Thoughts from a Bafta nominated Podcaster, Blogger, Writer and Commentator.
“The goal is that Firefox OS shows that the Web can be a viable alternative to proprietary applications,” [Director of Research Andreas] Gal said. As the major websites online turn away from HTML to native code on smartphones, why is Mozilla’s Firefox OS pushing it as one of the main selling points? More to the point, there have been countless little mobile OS projects like this (such as Save JE), what makes this one special… beyond name recognition?
If you try to build a native app with HTML5 and friends, you’re using a stack of web technologies (OS, browser, JavaScript library, your app) to emulate the thing at the bottom of that stack. Performance will suffer; you’re at the mercy of this intermediate layer. It won’t feel "right". You’ll likely end up fixing or working around platform-specific oddities anyway. Lots of practical experience here, this is one article that is well worth reading and remembering.
