Fwd: A quick update on "Building Firefox OS"

[Fred Wenzel]

I did not mean to exclude dev-gaia from the recipients list, sorry about
that.

~F


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: A quick update on "Building Firefox OS"
Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:59:21 -0700
From: Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com>
To: engagement-developers <engagement...@lists.mozilla.org>
CC: Dev Ecosystem Team <deveco...@mozilla.com>, Daniel Buchner
<dbuc...@mozilla.com>, Gordon Brander <gbra...@mozilla.com>, ARNAU
MARCH CASTILLO <ar...@tid.es>, SERGIO VILA PAGES <ser...@tid.es>, Rob
MacDonald <rmacd...@mozilla.com>, Tony Santos <asa...@mozilla.com>

Hello, fellow developer people!

Let me update you shortly on what's happening in the world of apps
building blocks and components.

As you may know, buildingfirefoxos.com exists; It's a site originally
built by a few TEF engineers outlining the structural and visual
components used in Firefox OS/Gaia.

UX, Dev Ecosystem, Dev Engage and others have been working with the
buildingfirefox group to move the site onto a new platform and enable it
to be extended by the community. In the process, it also received a
"sandstone-esque" makeover to fit in better with Mozilla's sites.

Here's a staging instance of the new site:
<http://my.gh.buildingfirefoxos.com/>

What are some of the next steps?
- When our "developer" branding becomes available, the site will adapt
it, so it smoothly blends in with the other developer-facing sites.
- As they are developed, the site can expose x-tags-based web components
as an alternative to the "traditional" Gaia styles
- As Gaia considers representing the building blocks as web components,
the site can be adjusted to accompany that process.

We hope you find this a useful resource and looking forward to the next
steps as much as we do.

If you're interested in joining the project and getting your hands
"dirty", let me know. We currently have a weekly meeting Wednesday
mornings at a Europe-friendly time that I am happy to invite
contributors to.

Also, if you have any questions, as always don't hesitate to ask!

Thanks,
Fred

[Ben Francis]

It's nice that this is being brought into line with Mozilla branding and
I'm interested in the idea of using web components in our building blocks,
but this re-branding doesn't address my concerns with the original site.

1) It risks giving third party app developers the impression that they
should build Firefox OS apps using Firefox OS UI components, instead of
building web apps for the web. Sanctioning this web site via Mozilla
branding adds weight to that impression. Why should an open web app running
on Firefox OS, Tizen, Ubuntu Touch, OS X, Windows, Linux, Android and
Chrome OS follow the interaction and visual design conventions used in Gaia?

2) Based on my experience from three app days, the building blocks don't
actually work. The web site gives the impression that you can just copy and
paste the referenced CSS file into your app, write some HTML markup and it
will work. In reality there are many dependencies and additional assets you
need to download, which requires delving deep into the Gaia source code
repository.

Personally I think there are plenty of good web libraries and UI toolkits
out there already, but if we do want to provide our building blocks for
re-use then we need to do so in a way more easily consumable by third party
developers, and have clearer messaging around what it means to build an app
for the open web.

Ben

On Tue, Jun 18, 2013 at 9:31 PM, Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> I did not mean to exclude dev-gaia from the recipients list, sorry about
> that.
>
> ~F
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: A quick update on "Building Firefox OS"
> Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:59:21 -0700
> From: Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com>
> To: engagement-developers <engagement-developers@lists.**mozilla.org<engagement...@lists.mozilla.org>
> >
> CC: Dev Ecosystem Team <deveco...@mozilla.com>, Daniel Buchner <
> dbuc...@mozilla.com>, Gordon Brander <gbra...@mozilla.com>, ARNAU
> MARCH CASTILLO <ar...@tid.es>, SERGIO VILA PAGES <ser...@tid.es>, Rob
> MacDonald <rmacd...@mozilla.com>, Tony Santos <asa...@mozilla.com>
>
> Hello, fellow developer people!
>
> Let me update you shortly on what's happening in the world of apps
> building blocks and components.
>
> As you may know, buildingfirefoxos.com exists; It's a site originally
> built by a few TEF engineers outlining the structural and visual
> components used in Firefox OS/Gaia.
>
> UX, Dev Ecosystem, Dev Engage and others have been working with the
> buildingfirefox group to move the site onto a new platform and enable it
> to be extended by the community. In the process, it also received a
> "sandstone-esque" makeover to fit in better with Mozilla's sites.
>
> Here's a staging instance of the new site:

> <http://my.gh.**buildingfirefoxos.com/<http://my.gh.buildingfirefoxos.com/>

> >
>
> What are some of the next steps?
> - When our "developer" branding becomes available, the site will adapt
> it, so it smoothly blends in with the other developer-facing sites.
> - As they are developed, the site can expose x-tags-based web components
> as an alternative to the "traditional" Gaia styles
> - As Gaia considers representing the building blocks as web components,
> the site can be adjusted to accompany that process.
>
> We hope you find this a useful resource and looking forward to the next
> steps as much as we do.
>
> If you're interested in joining the project and getting your hands
> "dirty", let me know. We currently have a weekly meeting Wednesday
> mornings at a Europe-friendly time that I am happy to invite
> contributors to.
>
> Also, if you have any questions, as always don't hesitate to ask!
>
> Thanks,
> Fred
>
>

> ______________________________**_________________
> dev-gaia mailing list
> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/dev-gaia<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia>
>



--
Ben Francis
http://tola.me.uk

[ARNAU MARCH CASTILLO]

Ben,
Buildingfirefoxos.com came from the need of documentation on how to use
Building Blocks for core apps.
I've also attended to app days, and some developers without design
knowledge or even markup expertise, want to replicate our UI with minimum
effort. That's an starting point.

If you have enough expertise you can either start your web project from
scratch, or you can even use the building blocks we're providing through
BFFOS and customize them to your needs.

I'm a great fan of Twitter Bootstrap and have never used in my projects.
For me is a great site for inspiration but for thousands of users is the
starting point to build their projects.

Building Blocks were not thought to work in other browsers from the
beginning, although we claim for web standards.
BFFOS pretends to be a place to share resources with the people who wants
to use them, we are not forcing anybody or saying you have to do it that
way.

I agree with you this should further evolve to become easier to use and
have less dependencies, but we thought it's better to provide something
and then iterate it from devs feedback instead of waiting to have the
perfect solution for everyone.

