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A Few Questions to begin FF OS Development
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plutois...@gmail.com
May 10, 2013, 1:41:50 PM5/10/13
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I want to begin Firefox OS development, but I'm a bit lost. I've tried researching in the past, but there were never direct answers to my questions and I'm assuming some of the problems I've run into are just because some things aren't ready yet (for example I saw remote debugging is disabled until it's changed to be reimplemented).
Anyways the point is I want to test my web app so I can bring it to my Firefox Phone and hopefully continue to develop for Firefox OS. The big problem I ran into in the past is that I haven't been able to test a local app on the Firefox OS Simulator. I don't have a website of my own and it seems that by uploading it to my school's site, it forces one of a set of MIME types that makes Firefox OS not recognize the manifest.webapp file. Either that, or I set up my manifest.webapp file wrong, which I'm fairly certain I didn't. If I need to, I can set up a server on my own computer so that it's ideal for testing, but I'm pretty new to that (I've only truly immersed myself into server-sided development over the past few months).
The next problem is testing the app on my phone. Is there a way to get it on there without have it uploaded somewhere? From what I've seen, there's no way to access the OS's files at all, except by a MicroSD card (which doesn't really help). I'm using the GP Peak, if that helps figure out the answer. And is there currently any way to debug the app while it's running live? I saw remote debugging is disabled, but I'm not so sure how necessary that is given that I have a USB cable to plug into my computer (unless that'd be considered remote debugging too).
And last (which kinda ties into the question I just asked), how can I modify the OS? If I could somehow get access to the actual file system on the phone, that'd be a great start and I could probably go from there on my own.
Thanks!
Anyways the point is I want to test my web app so I can bring it to my Firefox Phone and hopefully continue to develop for Firefox OS. The big problem I ran into in the past is that I haven't been able to test a local app on the Firefox OS Simulator. I don't have a website of my own and it seems that by uploading it to my school's site, it forces one of a set of MIME types that makes Firefox OS not recognize the manifest.webapp file. Either that, or I set up my manifest.webapp file wrong, which I'm fairly certain I didn't. If I need to, I can set up a server on my own computer so that it's ideal for testing, but I'm pretty new to that (I've only truly immersed myself into server-sided development over the past few months).
The next problem is testing the app on my phone. Is there a way to get it on there without have it uploaded somewhere? From what I've seen, there's no way to access the OS's files at all, except by a MicroSD card (which doesn't really help). I'm using the GP Peak, if that helps figure out the answer. And is there currently any way to debug the app while it's running live? I saw remote debugging is disabled, but I'm not so sure how necessary that is given that I have a USB cable to plug into my computer (unless that'd be considered remote debugging too).
And last (which kinda ties into the question I just asked), how can I modify the OS? If I could somehow get access to the actual file system on the phone, that'd be a great start and I could probably go from there on my own.
Thanks!
Gabriele Svelto
May 10, 2013, 4:15:14 PM5/10/13
to plutois...@gmail.com, dev...@lists.mozilla.org
> I want to begin Firefox OS development, but I'm a bit lost. I've tried researching in the past, but there were never direct answers to my questions and I'm assuming some of the problems I've run into are just because some things aren't ready yet (for example I saw remote debugging is disabled until it's changed to be reimplemented).
Remote debugging is available in the simulator and can also be done on
the devices though it requires some hacks to work; see here for more
information on the topic:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/Debugging/Setting_up
> Anyways the point is I want to test my web app so I can bring it to my Firefox Phone and hopefully continue to develop for Firefox OS. The big problem I ran into in the past is that I haven't been able to test a local app on the Firefox OS Simulator. I don't have a website of my own and it seems that by uploading it to my school's site, it forces one of a set of MIME types that makes Firefox OS not recognize the manifest.webapp file. Either that, or I set up my manifest.webapp file wrong, which I'm fairly certain I didn't. If I need to, I can set up a server on my own computer so that it's ideal for testing, but I'm pretty new to that (I've only truly immersed myself into server-sided development over the past few months).
>
> The next problem is testing the app on my phone. Is there a way to get it on there without have it uploaded somewhere? From what I've seen, there's no way to access the OS's files at all, except by a MicroSD card (which doesn't really help). I'm using the GP Peak, if that helps figure out the answer. And is there currently any way to debug the app while it's running live? I saw remote debugging is disabled, but I'm not so sure how necessary that is given that I have a USB cable to plug into my computer (unless that'd be considered remote debugging too).
allows for very easy testing and debugging and the last version allows
you to push your app directly to your device:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Firefox_OS_Simulator
> And last (which kinda ties into the question I just asked), how can I modify the OS? If I could somehow get access to the actual file system on the phone, that'd be a great start and I could probably go from there on my own.
Gonk, the Gecko rendering engine and finally Gaia which includes the
user interface, standard application and all related code. I assume you
would be interested in modifying the latter. You can read about it here:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox_OS/Platform/Gaia
I also encourage you to subscribe to the dev-gaia mailing list
(dev-...@lists.mozilla.org).
Gabriele
plutois...@gmail.com
May 17, 2013, 3:14:32 PM5/17/13
to
I haven't gotten time to really delve into anything yet, but I will soon. Also for anyone else who sees this thread and wants up-to-date info about pushing apps to a device, this was just posted on the Mozilla Hacks blog: https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/05/pushing-firefox-os-apps-to-the-geeksphone/
plutois...@gmail.com
May 21, 2013, 4:05:45 AM5/21/13
to
Yeah most of my confusion came from not being aware that this version of the simulator is at a different stage from before. Anyways, how do you set the app's icon that displays on your homescreen? I've set all the possible sizes of icons in the manifest (even mostly following the app icon guidelines), but it still displays the default marketplace app logo.
Jan Jongboom
May 21, 2013, 6:31:40 AM5/21/13
to
On Tuesday, May 21, 2013 10:05:45 AM UTC+2, plutois...@gmail.com wrote:
> Yeah most of my confusion came from not being aware that this version of the simulator is at a different stage from before. Anyways, how do you set the app's icon that displays on your homescreen? I've set all the possible sizes of icons in the manifest (even mostly following the app icon guidelines), but it still displays the default marketplace app logo.
You can use this for inspiration. It's what we use to train developers.
> Yeah most of my confusion came from not being aware that this version of the simulator is at a different stage from before. Anyways, how do you set the app's icon that displays on your homescreen? I've set all the possible sizes of icons in the manifest (even mostly following the app icon guidelines), but it still displays the default marketplace app logo.
Jan Jongboom
May 21, 2013, 6:31:46 AM5/21/13
to
On Tuesday, May 21, 2013 10:05:45 AM UTC+2, plutois...@gmail.com wrote:
> Yeah most of my confusion came from not being aware that this version of the simulator is at a different stage from before. Anyways, how do you set the app's icon that displays on your homescreen? I've set all the possible sizes of icons in the manifest (even mostly following the app icon guidelines), but it still displays the default marketplace app logo.
https://github.com/comoyo/ffos-list-detail/tree/master/www
plutois...@gmail.com
May 22, 2013, 12:57:23 PM5/22/13
to
Message has been deleted
plutois...@gmail.com
May 27, 2013, 3:25:00 AM5/27/13
to
So I was able to get my app working and it's able to install itself on your device. My question now is how do I find out what the latest version is? For the most part, I've been trying to follow this (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Apps/Updating_apps), but neither the information in the window.navigator.mozApps.getSelf()'s manifest nor the window.navigator.mozApps.getSelf()'s checkForUpdate() method tells me about what the latest version of the app is on the web. How do I do that?
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