Fwd: iClarified - Apple News - Mozilla Announces Firefox OS Developer Preview Phone

[Owen Densmore]

This might be interesting: mozilla and a web-centric phone os.  If they really do move the phone world from apps back to webapps, that would be a good thing, I think.  At least if they could give the same quality of user experience as a native app.

http://www.iclarified.com/26851/mozilla-announces-firefox-os-developer-preview-phone

I've never been comfortable with the app revolution, moving away from html5/css/javascript.  Maybe naive of me.  But in terms of security, a whole new set of "logins" on non-web software makes reasonable authentication (Persona & Google's Kill the Password device) harder .. lets keep to the browser, even as an OS.

   -- Owen

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/23/13 6:21 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

This might be interesting: mozilla and a web-centric phone os.  If they really do move the phone world from apps back to webapps, that would be a good thing, I think.

A reason to favor Mozilla is because they are acting in the public interest.  
HTML5 is just a means to that end. 

Google, Apple, and Microsoft are acting in their own interest with their smartphone products.

There's a secondary minor technical reason which is that Mozilla doesn't have the overhead of a JVM or a CLR in the way.  So, eventually, it will probably be faster than at least the Android or Windows products and consume less energy.

Marcus


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[Grant Holland]

Owen,

How do you square your pro-HTML5 position with Facebook's backtracking om HTML5 - and returning to the world of actual applications?

Grant

On 1/23/13 6:21 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

This might be interesting: mozilla and a web-centric phone os.  If they really do move the phone world from apps back to webapps, that would be a good thing, I think.  At least if they could give the same quality of user experience as a native app.

http://www.iclarified.com/26851/mozilla-announces-firefox-os-developer-preview-phone

I've never been comfortable with the app revolution, moving away from html5/css/javascript.  Maybe naive of me.  But in terms of security, a whole new set of "logins" on non-web software makes reasonable authentication (Persona & Google's Kill the Password device) harder .. lets keep to the browser, even as an OS.

   -- Owen

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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 1/23/13 8:10 PM, Grant Holland wrote:

How do you square your pro-HTML5 position with Facebook's backtracking om HTML5 - and returning to the world of actual applications?

Page 20 of http://syntensity.com/static/splashpres.pdf gives a sense of where just in time compilers for JavaScript are relative to GCC.   Basically within a factor of 3 of C. 

The latest Mozilla has a new JIT called IonMonkey that is faster. 

Think of JavaScript as a macro language on top of an in-memory assembler.  Add typed arrays, and there's no reason why JavaScript can't at least be as fast as Java. 

A classic example:  http://bellard.org/jslinux/

Marcus

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[Owen Densmore]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2013 at 8:10 PM, Grant Holland <[hidden email]> wrote:

Owen,

How do you square your pro-HTML5 position with Facebook's backtracking om HTML5 - and returning to the world of actual applications?

Evolution. Smartphones initially used apps, there really was no other alternative.  I'm talking pre-iPhone .. Treo, RIM, Nokia etc.

But when html5 etc caught up, there was conflict, mainly because the handset mfgrs didn't want to provide access to the latest stunt they had (better camera, gps and so on).  But the browser has always had an advantage: its everywhere .. even on TVs nowadays.  So hip app providers started back to the future: providing web-first, with apps secondarily.

A cute example of the merge occurred with Kindle on iOS.  Apple insisted on a cut of transactions made in-app.  Amazon bristled at that, naturally, so they provided a web-app kindle: works on all devices (even TV) and is easy to maintain.  They do still provide apps but the fallback is always there, and the UI experience is often better than the apps.  And you don't have to have yet another login: in-app and on-web.

Also, remember, I'm sensitive to the unholy trinity: OS provider, handset mfgr, and carrier .. who's in charge?

With a back-to-the-web phone, I feel that I've got a lot more control than with my draconian iPhone and my dysfunctional and chaotic Android.  Its the same experience everywhere, and as a developer, I'm back to not having to get in the middle of the Apple, Google, Amazon, RIM, Nokia, ... wars.  Just the web, standards all the way down.

In terms of FB, they will find a way to do what they want whatever the environment.  I'm not very facebook-y, so that may not be your question, but from 50K feet, I'd prefer to not to create an artificial divide -- apps vs webapps, especially when the web will always win out.

   -- Owen

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