We're working together with the guys from Mozilla in charge of pushing web
components forward, and converting the building blocks to web components
is something really exciting we are eager to explore. BFFOS may also be a
starting point to promote the usage of web components.

We are really aware BFFOS is not perfect and there's still a lot of work
to do, the same happens with Firefox OS itself. We're releasing v1, and
with the dev community's help we can make something useful for as much
people as possible.

It's just my opinion. Thanks for your feedback.
Arnau


El 20/06/13 11:37, "Ben Francis" <b...@krellian.com> escribió:

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[Anthony Ricaud]

I like the idea of creating our building blocks as web components but
this is not gonna produce significant results before at least 2 years,
maybe 3. (we need implementation in browser engines + time for the
implementations to be shipped)

So in the mean time, we're stuck with regular web technologies. And as
Ben said, our experience in app days is that the current building blocks
are hard to use for many people.

- Our current building blocks are not adapted to a multi-device webapp.
They've been created for Gaia and don't scale well to different screen
sizes and densities. They also don't work well with other platforms. So
if you use them, you're creating a FxOS app, not a webapp.
- Those building blocks are not ready to be used either. You'll need to
write the JavaScript to make them do anything useful. And sometimes,
that is a big part of the work.
- A lot of webapp authors don't start from scratch. They already use a
UI framework and adapting our building blocks is not an easy task.

Given these 3 points, I think we'd have way more impact if we created
FxOS themes for existing UI frameworks (or partnered with the frameworks
creators).

I've asked around and identified some mobile frameworks that we could
look at:
- jQuery mobile
- http://phonejs.devexpress.com/
- http://demos.kendoui.com/mobile/
- Sencha Touch http://www.sencha.com/products/touch
- http://www.iui-js.org/theme-gallery

[James Lal]

Like most of the tools inside gaia the only intended consumer _is_ gaia...
For example both documentation sites still list sources for "shared/" which
is useless for any outside contributor. We don't necessarily need to
partner with existing CSS frameworks. We can make this significantly easier
by promoting building blocks to their own repo and then consume them in
gaia as such.. In this way we can bring our development process in line
with the rest of the people who may want to use building blocks. This is a
very typical pattern across most companies/platforms and I think we should
be aggressive about following it...

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Anthony Ricaud <ant...@ricaud.me> wrote:

> I like the idea of creating our building blocks as web components but this
> is not gonna produce significant results before at least 2 years, maybe 3.
> (we need implementation in browser engines + time for the implementations
> to be shipped)
>
> So in the mean time, we're stuck with regular web technologies. And as Ben
> said, our experience in app days is that the current building blocks are
> hard to use for many people.
>
> - Our current building blocks are not adapted to a multi-device webapp.
> They've been created for Gaia and don't scale well to different screen
> sizes and densities. They also don't work well with other platforms. So if
> you use them, you're creating a FxOS app, not a webapp.
> - Those building blocks are not ready to be used either. You'll need to
> write the JavaScript to make them do anything useful. And sometimes, that
> is a big part of the work.
> - A lot of webapp authors don't start from scratch. They already use a UI
> framework and adapting our building blocks is not an easy task.
>
> Given these 3 points, I think we'd have way more impact if we created FxOS
> themes for existing UI frameworks (or partnered with the frameworks
> creators).
>
> I've asked around and identified some mobile frameworks that we could look
> at:
> - jQuery mobile
> - http://phonejs.devexpress.com/

> - http://demos.kendoui.com/**mobile/ <http://demos.kendoui.com/mobile/>
> - Sencha Touch http://www.sencha.com/**products/touch<http://www.sencha.com/products/touch>
> - http://www.iui-js.org/theme-**gallery<http://www.iui-js.org/theme-gallery>

>
>
>
> On 20/06/13 11:37, Ben Francis wrote:
>

>>> <http://my.gh.**buildingfirefo**xos.com/ <http://buildingfirefoxos.com/>

>>> <http://my.gh.**buildingfirefoxos.com/<http://my.gh.buildingfirefoxos.com/>
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>> What are some of the next steps?
>>> - When our "developer" branding becomes available, the site will adapt
>>> it, so it smoothly blends in with the other developer-facing sites.
>>> - As they are developed, the site can expose x-tags-based web components
>>> as an alternative to the "traditional" Gaia styles
>>> - As Gaia considers representing the building blocks as web components,
>>> the site can be adjusted to accompany that process.
>>>
>>> We hope you find this a useful resource and looking forward to the next
>>> steps as much as we do.
>>>
>>> If you're interested in joining the project and getting your hands
>>> "dirty", let me know. We currently have a weekly meeting Wednesday
>>> mornings at a Europe-friendly time that I am happy to invite
>>> contributors to.
>>>
>>> Also, if you have any questions, as always don't hesitate to ask!
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Fred
>>>
>>>

>>> ______________________________****_________________
>>> dev-gaia mailing list
>>> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org
>>> https://lists.mozilla.org/****listinfo/dev-gaia<https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/dev-gaia>
>>> <https://**lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/**dev-gaia<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia>

[Luigi Tedone]

Sencha Touch is a good framework with a lot of UI widgets and tools, but
it doesn't support Gecko actually.

[Fred Lin]

For information, I found a css UI framework called 'topcoat' open sourced by adobe
http://topcoat.io/

It take similar approach the use only CSS


some other candidates:

Flat-UI
http://designmodo.github.io/Flat-UI/

bootstrap based, mobile friendly UI


ratchet
http://maker.github.io/ratchet/

iOS style UI, with easy prototyping push.js


Currently most internet company are willing to provide web site + apps, but not only mobile apps/webapps.
As a web developer I'd prefer bootstrap based solution since it's proven of flexibility,
adaptive to both desktop and mobile web, and already has large user base.

Flat-UI shows the possibility that make bootstrap web site looks like native app.
It's time saver to get responsive and reuse existing knowledge with bootstrap.
Or Even Better: get webapp support directly while adopting new version/theme of bootstrap.

Besides, there are some initiatives about modulizing bootstrap UI components to web components.
http://www.dartlang.org/articles/web-ui/

It means use bootstrap as foundation also align the goal of moving building block to web component.


regards
--
Fred Lin


----- Origin -----
Sender: "Luigi Tedone" <luigi...@gmail.com>

Sencha Touch is a good framework with a lot of UI widgets and tools, but
it doesn't support Gecko actually.

