Learning Firefox OS Application Development

Learn to design, build, and deploy your Firefox OS applications, built with web technologies, to the Firefox Marketplace

About This Book

• Create beautiful and interactive Firefox OS applications by applying your knowledge of web development
• Cater your applications to a huge number of users by porting them to the Firefox OS
• A step-by-step learning workflow with real-life applications to demonstrate the concepts

Who This Book Is For

This is a practical guide that uses hands-on examples to teach you how to create applications for Firefox OS and also how to port applications to Firefox Marketplace. This book is intended for developers who want to build applications for Firefox OS. An understanding of HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS is required.

What You Will Learn

• Install, use, and access the Firefox OS simulator with the help of WebIDE
• Get to know about application manifest files and the essential difference between web applications and Firefox OS applications
• Create an application that measures the tapping speed of the user
• Create an application that allows a user to check in at a place with geolocation tagging
• Access device-specific features with WebAPIs and implement these by building a photo editing and sharing application
• Submit your own applications to the Firefox Marketplace and share them with others
• Professionally maintain the code of your application with the help of Github and deploy your hosted applications to OpenShift

In Detail

With broad compatibility, the latest in web technologies, and powerful development tools, Firefox is a great choice for both web developers and end users. Firefox OS’s promotion of HTML5 as a first class citizen opens up the walled gardens of mobile application development for web developers. It is because of this initiative that no special SDKs are required to develop for Firefox OS.

This book will help you excel in the art of developing applications for Firefox OS. It sequentially covers knowledge building, skills acquisition, and practical applications.

Starting with an introduction to Firefox OS, usage of WebIDE, and then the application structure, this book introduces applications of increasing complexity with each chapter. An application that measures your tapping speed, a geolocation tagging application, and a photo editing and sharing application are the three applications that will be built from scratch. You will learn about topics such as the difference between various types of Firefox OS applications, application manifest files, offline apps, and designing principles for applications. You will also learn to test and submit the applications to the marketplace and finally maintain the repository of the Firefox OS application.

By the end, you will be able to develop beautifully designed, fully-fledged, and rigorously tested Firefox OS applications and also share them at the Firefox OS Marketplace.

Style and approach

This book is an easy-to-grasp workflow with practical examples of real-world applications such as Clickr, Check In!, and FotoFox. Each chapter explains the concepts, which are then reinforced as they are demonstrated in an application or a flowchart.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction to Firefox OS
Chapter 2. Running Firefox OS Simulators with WebIDE
Chapter 3. Getting Your Hands Dirty – Firefox OS Apps
Chapter 4. Diving Deeper with the Fox Creating Richer Apps
Chapter 5. Making Applications Visually Appealing – Style Guide
Chapter 6. Emerging a Guru – Learning Web APIs
Chapter 7. Testing Your Firefox OS Application
Chapter 8. Firefox Marketplace – Setting up Your Bazaar
Chapter 9. Maintaining Your Firefox OS Application Code Professionally