FxOS 1.1 is our personal IE6 here in Brazil already… (yay fragmentation) :)

LG Fireweb devices will stay on that version forever since the manufacturer 
doesn't even acknowledge the existence of such a device on their support 
websites, also, they come with a locked bootloader so manually building from 
source is not an option (in spite of our CTO having told the audience of campus 
party in são paulo otherwise[1]).

[1]: http://youtu.be/3JE0P5obpvI?t=52m45s



On Apr 29, 2014, at 2:46 PM, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <[email protected]> wrote:

> Yeah - it's a huge problem. I just the other day managed to get my ancient
> (September 2013) ZTE Open up to 1.4 with a flash build from source. I have
> a Geeksphone Revolution, but I chose to run it Android (Jellybean) rather
> than Firefox OS / Boot to Gecko, since I already have the ZTE.
> 
> 
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 12:26 AM, Pablo Brasero Moreno 
> <[email protected]>wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I am currently working on a FxOS app. At one point during the development,
>> I came across a gotcha that doesn't seem to be discussed elsewhere. By
>> posting here, I'm not sure whether I am looking for guidance or
>> confirmation; just air your opinions and I'll be content :-)
>> 
>> (I'm not entirely confident that this is the correct forum for this. Please
>> point me in the right direction if it is not).
>> 
>> The question: for FxOS development, what would currently be a reasonably
>> safe baseline target platform?
>> 
>> I'll explain. MDN has a listing of the FxOS handsets available in the
>> market[1]. At the time of writing, only one of these has FxOS 1.3 on it
>> (1.3pre, to be precise; the Geeksphone Revolution). The rest run 1.0.1 or
>> 1.1.
>> 
>> Detection of JS capabilities has been discussed elsewhere before (eg: over
>> at mozilla.dev.webapi[2]), but CSS capabilities are another kind of beast.
>> For one flexboxes weren't supported until Firefox/Gecko 22, but FxOS 1.1 is
>> based on v18[4], and therefore doesn't get those.
>> 
>> The lack of flexbox support is disturbing enough. Mozilla encourages using
>> them, by means of the Quickstart documentation[5], or using them for some
>> Building Blocks[6].
>> 
>> Mozilla also encourages testing FxOS applications using the App Manager,
>> but this gives you a minimum FxOS 1.2[6]. In order to test for 1.1 I have
>> to use the old Simulator, which is discontinued and may stop working soon
>> (the docs say I should be using Firefox 24 or 25[7], but I use it
>> successfully on Aurora 30 on a Mac).
>> 
>> If I went by this 1.2 baseline, I wouldn't be able to run my app on my own
>> handset, a ZTE Open. Incidentally, the device was initially on 1.0.1 and I
>> upgraded it to 1.1 myself. Now I'm wondering if it was a good idea to
>> upgrade it at all, given that it may hide problems that my app may have
>> running on 1.0.1.
>> 
>> For the purposes of developing my application, I have installed Firefox 18,
>> which I run using a profile separate from my normal browsing one. This
>> seems to work well for spot checks, JS unit tests, and integration tests
>> (for which I use Selenium). This gives me enough confidence that my app
>> will work in other handsets.
>> 
>> Despite my current solution, my questions persist. Mozilla seems to be
>> encouraging developers to use 1.2 as baseline, but hardly any devices out
>> there run it. This problem is not mentioned on the docs, or if it is it's
>> not stressed at all. FxOS handsets are already being sold to the public,
>> and there's a risk of disappointing users with apps that don't work for
>> their devices, unbeknownst to the developers themselves.
>> 
>> What do you people think?
>> 
>> Thank you,
>> 
>> [1]
>> 
>> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Developer_phone_guide/Phone_specs
>> [2]
>> 
>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.dev.webapi/mQPZ-38wgy4/rYNnbZZaQsEJ(among
>> other discussions)
>> [3] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/22.0/releasenotes/
>> [4]
>> 
>> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Developer_phone_guide/Phone_specs#Firefox+OS+by+version
>> [5] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Design (in turn linked from
>> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Apps/Quickstart)
>> [6] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Using_the_App_Manager
>> [7]
>> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Firefox_OS_1.1_Simulator
>> 
>> --
>> Pablo Brasero Moreno
>> [email protected]
>> _______________________________________________
>> dev-webapps mailing list
>> [email protected]
>> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/znmeb; Computational Journalism on a Stick
> http://j.mp/CompJournoStickOverview
> 
> My poltergeist can beat up your zeitgeist.
> _______________________________________________
> dev-webapps mailing list
> [email protected]
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps

_______________________________________________
dev-webapps mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps

Reply via email to