#FIREFOX OS FOR EVERYONE
We live in the era of web 2.0 and in no time we are moving to web 3.0 and the Internet of things. we have come a long from using plain static web pages to interactive,dynamic and intelligent web services. we have also evolved ourselves from being just web users to web creators and hackers. Its easy to see how web will be revolutionised and holds a definite place in our future.
The internet is a very succesful product. As of 2014, the number of internet users worldwide was 2.92 billion and it is ever increasing but there is an interesting difference between then and now. Here is the chart showing the sales of PCS in red and Smartphones in blue. This analysis is 3-4 years old and the demand for smartphones is still on the rise.
The graph Analysis
It is eveident from the graph that the number of smartphones sold in the past few years is greater than the number of PCS that were sold. This implies PCS are by de facto the thing of the past. So, in the next few years over 3 billion people are going to discover the web through their smartphones. Smartphones, of which there is limited number of choices in their applications. Most of the smartphones promote the pay to participate idealogy which means you consume only what you paid for. There is no creativity, no hacking and hence no room for development from the user’s side.
This raises the question :
“How do we bring the values of the web to the smartphones?”
This question is important because we want to empower people to have the freedom to participate, create and develop or motify existing applications to suit their needs rather than abiding by the standard features given to them.
Mozilla community came up with a solution to this problem, The FIREFOX OS . Firefox OS is the new mobile operating system developed by Mozilla, based on Linux and Firefox’s powerful Gecko rendering engine.
Firefox OS is open source and therefore free from proprietary technology, while still providing the power to allow application developers to create excellent products. In addition, it’s flexible and capable enough to make the end user happy.
For Web developers, the most important part to understand is that the entire user interface is a web app capable of displaying and launching other Web apps. Any modifications you make to the user interface and any applications you create to run on Firefox OS are web apps created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, albeit with enhanced access to the mobile device’s hardware and services.
From a product perspective, Firefox OS is Mozilla’s (and their OEM partners’) branding and support services applied on top of Boot to Gecko (B2G), which is the operating system’s engineering codename. Boot to Gecko is developed by a team of engineers inside Mozilla plus many external contributors from the wider Mozilla/open source community.
Some of the other unique features of firefox os :
- “Web is the platform” is the central theme of Firefox OS.
- All three layers of Firefox OS are completely open source. Also, Firefox OS can be upgraded in parts.
- There is no SDK (Software Development Kit) to download and install. Instead, all the OS developmental branches are maintained as GitHub projects and are open to public.
- Dynamic app search and single use applications.
- “Do not track” - Respects privacy.
But why would any of these be relevant to a completely non technical user ?
Usually only these matter -
- Smartphone = Touchscreen + Camera + Apps
- Affordability = Cheap + Good quality
- Support
Firefox OS provides it all.
- Firefox OS provides all the standard features using latest web technologies. This also makes it light-weight thereby reducing the hardware cost.
- The entire software is avalaible for “Free”. The phone makers spend less money in production. So the retail cost is low.
- “Free” as in phone makers dont have to pay to use it. Plus they can make any change they want.
- It is built by Mozilla, a non profit organisation with thousands of developers around the world.
Firefox OS is also being used to make TVs , watches, small gadgets, car dashboards and so much more. It will change the way we use the web. This is just the beginning…
Firefox OS for everyone
#####References :
- Ted Talk on Firefox OS.
- Blogpost on firefox OS by Kaustav Das Modak.