At the risk of asking a "bad" question, will there be a FireFox App Store? If so, when and what will be the Mozilla cut? If not, what will be the plan to attract the "higher end" apps?
Nobody knows. While they're a similar approach to development, the company, strategy, and goals are different. HP wanted an OS for their smartphones and tablets that would compete with iOS. Firefox is aiming for something more along the lines of an ambitious Linux distribution for the touchscreen era.
Given some basic analysis, I think it's quite safe to say that it'll be a failure.
Android and iOS are already extremely well entrenched, and they're where the money is for developers. There are other OSes, including Blackberry OS and various Windows versions, out there an actual phones already, too. At best, FirefoxOS is starting at 5th or 6th in line, although it's probably further back than that. That's a lot of catching up to do, especially given that it isn't really revolutionary or unique in any beneficial way.
Android and iOS give developers much more flexible environments to work with. To many experienced developers, especially those with a diverse background, being forced to use JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS is just not going to be seen as an advantage. If anything, it should be considered a reason not to target Firefox OS.
Things haven't been very bright for Mozilla lately, either. Firefox's usage is dropping, in favor of Chrome and even IE in some cases. This isn't surprising, given how it has been one mistake after another since Firefox 4. Thunderbird is on the rocks. Firefox for Mobile has been a complete failure. Aside from Bugzilla, which is looking pretty outdated these days, their other projects don't have much of a user base.
When one takes an impartial look at Firefox OS, there's just nothing compelling about it. There's no reason for its existence, and it doesn't really offer anything we couldn't already do. It seems to me to be more of a "we can do that, too!"-style project driven by vanity, rather than any real need. They'd be better off putting the effort toward improving Firefox on the desktop, which seems to be their only remotely viable project.
I tend to think that people are not that in love about that devils trio.. they just HAS to deal with it.. javascript is messy after you pass 10 lines, HTML is too verbose, and css is a way to design using text, that you never know what it will produce as output..
Mozilla should try to push different projects not only based in the web, like it was the best invention ever since the ginger bread..
The technologies that made the web are just lagging behind, but the open mind, principles and universe that were the base for the web creation, should be here to stay
its just about adapt this bright way of thinking into new technologies.. not a big deal..
but mozilla look like a scratched vinyl, and thats a pity, cause its one of our only hopes to circumvent the tech titans agenda to lock people down into their platforms..
and this should be fighted back with new, and better technology.. the same old stuff with some glue on it won´t do the magic.
I wouldn't describe it as a developer's paradise at all- making apps with HTML/CSS/JS can be a very painful process. A developers paradise in terms of compatibility, though.
You wouldn't believe how many mobile developers I talk to who go on about how easy developing mobile apps using co-opted variants of HTML, CSS and JavaScript is.
They'll eventually talk about some of the problems they encounter, and then I can't believe they actually put up with any of it.
Of course, at this point I usually ask what other languages and environments they've worked with. They usually admit to having only ever done web development. Maybe some PHP, in rare cases. They don't know C++, Java, Objective-C, or even Python.
So I understand why they don't recognize the problems they're facing, due to their ignorance. If only they knew about real programming languages and the tools available for them, I think they'd quickly see how bad of an idea the whole HTML, CSS and JavaScript approach truly is.
Its fairly ridiculous to propose that the only reason that any developer is interested in build mobile web apps is that they are ignorant of all other platforms
Read again what I wrote. I clearly did not say that "ignorance is the only reason", or anything of that nature. Please refrain from making misrepresentations like that which you've just made, Dale Harvey.
Ignorance, however, does play a more significant role that you seem to believe, or would like to admit. Many of these developers do lack experience with languages that offer proper class-based OO support, namespaces, modularity, and other core functionality that JavaScript is missing, or has poorly tacked on (I'm looking at you, CommonJS).
How is this fundamentally different from using phonegap with ios/android? Are there more apis that tie into native functionality? Cause you can just hook a lot of those up with phonegap anyway. From this example I can't see any differences.
Co-creator of PhoneGap here. This isn't much different from using phonegap and that is the point. PhoneGap was created because this is how we felt SDKs should be designed. The difference here is that Mozilla built FirefoxOS from the ground up with web technology whereas PhoneGap is a shim on top of existing SDKs. The goal is that all devices will expose this API from a web view to make cross platform development much more palatable, negating the need for tools like PhoneGap. Good on Mozilla on this one. I have high hopes for this OS.
With Firefox OS, they will be using web standard APIs. For things that do not yet have official APIs, they will make them and try to get them standardised.[0] This is unlike PhoneGap, which uses non-standard PhoneGap-specific APIs. This means that Firefox OS apps should also work fine as vanilla web apps in newer browsers.
That isnt quite how I would describe it, FirefoxOS is the realisation of Phonegap original vision. Phonegap was built to not exist, it patches device API's where they dont exist with the intention that when the API is supported natively phonegap just isnt needed.
Ideally FirefoxOS and Phonegap applications will be identical (in that they will all be web apps that use standard APIs) there is work being done on making that true.
Hello! I work on the Firefox OS app store[1] . There are no officially supported Firefox OS devices yet- but you can experiment with the simulator[2]. Additionally, they will soon be able to run on any Android device with Firefox for Android installed. (certain apps work already in our Beta version[3])
Have you actually tried running on any of those devices?
I asked about them on a FirefoxOS post last week because I was trying to figure out which device to pick up and a Mozilla rep responded suggesting that I just try the emulator built for Firefox. She said that the builds that run on those devices are actually fairly out of date.
I'd love for somebody in the know or who actually has this up and running to provide some insight.
