of your time... Lag carries into the camera, which is slow to launch, snap, and reset."[2]

This is why I'm looking forward to the Edge w/ its Ubuntu OS. It doesn't try to hide its Android heritage, even gives you the option to boot to AOSP. Also has a modern gesture based UI unlike Firefox's dated iOS rip off. And most importantly, on resource limited mobile device gives developers the option to write native apps.

[1]http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/24/4024530/ztes-open-is-the-f....

[2]http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/geeksphone-keon/4505-645....

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Re:Yesterday I Wrote My First Firefox OS App by nissimk on Monday August 12, 2013 @01:49PM (#6200554)

yeah, 256MB of RAM is just not enough. The CPU speed is not relevant when you have so little memory to work with. I guess it's an OK deal for $79, but it's not going to do a good job running javascript apps with so little RAM. Even if it is only running one at a time. My GMail tab alone is using 237MB right now and every tab in my browser is > 50MB. That 256MB also has to hold the OS code.

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Re:Yesterday I Wrote My First Firefox OS App by pcwalton on Monday August 12, 2013 @11:07PM (#6203791)

> Deny them access to fast native apps on entry level hardware.

> I also wonder about the wisdom of taking low-end hardware, where every bit of efficiency at the software level matters, and shackling it by not allowing third-party native code.

This is what asm.js and OdinMonkey are for. You're right that forbidding developers from getting the control that native code buys you is a nonstarter, but asm.js gives you that control.

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