Firefox OS Simulator is a test environment for Firefox OS. Use it to test your apps in a Firefox OS-like environment that looks and feels like a mobile phone.
Home Page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-os-simulator/
License: Other
Note: This project is no longer maintained in this repo. It has been merged into the main Gecko (Firefox) repo.
r2d2b2g is an experimental prototype test environment for Firefox OS in the form of a Firefox Desktop addon.
To hack on it, clone this repository, then:
git submodule init
git submodule update
make build
make run
Caution! You need plentiful disk and patience, as the submodules and build process require copious space and time.
When I click on Install Page as App, it opens B2G for a second then immediately closes it.
The only information I have in Firefox error console is :
info: r2d2b2g: linux/b2g/b2g-bin terminated with 0
The Firefox OS Simulator item in the Tools menu currently appears underneath the Page Info item. Per the v1 spec, it should appear just below the Web Developer menu.
Removes an app from B2G profile and the add-on storage.
Add a Firefox command line tool to install the current page or an arbitrary URL to B2G Simulator.
Currently, it says "FxOS Simulator". Our branding folks are not keen on abbreviations like that. "Firefox OS Simulator" may not fit on one line, but that should be fine in this context.
Per the v1 spec, the Developer Toolbar should have the following commands to control the simulator process:
firefoxos on
firefoxos off
firefoxos restart
build.py installs the first build in the list of files in the directory rather than the build it downloads. That means it will install an older build that appears earlier in the filelist. For example, if I have the October 3 build, and I run build.py on October 4 to download that day's build, I get a filelist like:
-rw-r--r--@ 1 myk myk 56580573 Oct 3 14:08 2012-10-03-03-05-46-mozilla-central-b2g-18.0a1.en-US.mac64.dmg
-rw-r--r--@ 1 myk myk 56580177 Oct 4 09:30 2012-10-04-03-05-26-mozilla-central-b2g-18.0a1.en-US.mac64.dmg
And build.py installs the October 3 build instead of the October 4 build.
build.py should install the build it downloads.
...to put the focus on commonly used features, point people to use the Manager more, and ensure that people will be more likely to point to manifests or at least the page they really want.
Jean Claveau noted in this blog comment that r2d2b2g takes 121ms on startup in this profile generated using Firefox's new SPS profiler.
That seems like a lot, and we should bring it down to a reasonable number (probably down to the low tens of ms, unless there is work that must be done on startup and has to take the time). Some of that time might be spent in SDK code that we don't control, but we should fix any issues in the r2d2b2g code and work around any issues in the SDK code that are possible to work around.
Currently, the user must push the home key on the keyboard (fn-left arrow on my Mac) to simulate the home button on the device. Since this is an extremely important thing for users to know, I think we should do something along these lines:
I think the first is preferable, but the second is fine too if that's all we have time for.
We're not going to have anything there for v1 and I think it likely that debugger access will not actually be through the manager.
It isn't obvious how to return to the homescreen from an app in B2G Desktop. As users of the addon won't necessarily know much about B2G, the addon should conspicuously document how to return to the homescreen.
r2d2b2g's nascent "Create App" function creates an app in a webapps/{UUID}/ subdirectory of its Gaia profile directory, which it uses to store both source files and install files. This is problematic for several reasons:
Instead of creating the app in a subdirectory of the profile, the Create App function should create it in a subdirectory of a common location (like the user's default Documents directory) or let the user pick a location. One might combine these two with code that uses the file picker to prompt the user for a name while suggesting both a name ("My App") and a location (using Services.dirsvc from Services.jsm to get the location via the platform-specific definitions in nsDirectoryServiceDefs.h).
Once the source files are in a reasonable, potentially user-specified directory, the rest of the code, refactored, can behave much the same way: installation consists of packaging the files into a ZIP archive, installing the package into a webapps/{UUID}/ subdirectory of the Gaia profile directory, and adding an app record to webapps/webapps.json.
