Comment by programminggeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by programminggeek | Hacker News Reader

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programminggeek

"With Firefox OS, we can break open the world of native operating systems and closed platforms once again."

I'm not so sure they are solving the same problem they were solving before. "The web" doesn't have to be a browser anymore. It can be any app. For example, the Facebook app is a native app that makes a bunch of http api calls to provide the FB experience. Previously it was basically a web app with a native wrapper. In both cases you don't need Firefox to use Facebook.

I think native apps calling http services is a step fowrard in a lot of ways because if Firefox screws up or doesn't implement a feature the right way or whatever, your app isn't beholden to Firefox to fix their stuff in a future release.

Also, when there was basically just IE on Windows Firefox was definitely a reason for Firefox to exist. We have good browsers that seem to put a lot of effort into supporting mobile and HTML5. They're not perfect, but it's not even the same as IE6 back in the Win XP era.

Choice is good, but I don't think FirefoxOS is fixing anything.

>"The web" doesn't have to be a browser anymore. It can be any app.

I think HTTP and "the web" are pretty distinct. The reason that "any app" is mostly not "the web" is that it doesn't really let you go to just _any_ web page. The web is what it is because I can follow a link to anywhere. If the app does support this, then it is a branded browser on top of being a native app, and it competes with firefox.

>if Firefox screws up or doesn't implement a feature the right way or whatever, your app isn't beholden to Firefox to fix their stuff in a future release.

But if the native ecosystem (IOS, android) screws something up, you are beholden to them, and this happens plenty. I think firefox os is going to try to solve this problems with OS fragmentation more than anything. Since android has some closed core components, and IOS is mostly closed, this is what they are trying to free similarly to what they did with IE. I am optimistic about it.

I think the idea is that native apps (in most cases) can only run on the platform they were developed for. Web apps, on the other hand, can theoretically run on any platform with a solid web browser. Mozilla wants to use Firefox OS to encourage the development of quality web apps, as well as show what is possible in the context of a web browser on a mobile device.

If Mozilla succeed then there will be a common standard for all developers to code to, there will no longer be any worry about an app not working on Linux/MacOS because the targeted environment is the browser.

The browser becomes a VM, in fact it's already one but they want to make it far, far more powerful. This is a very good thing.

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