Il 24/06/2013 19:04, Anthony Ricaud ha scritto:

[ARNAU MARCH CASTILLO]

Hi,
Comments inline.
Arnau

On Jun 24, 2013, at 7:04 PM, Anthony Ricaud <ant...@ricaud.me> wrote:

> I like the idea of creating our building blocks as web components but this is not gonna produce significant results before at least 2 years, maybe 3. (we need implementation in browser engines + time for the implementations to be shipped)

Dan, do you think it will take that long?

> So in the mean time, we're stuck with regular web technologies. And as Ben said, our experience in app days is that the current building blocks are hard to use for many people.

That's the idea of having buildingfirefoxos.com a place to document BB and make them easier to understand to 3rd party developers.

> - Our current building blocks are not adapted to a multi-device webapp. They've been created for Gaia and don't scale well to different screen sizes and densities. They also don't work well with other platforms. So if you use them, you're creating a FxOS app.

I'm working on a css to make BB work with modern browsers (https://github.com/buildingfirefoxos/Building-Blocks/blob/gh-pages/cross_browser.css). When we startedcreating BB they were supposed to be used only in Gaia. In future I think we should include "-webkit" prefix and all standard rules, and promote them into its own repo, not inside gaia/shared.

> - Those building blocks are not ready to be used either. You'll need to write the JavaScript to make them do anything useful. And sometimes, that is a big part of the work.

Some folk at Telefonica are creating the javascript to make some of the components work, I will be adding this inside BFFOS and document it (https://github.com/telefonicaid/B2G-Utility-Libraries.JS) It would be good to extract from gaia other bits of javascript already used for the rest of the components. Please let me know if you have some code I could reuse!

> - A lot of webapp authors don't start from scratch. They already use a UI framework and adapting our building blocks is not an easy task.
>
> Given these 3 points, I think we'd have way more impact if we created FxOS themes for existing UI frameworks (or partnered with the frameworks creators).
>
> I've asked around and identified some mobile frameworks that we could look at:
> - jQuery mobile
> - http://phonejs.devexpress.com/
> - http://demos.kendoui.com/mobile/
> - Sencha Touch http://www.sencha.com/products/touch
> - http://www.iui-js.org/theme-gallery

I have already tested theming for jQuery Mobile and Lungo.js, but as Visual design evolves it's quite hard to maintain all frameworks.
Maybe Pavel could give us some light about Kendo…
Also if we start theming a framework, it would look like we are supporting it…

>
> On 20/06/13 11:37, Ben Francis wrote:

> _______________________________________________
> dev-gaia mailing list
> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org

[Ismael González]

Hi all guys, i will like to give general thoughts about building-blocks / bbffos:

> It risks giving third party app developers the impression that they
> should build Firefox OS apps using Firefox OS UI components, instead of
> building web apps for the web.

> Like most of the tools inside gaia the only intended consumer _is_ gaia...

Of course building-blocks was meant/built to be only used inside Gaia, but as all we've seen, app developers want to use them, they want to look like FirefoxOS.
Yeah i know, they should look like another webapp, but there are a lot of people that only want to create FirefoxOS applications without maintaining a website behind a server.


So if they don't have easy access to resources that may help them to build their apps, even if you hide that resources inside a chest in the middle of the ocean and throw up the key to the moon, they will find and open the chest anyway.

The reality is that we must provide solutions in order to do not break-the-web and start seeing tons of applications looking ugly and having frustrated devs because we didn't provide the necessary resources.

I know this is more a product perspective, but what i think is we should maintain building-blocks/bbffos as a separated project, refactor it to simplify the use/customization, create an extra layer that allows opt in js interactions and allow it to run on all modern mobile browsers and different resolutions.

This is a huge thing, but i think we took the correct path by staring documenting what we have and make it public.


Congratulations to all the people involved in this project because is doing an enormous effort.

--Ismael González / @basiclines

El martes, 25 de junio de 2013 a las 08:34, ARNAU MARCH CASTILLO escribió:

> Hi,
> Comments inline.
> Arnau
>

> On Jun 24, 2013, at 7:04 PM, Anthony Ricaud <ant...@ricaud.me (mailto:ant...@ricaud.me)> wrote:
>
> > I like the idea of creating our building blocks as web components but this is not gonna produce significant results before at least 2 years, maybe 3. (we need implementation in browser engines + time for the implementations to be shipped)
>
> Dan, do you think it will take that long?
>
> > So in the mean time, we're stuck with regular web technologies. And as Ben said, our experience in app days is that the current building blocks are hard to use for many people.
>

> That's the idea of having buildingfirefoxos.com (http://buildingfirefoxos.com) a place to document BB and make them easier to understand to 3rd party developers.

>
> > - Our current building blocks are not adapted to a multi-device webapp. They've been created for Gaia and don't scale well to different screen sizes and densities. They also don't work well with other platforms. So if you use them, you're creating a FxOS app.
>
> I'm working on a css to make BB work with modern browsers (https://github.com/buildingfirefoxos/Building-Blocks/blob/gh-pages/cross_browser.css). When we startedcreating BB they were supposed to be used only in Gaia. In future I think we should include "-webkit" prefix and all standard rules, and promote them into its own repo, not inside gaia/shared.
>
> > - Those building blocks are not ready to be used either. You'll need to write the JavaScript to make them do anything useful. And sometimes, that is a big part of the work.
>
> Some folk at Telefonica are creating the javascript to make some of the components work, I will be adding this inside BFFOS and document it (https://github.com/telefonicaid/B2G-Utility-Libraries.JS) It would be good to extract from gaia other bits of javascript already used for the rest of the components. Please let me know if you have some code I could reuse!
>
> > - A lot of webapp authors don't start from scratch. They already use a UI framework and adapting our building blocks is not an easy task.
> >
> > Given these 3 points, I think we'd have way more impact if we created FxOS themes for existing UI frameworks (or partnered with the frameworks creators).
> >
> > I've asked around and identified some mobile frameworks that we could look at:
> > - jQuery mobile
> > - http://phonejs.devexpress.com/
> > - http://demos.kendoui.com/mobile/
> > - Sencha Touch http://www.sencha.com/products/touch
> > - http://www.iui-js.org/theme-gallery
> >
>
>
> I have already tested theming for jQuery Mobile and Lungo.js, but as Visual design evolves it's quite hard to maintain all frameworks.
> Maybe Pavel could give us some light about Kendo…
> Also if we start theming a framework, it would look like we are supporting it…
>
> >
> > On 20/06/13 11:37, Ben Francis wrote:

