Changes 2/13/15 - Bower installation

In order to use the Firefox OS ui elements, I have to install this thing called bower, which I guess gives me all the resources I need.

First, I installed Node.js for windows.  Next, I used the npm package manager built into Node to install bower.  I then used bower (which is its own package manager) to install the resources mentioned in the firefox tutorials, such as this one.

Everything is installing just fine, but I don't know where the bower stuff is installing to, and so I can't get the css and other stuff into my project folder.

Changes 2/11/15 and 2/12/15 - Sick days

I've been sick the past two days, so I obviously didn't do much.

I did start looking into jQuery mobile, and played around with the theme creator webapp they have, which is pretty cool.  This is my first attempt at a theme (they will break this link after 30 days).  It's not the best, but their app also wasn't that helpful for fine tuning the colors, since it got really hard to see which one was which in the tiny little color picker they have.

Actually looking at it, Mozilla has their own UI library that I should probably use instead of jQuery mobile to keep the interface consistent.

Changes 2/10/15 - Firefox OS and Github

I kept going with my attempts to understand the camera API.  I used Finn's Flame device today because it has OS 2.2, and console.log works with the web console.

Now I can see this on my computer:

I'm stuck though, because everything seems to work, but the image doesn't show up in the gallery and I don't know how to reference it yet.  However, it appears to be going through all the steps correctly, and just failing to write to the file.

Changes 2/9/15 - Firefox OS difficulties

Today Jack "kindly" made an unboxing video of our new Firefox Phone for us, which turned out surprisingly well considering he edited the whole thing on his iPhone.

I also realized that in Firefox OS 3.0, #console.log output isn't sent to the web console, which is frustrating.  In Firefox OS 2.2, which is what I am running on the emulator, it seems to work fine.

However, I'm trying to get the camera to work, and accessing the camera causes the emulator to crash.  I think my best bet is to downgrade to version 2.2.

I also set up a github repo that Finn cloned off of.

Changes 2/5/15 (forgot to post this one) - Firefox OS

Now that I have the actual Flame phone, I can push my apps onto it and try them out on the hardware. It's actually really cool because you can use Firefox developer tools on the phone while it is running, so you can see what things look like on the actual hardware in real time. I didn't get too much done today because styling and getting stuff to look good takes a really long time, especially when you don't know what you want or what you are doing.

I started a new app and put my buttons in, but I'm not sure where to go from there. Additionally, it's hard to figure out how I want the layout to be. For instance, I haven't decided on the size of the buttons and whether they should be in a single row or have multiple side by side.

Changes 2/6/15 - Bad Documentation

Getting access to hardware features on Firefox OS is really tough, because I find the documentation to be pretty confusing.  A lot of times I'm not sure whether I'm looking at documentation for the browser firefox or firefox OS, and it seems like there are several different methods for accessing the camera, but only one of them works on the Flame.  Additionally, console.log() doesn't log to the web console, but instead logs to the device for some reason, so I have to install adb and use logcat to read the logs.  This is annoying because in trying to figure out whether the approach I'm using to take pictures is working, I'd like to be able to log to the web console in real time.

Changes 2/4/15 - Thanks computer

Today my computer crashed and I had to spend 20 minutes troubleshooting and waiting for it to repair itself, which really sucked.

We had a conference call with Marcia from Firefox, and we talked about Firefox OS development.  It was pretty cool talking to someone actually developing a phone!  She also answered some of our questions and offered to set us up with mentors, which is a really cool opportunity.

I also kept working on my button, but thanks to my computer crapping out, I didn't get very far.  I added some more styling for the base state, and started working on the styling for the active state (when it is clicked)


Here's the button:

Click Me!

It still needs to change color when clicked though!