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| 'There is something magical about Firefox OS' |
| By Thom Holwerda, submitted by MOS6510 on 2012-09-13 20:00:06 |
| "Over the past year and a half I've been spending more and more of my time working with Mozilla's latest project, Firefox OS. During that time I've fallen in love with the project and what it stands for, in ways that I've never experienced with a technology platform before." I'm not convinced just yet. I hope it succeeds, but I just doubt it actually will. |
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| Another fallen mobile OS. |
| By moondevil on 2012-09-13 20:35:42 |
| As it is currently being discussed to death in Reddit and HackerNews, given the way mobile operators and handset makers behave, the amount of failed attempts with alternative mobile operating systems, Firefox OS is most likely going to be the next corpse. |
 - Score: 3 |
| RE: Another fallen mobile OS. |
| By shmerl on 2012-09-13 20:56:08 |
|
Since it relies on Android compatible hardware and Android underlying lower stack with kernel/drivers - its potential installation base is quite broad. So it won't be a corpse by any means. So far what's really lacking are devices compatible with conventional (non Android) Linux stack. Samsung's devices for Tizen didn't come out yet to address this, and Jolla's one is supposed to appear next year. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Great but... |
| By dmrio on 2012-09-13 21:00:33 |
| Worst case it will popularize some phone APIs, like SMS. I hope it succeed, but I just don't believe that much. |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Another fallen mobile OS. |
| By bouhko on 2012-09-13 21:02:10 |
|
I see a contradiction in the fact that they use HTML5 and JS and that they want it to run on cheap hardware as well as Android. I highly doubt the claim in the article about javascript game running faster than Android native games. I _really_ want to see some proof of that, because that's really not what I have seen. I mean even on the desktop, HTML5/JS is slow when compared to other technologies. Also, it's really time for the web browser developers to start working on a real VM for the browser instead of hacking on top of JS. .NET seems like a good example of how you can have a common API shared across multiple languages. Edited 2012-09-13 21:04 UTC |
| - Score: 8 |
| WebOS |
| By Patric on 2012-09-13 21:08:15 |
| This sounds every bit like WebOS. As a former Pre owner, I love the idea, but am completely skeptical about the success of this. |
| - Score: 3 |
| Most forward-looking |
| By vaette on 2012-09-13 21:36:55 |
|
Firefox OS is the most forward-looking I have ever seen the open-source/standards-worsh ipping crowd. The overall strategy has a lot going for it, both when it comes to user rights and freedoms (open platform), market forces (getting apps will get easier and easier), and from a technology perspective (easy to profit from the work of a wider community). Looking forward to this. Interestingly Microsoft has also caught on to the wisdom of this move, having made HTML5 apps first-class both in the runtime and the dev tools in Windows 8. Surprisingly more forward-looking than Google when it comes to the web. Apple is also falling behind when it comes to this direction. On the surface it may look like users look down on webview apps, but they are getting better and better, and in many cases the users aren't complaining simply because they don't realize that it is a webview app they are dealing with. |
| - Score: 3 |
| HTML as a toolkit for a mobile OS? |
| By p13. on 2012-09-13 22:11:43 |
|
Web based tools and languages don't even work properly for the web nowadays. JS for example is bloaty, inadequate and people try to make it do things it was never designed to do ... resulting in hacks uppon hacks uppon hacks. HTML is a MARKUP LANGUAGE, it is meant to do layout, framing, formatting, etc of a DOCUMENT. So why would it be a good idea to build an entire mobile operating system around this? |
| - Score: 8 |
| STOP |
| By Nelson on 2012-09-13 22:49:56 |
|
Trying to force HTML5 on developers. For fucks sake. It is not up to par. Just fucking stop. Kill this OS with fire. Hell, even WebOS with EnyoJS is better |
| - Score: 5 |
| Comment by Luke McCarthy |
| By Luke McCarthy on 2012-09-13 22:52:36 |
|
I welcome alternative and open OSes for mobile, but I'm not a fan of the "do everything with web technologies" approach. Despite the claims of this article, such an approach is always suboptimal. And the programming environment sucks in my opinion, I hate when I have to program anything for web browsers. I don't see how JavaScript applications are supposed to run faster than Android's Java apps. I would much prefer a system that runs native-compiled applications... like Moblin/Tizen/whatever. If and when Wayland is viable it would be a pretty nice base for a phone UI (since all phones have accelerated OpenGL ES now). I would really like to see smartphones that are actually fully-fledged PCs that can be docked to a base station (like the Motorola Atrix) and run a full desktop... but not like that tacked-on system that runs inside Android, but the same exact system that runs on the phone (just a different UI on a different screen). Now add multi-monitor support and you have something very special. ARM is missing a unified system-level platform like the PC/x86 enjoys, due to various different non-standard SoC implementations. ARM need to get their act together and create a common platform that SoC vendors can implement. Hopefully that's what HSA will lead to. Otherwise I fear Intel will catch up to them in power efficiency and beat them on flexibility, platform standardisation and openness. |
| - Score: 3 |
| RE: Most forward-looking |
| By Nelson on 2012-09-13 23:20:20 |
|
Microsoft has moved HTML5 tooling forward a few years with Expression Blend. However, Windows 8 JavaScript apps are decidedly Windows 8 only. The knowledge carries over, its not a write once run anywhere deal. |
| - Score: 3 |
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