> > > > From: Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com (mailto:fwe...@mozilla.com)>
> > > > To: engagement-developers <engagement-developers@lists.**mozilla.org<engagement...@lists.mozilla.org (mailto:engagement...@lists.mozilla.org)>
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > CC: Dev Ecosystem Team <deveco...@mozilla.com (mailto:deveco...@mozilla.com)>, Daniel Buchner <
> > > > dbuc...@mozilla.com (mailto:dbuc...@mozilla.com)>, Gordon Brander <gbra...@mozilla.com (mailto:gbra...@mozilla.com)>, ARNAU
> > > > MARCH CASTILLO <ar...@tid.es (mailto:ar...@tid.es)>, SERGIO VILA PAGES <ser...@tid.es (mailto:ser...@tid.es)>, Rob
> > > > MacDonald <rmacd...@mozilla.com (mailto:rmacd...@mozilla.com)>, Tony Santos <asa...@mozilla.com (mailto:asa...@mozilla.com)>

> > > >
> > > > Hello, fellow developer people!
> > > >
> > > > Let me update you shortly on what's happening in the world of apps
> > > > building blocks and components.
> > > >

> > > > As you may know, buildingfirefoxos.com (http://buildingfirefoxos.com) exists; It's a site originally

> > > > dev-...@lists.mozilla.org (mailto:dev-...@lists.mozilla.org)

> > > > https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/dev-gaia<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia>
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > dev-gaia mailing list

> > dev-...@lists.mozilla.org (mailto:dev-...@lists.mozilla.org)

> > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia
> >
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> Este mensaje se dirige exclusivamente a su destinatario. Puede consultar nuestra política de envío y recepción de correo electrónico en el enlace situado más abajo.
> This message is intended exclusively for its addressee. We only send and receive email on the basis of the terms set out at:
> http://www.tid.es/ES/PAGINAS/disclaimer.aspx
> _______________________________________________
> dev-gaia mailing list

> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org (mailto:dev-...@lists.mozilla.org)
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia
>
>

[SERGIO VILA PAGES]

IMHO what we have here is an opportunity to make building blocks something useful for people creating Firefox OS apps. I agree there's a lot of work to do to make them really easy to use, and it's also true that, as a dev, you can use them or not to create your Firefox OS app. You decide, we're not saying you MUST use them. To pick an example, you can use bootstrap to create your web page, or you can create one using a text editor if you have the skills. The reality is that milions of users are using bootstrap and making themes for it because they find it not only easy to use but also a way to create better designs for their sites. Not all devs are UX experts ad viual design pros, that's why these kind of resources are interesting in order for them to cover that space. I think that's an interesting approach. We're far from that? maybe yes, but the way to arrive is to start walking. And that's what we're trying to do.

I've been also attending some dev conferences on Firefox OS, some of them as a speaker,and i've seen there's interest in using building blocks to create apps.

I think the conversation here should be how we can make them more open and easy to use instead of talking about using any other third party framework and adapt it to be used in Gaia. Why do we have to invest the effort in using jQuery mobile and not using that time in making BB better? I don't quite understand that.

//Sergi

El 25/06/2013, a las 09:38, "Ismael González" <igonzale...@gmail.com> escribió:

> Hi all guys, i will like to give general thoughts about building-blocks / bbffos:
>

>> It risks giving third party app developers the impression that they
>> should build Firefox OS apps using Firefox OS UI components, instead of
>> building web apps for the web.

>>>>> From: Fred Wenzel <fwe...@mozilla.com (mailto:fwe...@mozilla.com)>
>>>>> To: engagement-developers <engagement-developers@lists.**mozilla.org<engagement...@lists.mozilla.org (mailto:engagement...@lists.mozilla.org)>
>>>>>
>>>>> CC: Dev Ecosystem Team <deveco...@mozilla.com (mailto:deveco...@mozilla.com)>, Daniel Buchner <
>>>>> dbuc...@mozilla.com (mailto:dbuc...@mozilla.com)>, Gordon Brander <gbra...@mozilla.com (mailto:gbra...@mozilla.com)>, ARNAU
>>>>> MARCH CASTILLO <ar...@tid.es (mailto:ar...@tid.es)>, SERGIO VILA PAGES <ser...@tid.es (mailto:ser...@tid.es)>, Rob
>>>>> MacDonald <rmacd...@mozilla.com (mailto:rmacd...@mozilla.com)>, Tony Santos <asa...@mozilla.com (mailto:asa...@mozilla.com)>
>>>>>

>>>>> Hello, fellow developer people!
>>>>>
>>>>> Let me update you shortly on what's happening in the world of apps
>>>>> building blocks and components.
>>>>>

>>>>> As you may know, buildingfirefoxos.com (http://buildingfirefoxos.com) exists; It's a site originally

>>>>> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org (mailto:dev-...@lists.mozilla.org)
>>>>> https://lists.mozilla.org/**listinfo/dev-gaia<https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> dev-gaia mailing list
>>> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org (mailto:dev-...@lists.mozilla.org)
>>> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> Este mensaje se dirige exclusivamente a su destinatario. Puede consultar nuestra política de envío y recepción de correo electrónico en el enlace situado más abajo.
>> This message is intended exclusively for its addressee. We only send and receive email on the basis of the terms set out at:
>> http://www.tid.es/ES/PAGINAS/disclaimer.aspx
>> _______________________________________________
>> dev-gaia mailing list
>> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org (mailto:dev-...@lists.mozilla.org)
>> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia
>
>

> _______________________________________________
> dev-gaia mailing list
> dev-...@lists.mozilla.org

[Guillermo López Leal]

El 24/06/13 19:04, Anthony Ricaud escribió:

>
> I've asked around and identified some mobile frameworks that we could
> look at:
> - jQuery mobile
> - http://phonejs.devexpress.com/
> - http://demos.kendoui.com/mobile/
> - Sencha Touch http://www.sencha.com/products/touch
> - http://www.iui-js.org/theme-gallery

You can add Lungo.js (based on Spain): http://lungo.tapquo.com/

It is optimized for FirefoxOS now and its speed is really high and you
can prototype apps quickly.

