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Comment by nicpottier | Hacker News Reader

To me this is one of the most exciting projects coming up. it is still in early, early days, but it seems to pose the most realistic sane alternative to Android and iOS.

Android is great in that they are open, but their UI library is really just a mess, anybody who uses it for any amount of time yearns for the days of laying things out using HTML. iOS is much better in this respect but has the problem of limited devices and of being a closed platform.

I have no idea how they B2G (Boot2Gecko) will navigate the patent minefield, but I hope they do. I'm picking up another Galaxy Nexus just so I can have a phone dedicated to hacking on it.

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Android is great in that they are open, but their UI library is really just a mess

Historically, HTML has hardly been much better in enforcing UI consistency. Mozilla may have some tricks up their sleeve, I don't know.

I wouldn't bet on it. I have looked at a version of Gaia (Firefox OS's user interface and set of built-in apps) and the apps do not use any specific framework.

While a specific framework enforcing consistency might eventually appear, I do not think that this is the purpose of Mozilla or Firefox OS itself. Probably more the purpose of the companion marketplace.

This is the biggest challenge of building an html5 ecosystem: it is competing with high level, well designed UI abstractions. Help us solve this problem! Mozilla is focusing on the Web Components spec to try and offer a solution https://github.com/mozilla/x-tag

I find B2G very cool, I just hope the underlying stuff for the hardware (drivers; what's called a device tree in the Android world) is all open source or at the very least easily available so that people can easily do their own words.

In other words, I hope Mozilla can strong-arm the hardware partners into actual community-minded open source, rather than whatever the hell Android is doing. (I don't doubt Mozilla here, but their partners.)

It's exciting for developers. The developer build has a "View Source" hard button you can use on any app, so you can view the HTML source on the dialler, home screen, etc.

And maybe for manufacturers too. Some manufacturers are concerned that Android and Windows Phone are becoming more siloed, given the Motorola deal and the MS-manufactured Surface. So the timing might work well for Moz, but like you say, there are patent questions.

This is one of my favorite features.. I know editing on the phone probably isn't realistic, but just that a 'View Source' link is there makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Right now the Samsung galaxy s2 is your best bet, the lack of hardware keyboard hasn't been accounted for in b2g afaik

Really? The GN is listed as one of the supported devices on their page.

Would rather drop $350 than whatever an unlocked S2 would cost.

I put B2G on my GN and he's right. Once you get into an app there is no way to return to the home screen. You have to pull the battery out and reboot (which, by the way, is the fastest boot I've seen on a smartphone).

Also there are viewport issues with GN. Everything looks zoomed out. Those 2 bugs makes it not really very usable at this point.

I don't understand... the SGS2 doesn't have a hardware keyboard either. Why would it be a better bet?

He's talking about the hardware home, back and menu buttons, which the SGS2 has. The GN relies on onscreen buttons only.

I've found the most supported device, and easiest to hack around with using b2g, is the Nexus S. I'd recommend going for that over the Nexus.

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