The Helper page lets users create an app, but it doesn't expose any information about apps the user has created. That makes it hard for users to do much after creating an app. Helper should list apps the user has created and give them a short set of tools for performing common tasks. The particular tools to provide are listed in issue #16--expose "created apps" API to helper--and are:
-webapp command-line option);nsIFile::reveal());This issue obviously depends on issue #16, as it isn't possible for Helper to expose this information to users until the addon provides it to Helper! However, it might be possible to do some of the work in advance while awaiting the details of the API.
On Windows, the simulator crashes on startup due to bug 795484. To fix this bug, we probably need to fix that one, although it's possible that there's a workaround that'll enable us to avoid the crash. Some comments in that bug suggest we might be able to do it by disabling OOP apps, although it isn't clear exactly how to do that.
Some (all?) apps added from URL don't have access to external resources.
Reproduced by @dangoor:
Add an app from URL:
1st can't get weather data from Yahoo (JSNP), 2nd can't get any CDN resources (CSS + JS).
There should be a "Firefox OS Simulator" item in the unified Firefox menu on Windows/Linux. The item should appear just below the Web Developer menu. When selected, it should open the manager.
Per the v1 spec, the Developer Toolbar should have a "firefoxos manager" command that opens the manager.
Bug 776845 tracks building 64-bit Linux nightlies of B2G Desktop, which we could package into the Linux version of r2d2b2g (choosing which build to use at runtime).
Until then, a workaround would be to install 32-bit compatibility libraries, which is easy on Debian/Ubuntu, although it's hard on Fedora. However, it isn't clear that this is sufficient, as the 32-bit executable seems to have trouble locating its own libraries on 64-bit systems (unless you set LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.).
Perhaps that's a bug we can file and get fixed (or work around in our code). But at the very least, if the workaround of running a 32-bit binary on 64-bit Linux is viable (or there is some other workaround), then we should document what it takes to make it happen!
The Helper tells users to use the Escape key to go Back, but B2G recently removed the Back action, so the Helper should stop advertising that keyboard shortcut.
Per the v1 spec, the Help tab of the Manager should link to the following resources:
If I open some app, pressing ESC does not close the app.
I had also experienced this in B2G build for desktop that I had downloaded sometime back from Mozilla's FTP.
If I open some app and press home screen, I goto blank home screen where I do not
see any icons. The screen shot has been attached below.
OS: Kubuntu-32bit (Linux)
Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/8r1JX.png
I might repeat things from the spec, this is just a brain dump from what's in there now and what should be there.
See spec for list actions (Add app …)
Each app is displayed with
nameicontype, local directory, hosted (with manifest) or generated (generated manifest)location, local path, URL to manifest or URL to page, depending on typeActions for each app:
P2?locationI currently just throw in the buttons and fields I need when adding the actual features to the add-ons, but the list still needs styling, which involves adding some template engine to JS and event delegation (or whatever pattern works best) to make coding easier.
r2d2b2g had a welcome screen in its first version. I just switched it back on, but now thinking about its usefulness.
Some questions:
Like Delete Add-on UX.
In the Simulator, holding the home button should launch the task manager as it does on the actual device.
If you delete an app from the Simulator and click the Update button in the Manager, the app does not reappear in the Simulator.
r2d2b2g exposes a Create App function to the Helper page, but it doesn't expose an API for Helper to retrieve information about created apps. It should do so, so Helper can list the user's created apps and give the user tools for accessing them and performing common tasks, in particular:
-webapp command-line option);nsIFile::reveal());Bug 804330 will add 64-bit Linux builds of B2G Desktop, and we should bundle the 64-bit build with the 32-bit build in the Linux package, selecting the executable to run at runtime based on the bit-depth of the user's Linux installation.
(We need to bundle the builds into the same package and select the executable to run at runtime because AMO, on which we plan to distribute the package, only supports a single Linux XPI.)
