Beginning HTML5 Apps For Firefox OS

Written By John Sonmez

My latest course was just released on Pluralsight:

Beginning HTML5 Apps For Firefox OS

If you haven’t seen Firefox OS yet, it is worth taking a look.  I think this mobile operating system has a large amount of potential, because of its focus on HTML5 from the start.  I was surprised how nice Firefox OS looks and feels and how easy it is to develop for using skills you already have.

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Here is the official course description:

Firefox OS is a new exciting mobile operating system that has the goal of taking HTML 5 and making it a first class mobile citizen. In this course I’ll teach you the basics of Firefox OS and show you by example how to create two real Firefox OS applications as well as how to get those applications into the Firefox Marketplace.

In this course, we’ll start off by learning a little bit about Firefox OS and what makes it different. We’ll also talk about some of the benefits of a mobile operating system that uses web technologies you are already familiar with and take a quick look at the OS itself.

After that, we’ll create a very basic Hello World application as we go through the pretty simple process of installing the Firefox OS simulator and creating a very basic application to run inside it.

Once we have those basics down, we’ll go straight into creating our first application. First, I’ll show you how to create a hosted application which is an application that you can actually host on your own webserver, but is installed like any other mobile app on Firefox OS.

Then, we’ll create another full application, as we learn how to create a packaged application that is able to access more of the APIs that Firefox OS only exposed to apps that are actually installed on the device. We’ll still use the same HTML 5 technologies you are used to for this application, but we won’t need to host the app ourselves, because the user will install in directly on their device.

Finally, I’ll take you through the process of deploying your Firefox OS applications. We’ll talk about the different options you have for getting our application into users hands including distributing it yourself and using the Firefox Marketplace to host your apps.

So, if you are excited about mobile, and want to learn about an exciting platform you can develop for that will allow you to reuse your existing HTML 5, JavaScript and CSS skills, you’ll definitely want to check out this course.