Cheers,


--
Guillermo López [willyaranda]
http://mozilla-hispano.org
http://twitter.com/mozilla_hispano
http://facebook.com/mozillahispano
Certified Mozillian: https://mozillians.org/willyaranda

[Stormy Peters]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Anthony Ricaud" <ant...@ricaud.me>
> To: mozilla-...@lists.mozilla.org
> Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 11:04:36 AM
> Subject: Re: A quick update on "Building Firefox OS"
>
> Given these 3 points, I think we'd have way more impact if we created
> FxOS themes for existing UI frameworks (or partnered with the frameworks
> creators).
>

> I've asked around and identified some mobile frameworks that we could
> look at:
> - jQuery mobile
> - http://phonejs.devexpress.com/
> - http://demos.kendoui.com/mobile/
> - Sencha Touch http://www.sencha.com/products/touch
> - http://www.iui-js.org/theme-gallery

We are talking to several of these. Rick Fant is leading that right now.

We did a survey on Hacks about a year ago on web developer frameworks.
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/08/developer-survey-results-libraries-and-cross-browser-on-mobile/

Stormy

[Anthony Ricaud]

On 24/06/13 22:08, Luigi Tedone wrote:
> Sencha Touch is a good framework with a lot of UI widgets and tools, but
> it doesn't support Gecko actually.

Then we should talk with them to get this support. Given that it
supports Windows Phone, it doesn't rely on WebKit proprietary APIs so it
should be easy to get this support.

And given Stormy's email, it looks like that's what we're doing already.

[Anthony Ricaud]

On 25/06/13 08:34, ARNAU MARCH CASTILLO wrote:
> That's the idea of having buildingfirefoxos.com a place to
> document BB and make them easier to understand to 3rd party
> developers.

I like the idea of documenting our UI, so that frameworks have good
documents to work with when creating a theme. But I don't think the
audience of buildingfirefoxos.com should be app authors. I think it
should be framework authors.

> I'm working on a css to make BB work with modern browsers
> (https://github.com/buildingfirefoxos/Building-Blocks/blob/gh-
> pages/cross_browser.css). When we startedcreating BB they were
> supposed to be used only in Gaia. In future I think we should
> include "-webkit" prefix and all standard rules, and promote them
> into its own repo, not inside gaia/shared.

> Some folk at Telefonica are creating the javascript to make some of
> the components work, I will be adding this inside BFFOS and document
> it (https://github.com/telefonicaid/B2G-Utility-Libraries.JS) It
> would be good to extract from gaia other bits of javascript already
> used for the rest of the components. Please let me know if you have
> some code I could reuse!

So you're effectively creating a new framework (cross-platform CSS, JS
to run the interface, etc.). That is a lot of work and apps that will be
created with this new framework will only match the FirefoxOS look and
feel. And I don't think that's good for the web. Hence my suggestion to
integrate into existing frameworks rather than creating our own.

> I have already tested theming for jQuery Mobile and Lungo.js, but as
> Visual design evolves it's quite hard to maintain all frameworks.

We don't have to maintain all of them (we can't, there's too many). Some
of them are not open source so we can't contribute. We just have to stay
in touch with them. We can kickstart by providing some themes.

> Maybe Pavel could give us some light about Kendo…
> Also if we start theming a framework, it would look like we are
> supporting it…

But if we have FxOS themes for 10 frameworks, we're just telling people:
"use your existing tools, there is a theme for it".

[SERGIO VILA PAGES]

We started creating buildingfirefox with the idea of documenting Firefox OS UI and provide some useful resources. When we started to provided it as a resource in some events and the site evolved, we thought it made sense to work in creating a framework out of it to make it easier for people to create teir apps (as you've said several times, and i agree, it's really hard to create something similar to an app in Firefox OS).

We were asked by some people from the MDN and dev community in mozilla to make it more "official", because they liked the approach, and they asked us to make a joint effort and work in something like this together, which makes a lot of sense from our point of view.

I understand you like other frameworks, because most of them are more mature and there're more devs using them. Some have several years of development behind. That's ok, but i can't see why it's not worth to continue working in buildingfirefox to provide a useful framework. I know that's a lot of work, but i think it's worth creating it.

As you said devs should have freedom to create their apps, and creating themes and skins is in our roadmap, but we're going step by step. I can't understand why you say providing an open framewrok to the community is working against the open web.

BFFOS is not a mozilla initiative at the moment, although we'd really like to have you on board. Right now BFFOS is just a framework we're creating in our spare time (that's by 2 people at the moment), an we'd like to make it bigger and collaborate with mozilla if possible. I really understad that you don't want to endorse BFFOS at the moment, and you prefer to work endorsing other 3rd party frameworks which are more mature. That's fair enough. But we will continue working in BFFOS as a framework the way we've been working on it until now.

Who knows, maybe in 2 years from now BFFOS is something you find worth exploring and we can talk about collaborating again.

Cheers

//Sergi

El 25/06/2013, a las 21:44, "Anthony Ricaud" <ant...@ricaud.me> escribió:

> On 25/06/13 08:34, ARNAU MARCH CASTILLO wrote:

> > That's the idea of having buildingfirefoxos.com a place to
> > document BB and make them easier to understand to 3rd party
> > developers.

> I like the idea of documenting our UI, so that frameworks have good documents to work with when creating a theme. But I don't think the audience of buildingfirefoxos.com should be app authors. I think it should be framework authors.
>

> > I'm working on a css to make BB work with modern browsers
> > (https://github.com/buildingfirefoxos/Building-Blocks/blob/gh-
> > pages/cross_browser.css). When we startedcreating BB they were
> > supposed to be used only in Gaia. In future I think we should
> > include "-webkit" prefix and all standard rules, and promote them
> > into its own repo, not inside gaia/shared.

> > Some folk at Telefonica are creating the javascript to make some of
> > the components work, I will be adding this inside BFFOS and document
> > it (https://github.com/telefonicaid/B2G-Utility-Libraries.JS) It
> > would be good to extract from gaia other bits of javascript already
> > used for the rest of the components. Please let me know if you have
> > some code I could reuse!