If you do this, nothing happens. Would be nice to have a "go restart b2g" message.
r2d2b2g's nascent Create App function installs an app into the Gaia profile but doesn't record its existence anywhere other than the webapps/webapps.json file in the profile. That means it'll lose track of the app after an addon update, when the addon completely removes and replaces the profile. It also means that it's hard to distinguish between built-in apps and those created by the addon.
r2d2b2g should track created apps in a persistent store that survives updates and clearly distinguishes between the user's apps and built-in apps. One option would be to use the simple-storage module https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/developers/docs/sdk/latest/packages/addon-kit/simple-storage.html.
The user agent that's showing up for me is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0
Which means many sites are returning desktop content. I'd think for the purposes of quick and easy app testing, r2d2b2g should use the (generally agreed upon) mobile user agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (Mobile; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0
(Obligatory: Yes, it's better for developers to do feature detection and responsive design than user agent sniffing.)
The diagonal "experimental" banner in the top-left corner of the page renders horizontally underneath the FxOS Simulator header on Linux and Windows. It should render diagonally on those OSes, just as it does on Mac.
From Portrait to Landscape
Updating an app directory often results in a broken zip package.
Result: Installed app has name, but no icon; launching shows gray screen.
Sometimes, when you create an app, start B2G Desktop, and then start the app, the app displays a black screen instead of the app, and B2G Desktop becomes unresponsive (it isn't possible to go back to the home screen). When that happens, I don't see any different error messages in the console, just these same two that always appear:
Content JS INFO at app://system.gaiamobile.org/js/window_manager.js:802 in createFrame: %%%%% Launching My App 39 as remote (OOP)
Content JS LOG at app://system.gaiamobile.org/js/window_manager.js:379 in anonymous: Window Manager: No screenshot in database. This is expected from a fresh installed app.
I wonder if that black screen is some kind of default screenshot that appears when an app doesn't have a screenshot, per that log message. And then something goes wrong between the display of the screenshot and the loading of the app's actual content.
In any case, starting the app should always show the app! So if there's something we're doing wrong when creating the app that causes it to sometimes fail to start, then we need to fix that. Or, if this is a B2G Desktop bug, then fix that.
Seems like apps don't have a separated cache (correct me if I am wrong) in B2G, which makes cleaning cache for just one app hard.
Some ideas:
Clear Cache on Launch, similar to JS Console.Windows 7 x64, Firefox 15.01
Happy to debug
The last thing missing for #14 is a smooth update process, where the B2G profile gets populated automatically after update with all the apps installed before.
Wherever "Ready to Deliver to Boot to Gecko" or "r2d2b2g" appears to users, we should change the string to "Firefox OS Simulator", or "simulator" for short. I'm thinking particularly of the addon's listing in Add-on Manager (for which we just need to update the addon's name/description in package.json).
One place we should not change (right now) is the manager's URL. That is derived from the addon's ID, and it should be simpler (perhaps as simple as about:simulator), but doing that is probably complicated and doesn't matter for v1.
When running FX Nightly from the terminal, I get this error on startup—
info: r2d2b2g: Error while loading localization: There is no localization file for your language.
info: r2d2b2g: linux/b2g/b2g-bin terminated with 0
Running global cleanup code from study base classes.
Nightly continues to function (more or less) normally, but Tools►B2G Desktop doesn't work.
I'm running 19.0a1 (2012-10-13), on Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit.
No matter how wide I make the browser window, the manager always has a horizontal scrollbar. It should fit into the available space provided the browser window is a reasonable size.
Content seems to think the screen resolution of the tool's display is the same as the full version of firefox.
Windows 7 SP3 x64, running the extension under Firefox UX 19.0a1 (2012-11-06).
Just installed for the first time, started it up, unlocked, ran the Firefox app.
Mozilla B2G crash reporter comes up, Details button doesn't seem to do anything.
I put a link to this issue in the comments field of the crash report before sending it.
When I click the update button for an app in the Manager, there's no visual indication that anything has occurred.
Per the v1 spec, there should be a Firefox OS Simulator item in the More Tools menu of the Developer Toolbar. Selecting it should open the manager.
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