Hi Fabrice,
On the subject of themes, this ties into the concept of replaceable home/lock
(and potentially other) screens. That is a direction that the Product and UX
teams certainly want to move in.
Here are some of the goals that Josh and I had in mind:
* Enable partners to differentiate the user experience of their Firefox OS
implementation so that they can ultimately sell more devices by standing out
amongst competitors
* Enable the development/design community to deliver rich and unique
experiences which allow users to personalize their device based on their
interests
* Drive developer/designer monetization opportunities through distributable
themes (free and paid)
* Promote users' psychological connection to their Firefox OS device by
providing the opportunity to make their device uniquely them (without a
confusing and cumbersome Android widget experience)
* Encourage niche smartphone use cases to be fulfilled without being
restricted to the boundaries imposed by the stock experience which inherently
must target a wide audience (eg. social - people first, news - events first,
entertainment - media first, gaming - fun first)
Some ideas that we can work towards over time:
* Home/Lock screen alteration
* Allow home/lock screens to be heavily modified by OEMs (combination
of policy and Gaia architecture)
* User selectable themes
* Give user ultimate choice over look/feel of OS (including reverting
to stock)
* Make choice core part of setting up device (not buried in settings or
using unintuitive concept of launchers/widgets)
* Ensure that the home screen has access to key pieces of data to deliver
interesting user experinces
* Home screen should be able to use info on: Contacts, Calendar, Call
log, SMS/MMS, Email, Alarms, Active audio source, Network, Battery, Date/Time,
Bluetooth, FM Radio, Data consumption, App use stats, etc.
* Theme market/tools
* Build tools for designers to create unique themes (based on stock or
net new)
* Establish area in Marketplace for theme distribution/monetization
These were early ideas, but thoughts are welcome.
Peter
----- Original Message -----
From: "Fabrice Desre" <[email protected]>
To: "dev-b2g" <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, 9 July, 2013 12:07:48 AM
Subject: [b2g] Add-ons support for b2g
Hi all,
Another item on the "Engineering whislist" that I think is crucial for
b2g success is to add some kind of add-on support. Firefox's popularity
is in no small part due to its add-on model that allows both
customization and extensibility.
How can we translate this model to make b2g even better?
First, we need to use web applications as add-ons and not reuse the xpi
format from firefox, since it's designed for other cases.
Secondly, there's the big question of which kind of functionality we
want to offer to add-ons. We very likely need at least themeing support
(maybe even support styles from userstyles.org) and page scripts (like
scriptish/greasemonkey). If we want to allow resources filters (for ad
blockers for instance) this may be harder, but also really interesting!
Add-ons being applications, their api access will be similar to
applications - no chrome privileges, etc.
Thoughts?
Fabrice
--
Fabrice Desré
b2g team
Mozilla Corporation
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