firefox os

Foxconn and Mozilla announced a partnership Monday under which the Chinese electronics manufacturer will build not just Firefox phones, as others have announced, but tablets, too.

The rumored partnership was confirmed as Mozilla and Foxconn announced their tie-up at the Computex show in Taiwan. By including software in its devices, Foxconn gets to sell a more complete and therefore potentially valuable product to those companies that actually will attach their brands to the hardware.

"We believe that the integration of software and hardware development will offer greater benefits to our customers and consumers," said Young Liu, the general … Read more

Mozilla and Foxconn have sent around an press event invitation that declares that the two companies will be debuting a new device that runs on a Firefox operating system, according to Focus Taiwan. The event is to take place on June 3.

Someone with knowledge of the matter told Focus Taiwan that the new product will most likely be a tablet. Rumors have surfaced lately that Mozilla has been working on a Firefox OS tablet, especially since the company recently debuted two smartphones running on the operating system.

In April, a small Spanish company called Geeksphone began selling the two Mozilla smartphones, … Read more

Short, compact, and screaming orange, the Firefox OS-based Geeksphone Keon is equal parts intriguing, frustrating, and perplexing. But it isn't your typical smartphone.

Instead, the Keon is a developer preview device that's been created to fulfill a specific need as a testing bed for the nascent Firefox mobile operating system, itself in deep development.

Reviewers rarely get a chance to become so intimate with a preproduction handset running experimental software -- the thought of exposing unfinished products in states of vulnerable development tends to make phone makers and software smiths squeamish. But this is Mozilla, the champion of … Read more

Mozilla has a deal for programmers: We'll supply the phones if you supply the apps.

In an effort to ensure there will be good Firefox OS apps in the Firefox Marketplace, Mozilla is offering developer phones to programmers who have compelling ideas for software. In a blog post Thursday, Mozilla employee Havi Hoffman tried to drum up interest:

If you can show you've got a great app idea and the skill to build it, we'd love to see your apps in the Marketplace when the Firefox OS launch begins later this summer. And to sweeten the deal, … Read more

Firefox OS app developers hoping to snag one of the new Firefox OS phones seem to be out of luck.

The Keon and the Peak popped up for sale today courtesy of manufacturer/seller Geeksphone. But the two phones already appear on the company's Web site as "out of stock." The page for each phone simply says "this product is no longer in stock" with no further explanation.

A spokeswoman for Geeksphone told CNET at around 6:15 a.m. PT that the phones are currently out of stock due to great demand. But the … Read more

A small Spanish company called Geeksphone will begin selling two smartphones on Tuesday that are geared for developers who want to build apps for Firefox OS -- or for that matter, to build Mozilla's open-source browser-based operating system itself.

As previewed earlier this year, Geeksphone has two models, the Keon at 110 euros including VAT ($143) and the Peak at 179 euros ($234) including VAT.

That's a notch cheaper than high-end unlocked smartphones you'll find, like the $574.99 HTC One, an Android phone that just went on sale. But the low price is part of the … Read more

Mozilla's Web site log-in alternative known as Persona unveiled a Beta 2 version today. Now you can sign in to any Web site supporting Persona using a Yahoo Mail account.

Persona, which is still in development, is an open authentication system that works on desktops and mobile devices. In addition to being able to log in using either your Persona ID or your Yahoo credentials, today's release introduces support for Firefox OS, which means you can expect to use Persona to log in to any Firefox OS devices that launch later this year. It also includes back-end changes … Read more

Mozilla is hoping to streamline payments for Web apps by adding a new API into its forthcoming Firefox OS that is designed to make the process easier and more secure.

The organization announced the first draft of a new payment system API last week in a blog post. The API will be integrated into Firefox OS with the aim of making payment processing simpler and provide better security and control for users. Firefox OS is Mozilla's upcoming mobile operating system.

Mozilla said that while online services such as PayPal go some way to simplifying accepting Web payments, they aren'… Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--If you could play high-end, 3D games in your browser at the same speed as on a console, would you? Here at the annual Game Developers Conference, the maker of Firefox revealed a plan to get you to do just that.

Mozilla's current holy grail is getting the mix of HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS that powers the modern Web to run apps at speeds that rival native code, the operating system-dependent languages underpinning apps on iOS, Android, Windows 8, and other proprietary systems.

The not-so-secret weapon in Mozilla's plan is something called ASM.js, said Director of Engineering Vladimir Vukicevic. "It's a dialect of JavaScript that can optimize [code] much better. It's around two times as fast," he said.… Read more