On Tuesday, December 30, 2014 6:38:43 PM UTC+5:30, Toby Kurien wrote: > I'm an experienced full-stack developer (web, enterprise, and mobile esp. > Android), and I've decided to try out Firefox OS after acquiring a Geeksphone > Keon recently. I made notes along the way and thought I'd post them here. I > hope it's the right place, otherwise I apologize for the noise! > > NOTE: The comments below are based on recent nightly v2.0 builds. I am aware > that it is not a stable release. > > The Good: > - Development is super easy. WebIDE is great (fast code-change-to-execution) > although I'd love a dark theme. Breath of fresh air compared to all other > mobile OS's. > - Smooth activity transitions. > - Fading/translucent system bar on homescreen is cool. > - Notifications showing up on lock screen is nice. The above features only > recently dropped in Android, so FxOS feels modern. > - Love the lockscreen pin timeout option, so I don't have to enter pin > everytime. > - Apps are super tiny and barely ever ask for permissions. > - Permissions can be denied! > - Love the simplicity of the OS. It's simple and yet functional, and doesn't > feel bloated at all. > - Data metering in the notification shade is great. > - Apps are sandboxed! i.e. don't share cookies, external links open > separately in the browser. I wrote a whoel app for this in Android: > https://github.com/tobykurien/webapps > - Browser shortcuts on the homescreen are independent of the browser, i.e. I > can clear cookies in the browser, but shortcut's cookies persist. > - App discovery via collections (social, games, etc.) > - In general, there's an app for everything I need (e.g. XBMC remote, folder > music player, WhatsApp, etc.) > - Speaking of WhatsApp, the Loqui IM app it the least permissions-intensive > OTR-supporting IM client I've ever seen on mobile. A big win! > > The Bad: > - The default touch slop is too large, making the homescreen (for example) > feel "spongy" and unresponsive. Example, touch down and drag, and see how far > the finger is from the point it touched. > - I fixed this by setting profiledir/prefs.js "apz.touch_start_tolerance" = > "0.1" (default is about 0.2), and did a hard reset. Feels *much* better! > - Touch slop is actually too small on the notification shade! This makes > toggling buttons like wifi difficult - touches are easily mistaken for small > drags.
> - Critical problem for me: email and contacts refuse to sync with my > self-signed SSL/TLS-secured IMAP and ownCloud server. I wrote a small app > (https://github.com/tobykurien/vCardImporter) to import my ownCloud contacts > to make the phone usable. The vcf could not be imported by Contacts or any > other app on the market (they just hung with no error messages). IMAP fails > with "bad security" even though I added the certificate to the browser, and > the calendar works fine with it. Can you please elaborate on this a bit more. Is it that IMAP connections over TLS with self-signed certificates are not succeeding? And this is even after you added your certificate (and any intermediates) in the trust-store of the device. Is that the case? There is one open issue https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=995005 for FXOS web-apps, want to check if that is the same issue you are seeing too. Another one specific to Android ICS - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=756763 > - Calendar doesn't do recurring events. This is a known issue for now and is in progress. Tracked on this bugzilla enhancement - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=931983, https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1023664 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=908940 > - The keyboard is terrible: always shows uppercase characters, touch targets > are not correctly placed, leading to constant typos (not using auto-correct). > SwiftKey on Android works much better without auto-correct and same screen > size. I am guessing that the touch target for a key should be somewhat under > and to the left of the actual key placement on-screen. > - Couldn't find a GPS turn-by-turn navigation app, which is a big missing > feature. > - Tapping on Loqui IM notifications doesn't bring up the app. Not sure if app > problem or FxOS problem. > - No copy & paste, which is cricital for using password managers. > - Multi-tasking is sluggish - after a while the phone crawls when switching > multiple apps. Manually killing them all in "recents" seems to bring the > phone back. > - Once (and only once) I experienced overnight complete battery drain with > wifi+data off. Hopefully this is just a weird bug rather than a rogue app > being able to keep the CPU running. > - The app close badge in recents is too small. I more often re-open an app > than close it. > - Wired headphone music controls don't work in the music player (using a > SkullCandy Crusher). > > The massive platform issues (IMHO): > - Browser shortcuts on the homescreen are not sandboxed from each other. They > share cookies and load 3rd party content, thus creating a big privacy issue. > If I create a shortcut to Google News and login, then create another shortcut > to GMail, I don't expect to be logged into GMail, but I am. > - Exception handling: unhandled JavaScript exceptions are absorbed (I am > guessing), so apps just hang leaving user stuck (no back/refresh button). > This even happens often on the lockscreen and homescreen, especially with a > spotty internet connection, forcing me to reboot the phone. > - A related issue: when on a bad internet connection (e.g. ISP using Sandvine > to shape traffic by sending random RST packets, leading to "connection > reset"), apps just display blank or become unresponsive. No error messages > are shown, and even worse, FxOS does not retry loading the failed resources. > It should keep trying to load all the page resources, or display a persistent > error message if the internet connection just went down, for example. Is this https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1045709 the same symptom you are noticing? Understandably, connection resets should have feedback on the application, so trying to figure out if this needs to be logged as a separate FXOS platform bug - so that the JS API has a callback for the apps to register to for connection reset handling. > - The platform desperately needs touch feedback on all interactive elements. > Do not rely on developers to add this. They either don't, or their touch > targets are so small that the finger covers up the highlighting. There should > be default touch highlighting on any element that accepts an onClick, onDrag, > etc. I can't stress how bad it is for UX when there is no touch feedback. I > am constantly clicking things 3 or 4 times, because I don't know if the app > accepted the touch. > - Similarily, when javascript is running, some sort of activity indicator > would be extremely good to have (similar to the network activity indicator in > the status bar). I spend a lot of time clicking on a "dead" app (due to > javascript failure from unloaded resources or an exception that wasn't > handled), and without the touch feedback, this gets maddening. > > Overall, I love the FxOS platform. I'm really impressed with the AsyncPanZoom > thing and the tiling thing, that makes the UI smooth. WebIDE allowed me to > tinker with apps in no time at all. I love the innovative ideas like Pinned > Apps, and I can't wait for things like standardized UI components (Mozilla > Brick?). The permissions system is leagues better than Android's broken one, > and I love that apps don't (currently) abuse permissions. This is definitely > pushing the web forward in more ways that I thought possible, and I hope to > be able to contribute to it in future. _______________________________________________ dev-b2g mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-b2g
