Firefox OS mobilises HTML5, without the added Steve Jobs Do you want to build applications for Firefox OS? The first step is to head over to the Mozilla website and sign up for a developer kit. Just kidding, there's no developer kit. There are also no developer fees and no new programming languages to learn. You can start building apps for Firefox OS today, using nothing more than …
You never paid for an app via someone's website before? Only, this time it could be a far more seamless "like this game? Buy the full and offline version for only £X.YZ. Click [here]!"
News sites like The Register, except with an article store that'll automatically download today's news so you can read it offline? Full offline functionality enabled via a small subscription.
That or MMO clients. WebGL exists now, and it's shaders as far as the eye can see. Possible to do a WoW or EVE client? Only Blizzard and CCP know that, but they'd be daft not to be running experiments right now.
Or even, shock horror, adverts. Must be a reason I'm being told that EE are doing a Blackberry Q10 on a business plan for just £30 a month, in that little box to the right.
One of the key differentiators to other app stores and one of the reasons carriers are interested is that carriers will look after the payments, not Mozilla. Good or bad for users and developers, we will see, but it is at least one less company who will have your credit card details.
Am I now supposed to write serious games in HTML5/Javascript?
A subset of Javascript. asm.js, can be compiled down from C++ (with a hit of ~50%). So no, you don't have to.
They wrote a surprising amount of Firefox OS in Javascript.
And I wouldn't class Javascript as limited or unsophisticated. Different, yes: personally I hate the way classes are done (I much prefer the C++/Java/PHP way).
"I hate the way classes are done (I much prefer the C++/Java/PHP way)"
Excuse me if I'm having a slow day; I'm not sure if you picked three utterly different approaches to OOP on purpose or not... Short of throwing VBA in there, I can't think of more disparate alternatives.
I'm a game developer. Am I now supposed to write serious games in HTML5/Javascript?
If there are potential customers on a new platform, and the potential revenues from that new platform comfortably exceed the cost to port old/develop new software on that platform, would you really ignore that platform just because you don't like the language?
do they expect us to write good apps in this limited and unsophisticated language?
There's lots not to like about javascript, but 'limited and unsophisticated' it ain't. You can refuse to write in it and demand a 'real programming language' (and I wouldn't blame you), but that basically makes you a primadonna. If you can't write good apps in it, then perhaps you should be examining your own design and engineering skills rather than blaming the language you have to work with.
Which phone OS do you need to learn a new programming language for? C++, Java and Objective-C are all normal languages on the target platforms they're used for.
In fact, as a software developer rather than a web-developer, I WOULD have to learn a new programming language!
Also... is £100/year really a big issue for anyone doing this professionally?
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Dalvik != native app. Relatively few Android apps are written in native code or even include native code.
asm.js is a subset of JavaScript chosen so it can be optimised more than standard JavaScript, so in effect you should be comparing asm.js against Dalvik. Other languages can be converted into asm.js so there's not even any need to learn something new (asm.js) to get high performance apps.
"You can start building apps for Firefox OS today, using nothing more than HTML, CSS and a generous helping of JavaScript."
How awful.
Technology from long ago that I moved to the mobile platform to escape. I'd rather never see it again.
God help us if we are forced in the future to program apps in Javascript and CSS.
And if anyone says it will be "cross platform" you can bet it won't be!
Presumably if the developer uses the useful APIs to make it interact with anything (or, in other words, make something that isn't just a website) then that's no longer portable, and hence defeats the point?
I also agree with the comment about why buy one - if the apps are cross platform (but see my point above), then I'd buy an iPhone / Android / WinPhone and run the same apps in their web browser, but *also* be able to run the hundreds of thousands of apps which can't.
Not true. W3C standards are being developed for loads of apis to integrate with the browser. There's apis for sms, tcp, bluetooth, contacts, file store, database, light sensor, battery status, geolocation, device orientation and a load more. Presentation is where most cross device headaches are, not in getting access to the hardware.
Think about it from the point of view of a developer not a customer. Why write for one of iPhone / Android / WinPhone when you can target them all and more besides with one app?
The problem to my mind is making money. App stores allow developers to monetise very easily, how you achieve that with an easy to copy web app is a different matter....
The problem to my mind is making money. App stores allow developers to monetise very easily, how you achieve that with an easy to copy web app is a different matter....