> So you're effectively creating a new framework (cross-platform CSS, JS to run the interface, etc.). That is a lot of work and apps that will be created with this new framework will only match the FirefoxOS look and feel. And I don't think that's good for the web. Hence my suggestion to integrate into existing frameworks rather than creating our own.
>

> > I have already tested theming for jQuery Mobile and Lungo.js, but as
> > Visual design evolves it's quite hard to maintain all frameworks.

> We don't have to maintain all of them (we can't, there's too many). Some of them are not open source so we can't contribute. We just have to stay in touch with them. We can kickstart by providing some themes.
>

> > Maybe Pavel could give us some light about Kendo…
> > Also if we start theming a framework, it would look like we are
> > supporting it…

> But if we have FxOS themes for 10 frameworks, we're just telling people: "use your existing tools, there is a theme for it".

[Salvador de la Puente González]

Hello people

I think there are several problems here related with Ben concerns (inline):

On 20/06/13 11:37, Ben Francis wrote:

It's nice that this is being brought into line with Mozilla branding and
I'm interested in the idea of using web components in our building blocks,
but this re-branding doesn't address my concerns with the original site.

1) It risks giving third party app developers the impression that they
should build Firefox OS apps using Firefox OS UI components, instead of
building web apps for the web. Sanctioning this web site via Mozilla
branding adds weight to that impression. Why should an open web app running
on Firefox OS, Tizen, Ubuntu Touch, OS X, Windows, Linux, Android and
Chrome OS follow the interaction and visual design conventions used in Gaia?

I) First, we brand:

"The Web is the platform"... "so develop a WebApp and it will show correctly in all web-based platforms".

This is unrealistic because we focused on delivering an Android/iOS-like user experience (and this is not a criticism, this is a fact) so we are dealing with card views, animations, drawers, switches... a lot of components not seen on regular websites but in mobile applications so it is reasonable that Building Blocks are focused on displaying this kind of experience. Media queries are there, if you need to adapt your application to several views, use them.

2) Based on my experience from three app days, the building blocks don't
actually work. The web site gives the impression that you can just copy and
paste the referenced CSS file into your app, write some HTML markup and it
will work. In reality there are many dependencies and additional assets you
need to download, which requires delving deep into the Gaia source code
repository.

II) Developers want to look "native"

When I come to an app day and it's my turn to explain the architecture of Firefox OS, I remark our native idiom is HTML5 (the stack of technologies), the programming language is JavaScript and there is no "native UI library". But the developers want to look like Gaia. At the first moment they want to feel integrated so I point them to buildingfirefoxos.com and the GitHub repository with the building blocks. Why? Because they want a smooth bootstrapping with useful snippets and smart copy & paste. Because a one person team wants to go straight to the meat, to the core of his application; not messing up with the UX stuff.

Personally I think there are plenty of good web libraries and UI toolkits
out there already, but if we do want to provide our building blocks for
re-use then we need to do so in a way more easily consumable by third party
developers, and have clearer messaging around what it means to build an app
for the open web.

III) The way the Web evolves is by using frameworks.

Very few developers are really interested in building the back-bones and scaffolding every time they start a new app. Frameworks are everywhere in the web, call them frameworks, call them utilities, call them toolkits, most of developers don't work with vanilla JavaScript, the use, mix and assemble other solutions. When a solution is widely used, they become de facto standard and it means the Web probably adopt it in the near future. Frameworks are ways for innovation and best practices as well. Let's abandon our framework panic once and for all. It is true more of frameworks out there are overkilling and introduce unnecessary overhead but we can use other strategies, be more modular, use polyfills, be lighter...

Corollary: a frameworks is only useful when it's used and was created to cover real needs. We started BB to document how Gaia app should look for Gaia core applications, it was useful for us. I have always though we should include the JavaScript snippets to make them work but, even without the code, HTML and CSS was useful. Let's evolve them.

So:

IV) What do we want?

There is another conversation in Gaia list saying Gaia is the first place where developers are going to look at but Gaia is not intended to be the correct way to do WebApps (this is because when working on core apps we are very constrained by the hardware limitations). So before pushing for other solutions we should ask ourselves (or ask Product or ask Strategy) what do we want with the BB? In my opinion, it should be great if there is a normalized way to develop Firefox OS applications. Not WebApps but Firefox OS applications. And I would want to "copy & paste & include JS" to make them work as expected. Remember points I and II, we are saying "develop web applications" but we are delivering a very mobile-like UX, we are not programming as we program WebApps (I can not imagine moving a 1080px height card to the bottom to discover a settings view, xP) and developers want to feel native so:

* If we want to encourage other ways to develop applications, then we should re-think about the UX experience we are offering. Because, we like it or not, Gaia and building blocks in extension are the references for developers.

* If we want to ease the development cycle, then we need to evolve BB to be easier to use. So, eventually we'll be shipping a framework (utility / library, whatever).

These are my main concerns and thoughts.
Hope they help!

[Luigi Tedone]

+1

It would be great to have Sencha Touch support Firefox, because Sencha
has got a very good tool for prototyping applications (Sencha Architect
and Sencha Animator). The worst part is that these tools are not free
and quite expensive.

[Ben Francis]

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 8:39 AM, Ismael González <igonzale...@gmail.com
> wrote:

> I know this is more a product perspective, but what i think is we should
> maintain building-blocks/bbffos as a separated project, refactor it to
> simplify the use/customization, create an extra layer that allows opt in js
> interactions and allow it to run on all modern mobile browsers and
> different resolutions.
>
> This is a huge thing, but i think we took the correct path by staring
> documenting what we have and make it public.

Apparently this has now happened.

The Mozilla branded Building Blocks web site has launched with a blog post
https://hacks.mozilla.org/2013/07/firefox-os-building-blocks-find-a-new-home-and-get-more-streamlined/
at http://buildingfirefoxos.com/ - very clearly aimed at third party app
developers with the tag line "Start creating your own apps".

The downloads section links to a fork of the building blocks from Gaia in
their own repository https://github.com/buildingfirefoxos/Building-Blocks

So building blocks is now a separate project, not maintained by Gaia
developers?

[Ben Francis]

Note that buildingfirefoxos.com seems to have some DNS/load balancer issues
and you'll sometimes get the old web site or a broken site. Just reload the
page until you see the new one.

