Mozilla Delivers New Version 3.0 Preview of Firefox OS
Three months ago, the folks at Mozilla rolled out the 1.0 version of the Firefox OS Simulator, which provided folks--especially developers--an opportunity to try out the company's promising new mobile operating system. Mozilla has been making lots of noise about its entry into the mobile OS business, and early Firefox OS phones (a couple of them seen here) are arriving. Now, Mozilla has rolled out a preview version 3.0 of the simulator, which can provide a lot of the mobile operating system's flavor.
Mozilla has warned that the version 3.0 simulator is "a little rough around the edges," but can still be experimented with. All three of the preview versions do reflect the fact that Mozilla means to develop this new mobile OS fully out in the open.
So what are the new features? According to Mozilla Hacks, you'll find:
- Push to Device
- Rotation simulation
- Basic geolocation API simulation
- Manifest validation
- Stability fixes for installation and updates to apps
- Newer versions of the Firefox rendering engine and Gaia (the UI for Firefox OS)
Push to Device means that if you have an existing device supporting Firefox OS, connected via USB, you will be able to push apps installed in the Firefox OS Simulator directly to that device. You can try the simulator out via Firefox.
Here are the direct links to the installation files (they install as extensions in Firefox):