Mozilla has been courting developers hard, y’all. Like, Taming of the Shrew hard.
The latest in the charm offensive is an app manager for Firefox OS apps — which are nothing more or less than web applications scaled down for the simple, useful phones that currently run said OS.
The so-called Firefox phones are rolling out in markets around the world and are especially intended for folks with a need for connectivity without spending too much cash.
But, as the great Bard said, “No profit grows where is no pleasure taken.” So Mozilla has to get devs to find Firefox OS app-making to be pleasurable (read: easy and even fun).
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“The developer response has been extremely positive, with thousands of applications being submitted to the Firefox Marketplace since the recent launch,” said Stormy Peters, Head of Developer Engagement at Mozilla, in an email to VentureBeat.
“With the announcement of the Firefox OS App Manager we expect this momentum to increase as developers will find it even easier to start creating and debugging Web apps. Firefox OS has all the popular apps a user might want like Facebook, Twitter, Nokia HERE maps, Box, The Weather Channel, MTV Brasil, Time Out, Pulse News, and EA Games like Poppit and are seeing new apps developed every day like KAYAK, TMZ, Tuenti and a whole host of regional apps.”
High level but hands-on
Our upcoming DevBeat conference, Nov. 12-13 in San Francisco, will have a lot more on this topic. Featuring hacker legends like Stallman, DHH, Rasmus Lerdorf, and Alex Payne, it’s a hands-on developer event packed with:
- workshops
- teck talks
- live Ask-Me-Anything
- hardware hacking
It’s all aimed at boosting your code skills, security knowledge, hardware hacking, and career development. Register now.
To that end, Mozilla’s been rolling out a series of tutorials, inspirational videos, and various tools for building Firefox OS apps. The newest tool is the Firefox OS App Manager. This “bridges the gap,” Mozillan reps stated in a blog post, between Firefox OS’s simulator and the veritable bevy of Firefox developer tools already available. Put it all together and whaddaya get? A workflow to build, debug, and deploy great, functional mobile web apps.
Here she is in action:
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