[Stefan Arentz]

On Jun 20, 2013, at 5:37 AM, Ben Francis <b...@krellian.com> wrote:

> It's nice that this is being brought into line with Mozilla branding and
> I'm interested in the idea of using web components in our building blocks,
> but this re-branding doesn't address my concerns with the original site.
>
> 1) It risks giving third party app developers the impression that they
> should build Firefox OS apps using Firefox OS UI components, instead of
> building web apps for the web.

I think you are actually asking two things here:

1) Should developers build web apps for the web
2) Should developers use Firefox OS UI components for Packaged Firefox OS Apps

Personally I think both are incredibly important. The state of the mobile web is poor at the moment. There are very few mobile versions of sites that really stand out. We need to make a huge effort to encourage people to build proper and functional mobile versions.

On the other hand, don’t we also want to have awesome and good looking *packaged privileged* apps for Firefox OS? Apps that work offline, use our WebAPIs, etc.?

Those are two different missions but I don’t think they are mutually exclusive.

> Sanctioning this web site via Mozilla
> branding adds weight to that impression. Why should an open web app running
> on Firefox OS, Tizen, Ubuntu Touch, OS X, Windows, Linux, Android and
> Chrome OS follow the interaction and visual design conventions used in Gaia?

Because users might appreciate a consistent look and feel for third-party apps?

I don’t actually know that for sure. Time will have to tell how that works out on Firefox OS. Maybe it is all different on this platform. But ... if it is any indication, I can tell you from experience that apps on iOS that have an inconsistent look and feel are not received as well as an are less successful than apps that use the system provided UI.

> Personally I think there are plenty of good web libraries and UI toolkits
> out there already, but if we do want to provide our building blocks for
> re-use then we need to do so in a way more easily consumable by third party
> developers, and have clearer messaging around what it means to build an app
> for the open web.

I have mixed feelings about this. The Firefox OS built-in apps do not use frameworks for a good reason. They are lean and mean and start up quickly and have very little latency and a small memory footprint. I don’t know if you have looked at something like jQuery Mobile or Sencha recently but the demos are teeth grinding on low-end devices.

Personally I think we should try to encourage people who write packages apps to follow Gaia UI/UX and Coding styles.

I really miss the latter in the Building Blocks. It is good to have CSS and HTML snippets for things like menus and dialogs, but we also need to teach people that it is relatively easy to make those dialogs appear and handle clicks on elements without needing a heavyweight framework.

S.

[Ben Francis]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 1:47 AM, Stefan Arentz <sar...@mozilla.com> wrote:

>
> On Jun 20, 2013, at 5:37 AM, Ben Francis <b...@krellian.com> wrote:
>
> 1) It risks giving third party app developers the impression that they
> should build Firefox OS apps using Firefox OS UI components, instead of
> building web apps for the web.
>
>
> I think you are actually asking two things here:
>
> 1) Should developers build web apps for the web
> 2) Should developers use Firefox OS UI components for Packaged Firefox OS
> Apps
>

I wasn't asking that at all and I strongly disagree that hosted and
packaged apps should be considered differently in this context. Packaged
apps are just a distribution mechanism we came to as a compromise until we
can create something more "webby" [1].

> On the other hand, don’t we also want to have awesome and good looking
> *packaged privileged* apps for Firefox OS? Apps that work offline, use our
> WebAPIs, etc.?
>

Any API which is currently specific to Firefox OS should be considered a
bug, and should either be deprecated or standardised at some point in the
future. They're not our APIs.

>
> Those are two different missions but I don’t think they are mutually
> exclusive.
>

Mozilla's mission is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the
web [2]. Not Firefox OS. The goal of the Firefox OS project is to show that
"the web can displace proprietary, single-vendor stacks for application
development" [3]. Not create another one.

> Sanctioning this web site via Mozilla
> branding adds weight to that impression. Why should an open web app running
> on Firefox OS, Tizen, Ubuntu Touch, OS X, Windows, Linux, Android and
> Chrome OS follow the interaction and visual design conventions used in
> Gaia?
>
>
> Because users might appreciate a consistent look and feel for third-party
> apps?
>

> I don’t actually know that for sure. Time will have to tell how that works
> out on Firefox OS. Maybe it is all different on this platform.
>

Consistent with what? iOS apps only work on iOS. The web is different.
Should I make my web sites "consistent" with Internet Explorer?

> But ... if it is any indication, I can tell you from experience that apps
> on iOS that have an inconsistent look and feel are not received as well as
> an are less successful than apps that use the system provided UI.
>

Do you have data to back that up? Facebook and Twitter seem pretty
successful and they both have a distinctive look and feel quite separate
from the platforms they run on.

> Personally I think there are plenty of good web libraries and UI toolkits
> out there already, but if we do want to provide our building blocks for
> re-use then we need to do so in a way more easily consumable by third party
> developers, and have clearer messaging around what it means to build an app
> for the open web.
>
> I have mixed feelings about this. The Firefox OS built-in apps do not use
> frameworks for a good reason. They are lean and mean and start up quickly
> and have very little latency and a small memory footprint.
>

FWIW, that isn't why Firefox OS built-in apps don't use a framework. We
intentionally built them the hard way to force us to expose gaps in the
platform and fix them, rather than filling those gaps with a framework.

> I don’t know if you have looked at something like jQuery Mobile or Sencha
> recently but the demos are teeth grinding on low-end devices.
>

Let's help them fix that.

>
> Personally I think we should try to encourage people who write packages
> apps to follow Gaia UI/UX and Coding styles.
>

Why? If the interaction and visual design conventions in Gaia change
dramatically in version 2, should the whole of the web re-design their apps
to be in line with that?

As a Gaia developer I wouldn't necessarily recommend that third party app
developers follow the coding styles in Gaia. I don't think Gaia even
follows the coding styles in Gaia.

There's nothing wrong with providing re-usable bits of code to help people
build web apps, that's good. But I would argue that running a web site
called "Building Firefox OS" encouraging people to "start creating [their]
own apps" specifically targeted at Firefox OS, using the same visual styles
as Firefox OS, using components that don't yet work cross-platform
potentially undermines Mozilla's mission. Let's not add to the problem
we're trying to solve, through well intentioned but misguided messaging.