Question is whether you need to put copy protection on the app at all. The endless DRM arms race so far hasn't done much to stop unauthorised copying, but it has provided some pretty nasty ways of ensuring that paying customers are horribly limited.
Roughly 25 years ago Marc Andreeson was crying to the rooftops that Netscape was going to reduce Windows to the status of a commodity hardware layer on top of which Navigator would provide all the user functionality.
Of course Bill Gates gave him a good kicking.
Now the Son of the Son of Navigator might just fulfill Marc's dream.
Should be called fadfox is instead of Firefox as there is zero chance that this will catch on. I would rather use one of those "landfill android phones" that some reg writer alluded to than this one any day of the week. I think I read a review on Engadget or somewhere that said it was already laggy and they hadn't even really installed anything on it so yeah, thanks but no thanks.
It will catch on, simply because right now it's the only mobile OS that doesn't invade your privacy, give some faceless corporation complete control of your device, and profile your entire private life for profit.
Anyone who's rightly concerned about the invasive and overbearing control companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple maintain over your device, will look at FirefoxOS and immediately realise it's the only option, if actually owning your own device (rather than "paying to borrow" it from a corporation) matters to you.
Want a device you can distribute any app for without it having to be "approved" by a walled-garden software vendor? Firefox OS.
Want a device you don't have to "sign in" on an online account to use so the OS vendor can monitor your every action? Firefox OS.
Want a device you can install an app on without worrying that the OS vendor can "pull the plug" and remove it from your device whether you want it or not? Firefox OS.
Want a device where you decide the permissions and access an app is allowed to have, not the app distributor - so no more "weather apps" that needlessly require access to your contact list? Firefox OS.
Want a device you can save your own data securely and locally on, instead of trusting your most personal and confidential data to some PRISM-infested cloud storage? Firefox OS.
Oh yeah, I think it'll "catch on"!
I think you severely misunderstand the public. Ease of use and ubiquitous trump security any day. You and I work in IT - most people don't. Google is a big player and Mozilla/Firefox isn't. To the man in the street who is he going to choose? Someone he hasn't heard of or the big corporation? you can scream all you want about security, privacy, selling data, etc but it makes no difference. Why do you think the likes of McDonalds, Starbucks, etc, etc, etc are so big? They trade on convenience - and that is nearly all that matters.
Not to mention that coding in CSS and HTML and Javascript sucks donkeys, as as a dev. I won't be touching it.
I can't believe I've just read this when Mozilla get so much of their money from Google.
My personal prediction is that the same problems will emerge with privacy on this device as have emerged on the web and in the app space. The market becomes overly saturated with products, there's a price crash and eventually people expect apps for free. Then the most successful apps will be made free and monetised by harvesting data from their users, if not through Mozilla or the OS then through direct tracking through the app, sent to the vendor. Users may be able to pick apps that work with their choice of privacy settings, but the mainstream mass market won't care enough to bother.
As with my much-derided comment about using HTML 5, I don't see this as a new model in any way, and it contains all the same flaws as any other software market that have led us to the situation we're in today.
So El Reg lapped up the nonsense about still having a "working web app", yet then went onto describe how you need to call into the Firefox OS API if you want to get any real work done. Much as HTML 5 might try, it still doesn't (thank heavens) replicate everything a native OS can do, along with general housekeeping / "being a good citizen".
For example, accessing the platform-wide GUI toolkit, or producing a platform-wide notification broadcast, requires cooperation with the system and that requires an API. Screen orientation. System settings. Bluetooth. USB. Basic telephony. APIs, APIs, APIs.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI
I don't care if you're calling the API in JavaScript, C++, Objective C, Java, BASIC, assembler or any other language - it's a proprietary API for that platform. Get rid of the platform and your app won't run. It won't execute on a generalised web browser because that doesn't provide the platform specific API.
As you can see from the Wiki page, Mozilla list standards bodies they're trying to push the APIs into, or where they may already exist. If this were Microsoft, everyone would cry foul...
Bizarrely, in some respects this is actually LESS open than writing web apps under a cross platform framework such as Cordova, or even writing a "raw" un-integrated web app that just runs in the web browser and requires the user to save a link to it onto their home screen / apps list, where you really are limited to just the published and implemented APIs available in the browser environment. Or - as we used to call it once - write a web page.
And good luck writing something like Alchemy with that. Good luck even writing something like Audiobus with it!
http://www.camelaudio.com/AlchemyMobile.php
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