Mozilla building mobile OS to battle Chrome

http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-20083238-12/mozilla-building-mobile-os-to-battle-chrome/

by fizz972 • 15 years ago

45 15 15 years ago

download.cnet.com

My biggest problem with this is that the biggest problem with Mobile web browsers right now is that they pale in comparison (both feature and performance) to their desktop counterparts. Last time I checked the iPad browser (probably the best tablet browser) was something like 15x slower than Chrome desktop in javascript benchmarks.

This is the #1 blocker to mobile web app adoption. Try viewing a SVG on a mobile browser and see what happens. You're flipping a coin. Why doesn't Mozilla focus on bringing mobile/desktop feature parity before adding device level APIs?

rpearl2• 15 years ago

With regards to performance, keep in mind that there is simply a difference in processor performance. A mobile architecture browser is just not going to be as fast as a desktop based browser.

There are additional optimizations that can be done, of course--the ARM assembly generated by current JITs is not of quite the same quality as the x86 assembly, because the architectures are structured differently and ARM was shoe-horned in afterwards. Different ways of performing operations do better on ARM than on x86--the architectures have different performance characteristics. In point of fact, some of the JS team at Mozilla has shifted focus to improving ARM code generation.

Second, you are assuming that everyone at Mozilla works on the same single project. This is simply not so. There will still be a significant team of people working on improving the current mobile Firefox. This new project is distinct.

MatthewPhillips2• 15 years ago

Please educate me, I honestly don't know, but I've tested html5 games on an iPad2 and a 5 year old single core PC and seem the PC consistently outperform the iPad2. What is it about ARMs that are so slow compared to the equivalent or worse x86 chip?

I'm completely supportive of this project, and would probably use it on my personal phone, I just wonder if Mozilla isn't already stretched too thin.

thristian• 15 years ago

As of Firefox 5, I think, Mobile Firefox is released from the same revision of the same source tree as Desktop Firefox, and should have all the same web-facing features available. Of course, they might not run at the same speed - that's just hardware - but I would expect SVG for example to display identically on the desktop and on a mobile device.

rkwz• 15 years ago

Sensationalist title. The Ars article[1] was much better.

A foundational goal of the B2G project is to explore and remedy areas where current Web standards are insufficient for building modern mobile applications. Instead of haphazardly grafting vendor-specific markup or extensions into the application runtime, Mozilla will seek to propose new standards to address the challenges that emerge during development.

Nicely aligns with their main aim of promoting openness, innovation and opportunity on the web.[2]

[1] http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/07/mozilla-eyes...

[2] http://www.mozilla.org/about/mission.html

Yhippa• 15 years ago

I dream of a future of sophisticated mobile web apps and no vendor lock-in to a particular mobile OS.

shareme• 15 years ago

Mozilla's biggest problem is not aligning with wants of mobile OEMs..

Right now a significant part of mobile OEMs wants mobile widget engine technology..such as BONDi..Mozilla could be ahead of the game by putting BONDi inside their engine for mobile..

My bias; exactly 18 months ago was interviewed by Mozilla for an xml dev job and suggested that very path.

quattrofan• 15 years ago

Ok somewhat confused the article implies its to battle Android not Chrome..?

PedroCandeias• 15 years ago

"Mozilla will seek to propose new standards to address the challenges that emerge during development"

I'd love to be able to get excited about this, but sadly I can't. Here's why: http://xkcd.com/927/

Plus, like someone already said, Mozilla is maybe stretching itself a bit too thin.

asciilifeform• 15 years ago

I wish people would stop calling the act of scraping together a new linux distro "writing an OS."

_urga• 15 years ago

This may seem obvious but operating systems tend not to be replaced by other operating systems, but rather subsumed by the very applications built on top of them.

For example, DOS was not replaced by another OS but was subsumed by a DOS application, Windows 3.1, which eventually grew down and became a standalone OS in Windows 95.

Flenser2• 15 years ago

DOS << Windows << Browser << Facebook

cousin_it• 15 years ago

Great thread! So the next thing to expect after the Chrome laptop would be a Facebook laptop?

Mozilla building mobile OS to battle Chrome

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