Ben

1) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mozilla.dev.webapps/hnCzm2RcX5o
2) http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
3)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.platform/dmip1GpD5II/CzJSSUMq5HsJ

[Stormy Peters]

On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 4:50 AM, Ben Francis <b...@krellian.com> wrote:

>
>
> There's nothing wrong with providing re-usable bits of code to help people
> build web apps, that's good. But I would argue that running a web site
> called "Building Firefox OS" encouraging people to "start creating [their]
> own apps" specifically targeted at Firefox OS, using the same visual styles
> as Firefox OS, using components that don't yet work cross-platform
> potentially undermines Mozilla's mission. Let's not add to the problem
> we're trying to solve, through well intentioned but misguided messaging.
>

As Fred said, we are working on incorporating Building Firefox OS into some
of our other developer materials (DevHub, MDN). It's both branding and
functionality and integration into other tools that we have.

I see engagement-developers@ has been dropped off this conversation, but
that's probably a good place to have the conversation.

Stormy

[Stefan Arentz]

On Jul 8, 2013, at 6:50 AM, Ben Francis <b...@krellian.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 8, 2013 at 1:47 AM, Stefan Arentz <sar...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
> On Jun 20, 2013, at 5:37 AM, Ben Francis <b...@krellian.com> wrote:
>> 1) It risks giving third party app developers the impression that they
>> should build Firefox OS apps using Firefox OS UI components, instead of
>> building web apps for the web.
>
> I think you are actually asking two things here:
>
> 1) Should developers build web apps for the web
> 2) Should developers use Firefox OS UI components for Packaged Firefox OS Apps
>
> I wasn't asking that at all and I strongly disagree that hosted and packaged apps should be considered differently in this context. Packaged apps are just a distribution mechanism we came to as a compromise until we can create something more "webby" [1].

Right. But the impression now is that packaged apps are our ‘native’ apps. Specifically because they can be privileged and have access to APIs that people consider ‘native’.

I’m not trying to debate this, I’m trying to understand this. There is mixed messaging about this and it is confusing.

>
> On the other hand, don’t we also want to have awesome and good looking *packaged privileged* apps for Firefox OS? Apps that work offline, use our WebAPIs, etc.?
>
> Any API which is currently specific to Firefox OS should be considered a bug, and should either be deprecated or standardised at some point in the future. They're not our APIs.

If this is really how we look at it, what is the more developer friendly version of this? Developers like API stability and backward compatibility. A question they will ask is "if I put a packaged app on the store today, is there any guarantee it will work 4 months from now?"

Should we discourage people from writing privileged apps and tell them to stick with web apps as much as possible?

S.

[Julien Wajsberg]

Le 08/07/2013 15:37, Stefan Arentz a écrit :
> Should we discourage people from writing privileged apps and tell them to stick with web apps as much as possible?
>

Privileged apps are where our "proprietary" API are, and that's for a
good reason: we don't want to pollute the web with those API.

Developers should try hard to not use those API. They are non-standard,
and will probably change over time even if they're not deleted. I mean,
developers should be really aware of this.

I'd like to advocate using hosted apps with appcache, but I know there
are some problems (notably perf) right now with this approach. In an
ideal world, you'll use packaged apps when you'll need access to these APIs.

Another issue is that the marketplace currently only knows packaged apps
AFAIK.

So that's not an easy debate at all...
--
Julien

[Jordano Francisco (UK)]

On 08/07/2013 16:00, "Julien Wajsberg" <jwaj...@mozilla.com> wrote:

>I'd like to advocate using hosted apps with appcache, but I know there
>are some problems (notably perf) right now with this approach. In an
>ideal world, you'll use packaged apps when you'll need access to these
>APIs.
>
>Another issue is that the marketplace currently only knows packaged apps
>AFAIK.

AFAIK, you can add hosted apps, you just send where your manifest is
located :)

Cheers,
F.

[Julien Wajsberg]

hey, nice to know :) thanks Francisco !

[ANTONIO MANUEL AMAYA CALVO]

On 08/07/2013, at 17:13, "Julien Wajsberg" <jwaj...@mozilla.com> wrote:

> Le 08/07/2013 15:37, Stefan Arentz a écrit :
>> Should we discourage people from writing privileged apps and tell them to stick with web apps as much as possible?
>
> Privileged apps are where our "proprietary" API are, and that's for a
> good reason: we don't want to pollute the web with those API.
>
> Developers should try hard to not use those API. They are non-standard,
> and will probably change over time even if they're not deleted. I mean,
> developers should be really aware of this.
>

AFAIK privileged APIs are privileged because of security concerns, not because of pollution ones. I don't think the pollution argument was used when deciding the minimum privilege level for an API. It's just a issue of restricting the access that's given to sensible APIs (because they're dangerous or because they access personal/sensible data) to apps that have been vetoed previously.

I don't think they're inherently more volatile than the new, non privileged APIs either. Nor less susceptible to be standardized.

I wouldn't go as far as discouraging their use either. Quite the contrary in fact. Those APIs allow the creation of richer apps that will in turn enrich the platform.

Best,

Antonio

[Julien Wajsberg]

Le 08/07/2013 17:49, ANTONIO MANUEL AMAYA CALVO a écrit :
> On 08/07/2013, at 17:13, "Julien Wajsberg" <jwaj...@mozilla.com> wrote:
>
>> Le 08/07/2013 15:37, Stefan Arentz a écrit :
>>> Should we discourage people from writing privileged apps and tell them to stick with web apps as much as possible?
>> Privileged apps are where our "proprietary" API are, and that's for a
>> good reason: we don't want to pollute the web with those API.
>>
>> Developers should try hard to not use those API. They are non-standard,
>> and will probably change over time even if they're not deleted. I mean,
>> developers should be really aware of this.
>>
> AFAIK privileged APIs are privileged because of security concerns, not because of pollution ones. I don't think the pollution argument was used when deciding the minimum privilege level for an API. It's just a issue of restricting the access that's given to sensible APIs (because they're dangerous or because they access personal/sensible data) to apps that have been vetoed previously.
>
> I don't think they're inherently more volatile than the new, non privileged APIs either. Nor less susceptible to be standardized.
>
> I wouldn't go as far as discouraging their use either. Quite the contrary in fact. Those APIs allow the creation of richer apps that will in turn enrich the platform.

Antonio, thanks for seeing the positive side :)

However I strongly believe that in the end all the nice and rich API
should either go to the Web content or go away and die.

--
Julien