Great work, Potch, Leon, Daniel, Arron and everyone who's worked on this. Exciting stuff :)
WRT to the meta conversation this has spawned, I feel we need to step back and clearly articulate our goals and assumptions if we're going to be successful here. We certainly cannot just apply yesterday's solutions to today's challenges. Any time someone says "X worked for browsers, so we'll do the same for mobile", for example, huge bells should go off. Mobile presents very unique challenges. The portability of interaction design patterns between platforms as divergent as Windows Phone and Android, for example. And the appetite of consumers for "native-feeling" apps. Etc. Will try to return to this thread in next few days with detailed thoughts. Maybe a blog post. Have wanted to for a long while now, so am glad this conversation is happening :) Cheers, — Josh Carpenter UX Lead, Firefox OS Mozilla On Aug 28, 2013, at 12:00 PM, Bill Maggs <[email protected]> wrote: > <picks up whip, approaches lifeless horse> > > I agree with much of the sentiment expressed here, it is more about how we > treat the world's developers outside of our doors. Yes, we want the apps > people create to work all across the Web, but for several reasons (like the > reasons we made Gaia apps the way we did?), these same developers want to get > up and running making things for FxOS. They are clearly and repeatedly asking > for this right now. Packaging, FxOS-dependent APIs, all of it will wither > away, I am sure, but let's give them some convenient theming (not by default > but as a choice) as our blogs, evangelists, and PR consistently says that the > biggest win for all is to make apps that work where the Web is. We should do > both. > > I am mostly just sticking up for those newbies and budding developers here. > "Do as I say, not as do" is not a really nice message to developers that we > want to love us. > > > On Aug 28, 2013, at 11:37 AM, Ben Francis <[email protected]> wrote: > >> There do seem to be two issues being discussed here. >> >> One is that many app developers would rather use a library of UI components >> or a framework that encapsulates some best practice than create their app >> from scratch. That's completely understandable because it allows developers >> to focus on the value their app provides rather than writing boilerplate >> code. There are many existing libraries like JQuery etc. which provide that. >> If we feel that there's a gap in the market for another library/framework or >> that we'd like to create one to promote some best practices ourselves (like >> Web Components) then hopefully Brick can fulfil those requirements. >> >> The other issue is whether app developers should give their web apps the >> same visual style as the Gaia apps that ship with Firefox OS devices. I >> think this thinking comes from the Android and iOS (and other proprietary >> platform) worlds where it's normal to create a different app for each >> platform and follow different visual guidelines for each. On the web it >> makes no sense at all. GMail, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia look the same >> on Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Internet Explorer and Safari on the desktop. >> There are very slight variations in the styling of input elements that give >> them that native look and feel, but those you get for free and we have the >> equivalent on Firefox OS with select elements etc. You shouldn't need to >> create a separate app for every web app runtime, that's one of the problems >> we're trying to solve. >> >> If app developers start building their web apps specifically for Firefox OS >> like they would on Android and iOS then we have lost. Imitating the same >> visual style as Gaia apps is one clear indicator of this mentality and in my >> is view something we should discourage. Yes there are currently packaged >> apps that only work on Firefox OS, but this a bug not a feature. >> >> The web is the platform, not Firefox OS. >> >> Ben >> >> >> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 6:28 PM, Fred Wenzel <[email protected]> wrote: >> On 8/27/13 12:18 PM, Fabrice Desre wrote: >> On 08/27/2013 11:52 AM, Bill Maggs wrote: >> The last item in Fred's list is I think a very high priority. Can the >> buildingfirefoxos.com folk help? >> >> I don't want to open a can of worms, but that is controversial at best. >> Encouraging people to build apps that follow the same look and feel as >> gaia apps and not just build "web apps" is not very much in line with >> the "open web" idea. Will these app look also good on desktop (hint: >> gaia apps don't)? Will they look good on android? Most successful apps >> have their own look and feel, which is part of their identity. The Gaia >> look and feel is ... Gaia's identity. I kind of don't want to get random >> apps appear like default ones also; and while there's nothing we can do >> to prevent that to happen, we should not promote it either. >> >> I'm very happy to see brick solve the problem of providing well designed >> and efficient reusable components, but we should stay away from the look >> and feel. Please don't help build a firefox OS silo. Let other people >> contribute fun and crazy themes on top of brick instead! >> >> Fabrice >> >> >> I hear ya, but I also think you're conflating two problems: >> >> One, that we're trying to solve here, is the simplicity (or not) of building >> an attractive and functional app UI. As we've shown many times over (hat tip >> to the User Research team), many people want their apps to look decent from >> the get-go, and they want to fit in. As much as we'd like everyone to come >> up with a beautiful design on their own, this is the starting point for most >> developers. >> >> The second issue (and that's orthogonal to the first one) is the problematic >> re-use of Gaia components because they were not written to be run outside a >> very specific set of devices. That's something that Brick can fix, >> independently, by providing responsive components and ensuring the styles >> scale and behave as expected regardless of device. This second problem is >> not an argument against shipping Brick with Firefox-OS-esque styles, at >> least as one styling option of many. >> >> ~F >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> dev-webapps mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps >> > > _______________________________________________ > dev-gaia mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-gaia _______________________________________________ dev-webapps mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps
