A simulated FirefoxOS experience

Posted Dec 12, 2012 19:23 UTC (Wed) by ingwa (guest, #71149)
Parent article: A simulated FirefoxOS experience

Your editor has frequently written that, while Android is a great system that has been highly beneficial to the cause of open mobile devices, it would be awfully nice to have a viable, free-software alternative.

I would say that the combination of Mer and Plasma Active is exactly that.

A simulated FirefoxOS experience

Posted Dec 12, 2012 20:41 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link] (4 responses)

Is there a similar "simulator" appliance to demo how Active would behave on a phone formfactor while sitting at a desktop/laptop/workstation device, without having to install it on phone hardware?

My understanding is that Active so far has been targeting 9'' to 12'' tablet-like touch capable formfactors and not the smaller phone formfactors. I'm not sure I've ever seen Active UI/UX demo'd on phone formfactor. Not saying it doesn't play well there. I'm just saying I haven't seen what it looks like there. And I'm not prepared to assume that UI/UX optimizations for the 10''-ish tablet make sense for the pocketable phones.

That being said. Have 2 or 3 distinct open UIs to choose from as a user would not be the worst thing in the world. But man, from an app development standpoint, that's a nightmare right, there is always market pressure on devs to concetrate on the bang-for-the-buck instead of developing for all niche OSes.

If FirefoxOS does nothing else, but enshrine html5 as an open framework that app developers can code in, that can integrate well in multiple disparate mobile interface designs, that will be a big deal. Can we get to the point were html5 app developers can be reasonably certain that their app would work on a FirefoxOS or in Android or in Plasma Active? That would be a win for the ecosystem, regardless of the market penetration of any one UI platform relative to another.

-jef

A simulated FirefoxOS experience

Posted Dec 13, 2012 0:02 UTC (Thu) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (1 responses)

With what browser does it work?
Running latest Firefox ESR it says "Not available," not providing an alternative,

Versions

Posted Dec 13, 2012 0:04 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

I ran it fine with the v17 browser shipped with F17.

A simulated FirefoxOS experience

Posted Dec 13, 2012 0:56 UTC (Thu) by Lennie (subscriber, #49641) [Link] (1 responses)

Many websites already support "Responsive Web Design" with the use of the "Media Queries" technlogy which allows completely different designs for different screensizes.

So yes, webtechnologies could fit the bill very well.

But I assume Plasma Active can do that too (I've never looked) ?

A simulated FirefoxOS experience

Posted Dec 13, 2012 11:31 UTC (Thu) by sebas (guest, #51660) [Link]

Yes, Plasma can deliver different layouts depending on screensize (and dpi), and also use different widget sets depending on input methods available. (The latter is transparant to the app developer, the former needs simple modifications, such as providing alternative layouts, though it's usually just one file that differs.)