Using Firefox Remote Debugger with Firefox OS Simulator

Firefox OS App developers can use Firefox Remote Debugger to quickly fix web app bugs. In this screencast Jeff Griffiths shows the current workflow of using the Firefox OS simulator and the Firefox Nightly remote debugger developer tool.

Don't see the embedded video, you can watch it on YouTube.

You can also use Firefox Remote Debugger with Firefox OS running in a desktop emulator, on a Firefox OS device and Firefox Mobile on Android mobile phone. Head over to Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) to learn more about Firefox Remote Debugging.

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Mozilla Community Engagement in Laos

Just across the border lies Laos. This country of fun loving gentle people had a tumultuous history. I recently visited Laos for the first time to help build Mozilla community in Laos.

Writer Thomas Wanhoff lives Vientiane. He is the organizer of Barcamp Vientiane. Mozilla participated in the previous Barcamp Vientiane. Thomas helped me understand the Lao history and culture over few bottles of dark Lao beer. Lack of infrastructure and resources hampered economic growth of Laos. Development aid that poured into this country had made very little difference. Recent efforts to develop internet entrepreneurship haven't been successful. Laos is slowly overcoming these problems. The 3G mobile network provides inexpensive internet connectivity. Large construction projects can be seen in Vientiane, new roads are replacing the pot holed dirt roads.

Visited ICT Association of Laos to talk about the Mozilla mission to promote innovation and choice on the web. Presented a demo of FirefoxOS and interacted with the team of localizers who are interested in localizing Firefox in Lao.

Also visited the ICT Center at Dang Dok Campus of University of Laos(NUoL). The university campus is connected with high-speed optic fiber network. ICT Center staff gave me tour of their new e-learning centers computer lab and digital multimedia studio and post-production facilities. The ICT center team expressed their interest to support Mozilla activities.

Now Lao web fonts are available Google web fonts (Early Access) system. This would enable Lao speakers to read localized content on computers and mobile devices that do not include Lao fonts.

The Mozilla Story with Lao Subtitles (Translated by Patthana Vilay)

Next step towards building Mozilla Lao community is get a core team organized and plan community events such as Mozilla Web Maker, Web developer events and Mozilla Lao Firefox localization sprints. Get in touch with me, if you want to get involved in Mozilla Lao community building effort.

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Speeding Up Software Rebuilds with CCache

Software developers who routinely rebuild large projects would love ccache. Ccache is a compiler cache. It speeds up software rebuilds by caching the result of previous compilations and detecting when the same compilation is being done again.

I use ccache when compiling Linux kernel, Debian/Ubuntu packages, GNOME applications, Mozilla Firefox, FirefoxOS and Android operating system. You could enable ccache by prefixing ccache to your compilation command or update your system path to include ccache.

# Add the following line to your ~/.bashrc file 
export PATH=/usr/lib/ccache:${PATH}

Alternatively you could create symlinks in ~/bin directory. GNOME 3 jhbuild documentation provides a bash script for this purpose.

cd ~/bin
for cmd in cc gcc c++ g++; do
  ln -s /usr/bin/ccache $cmd
done

To take advantage of ccache while building Mozilla Firefox, append the following line to your .mozconfig.

ac_add_options --with-ccache

If you are compiling Android(ASOP), CyanogenMod or Firefox OS. Android build system includes the ccache program, set the USE_CCACHE environment variable to enable ccache.

$ export USE_CCACHE=1

Further more in-depth information, read the ccache manual page. Please do comment and share your experiences using CCache.

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ClockworkMod (CWM) Recovery Backup and Restore Android Phone Firmware

In my last post, I introduced ClockworkMod (CWM) Recovery to backup your phone firmware. It is a good idea to copy these backup files to your computer for safe keeping.

You will find the ClockworkMod(CWM) Recovery firmware backups in this location on your phones internal memory.

/sdcard/clockworkmod/backup

You'll need Dobrica Pavlinušić's shell script to copy the ClockworkMod(CWM) Recovery backups to your computer. For some unknown path related issue the standard Unix 'cp' will not work. You won't be able to copy these backup files to your computer, however you can copy files from computer to phone without any problem.

#!/bin/sh -x

sdcard=/sdcard/clockworkmod/

adb shell ls -1 -d $sdcard/backup/* | sed "s!$sdcard/*!!" | tr -d '\r' > /tmp/backup.android
ls -1 -d backup/* > /tmp/backup.disk
diff -uw /tmp/backup.android /tmp/backup.disk | grep -- '^-backup' | sed 's/^-//' | \
xargs -i sh -xc "mkdir -p {} && adb pull $sdcard/{} {}"

To restore your phone firmware from your backups. Copy the ClockworkMod(CWM) Recovery files to the backup directory on the phone. Reboot the phone into recovery mode and use the Backup / Restore option to restore the firm.

Lately, I use this technique to deploy Boot2Gecko quickly onto compatible phones when the Boot2Gecko builds breaks. The new B2GBuilds.org project started nightly build of Boot2Gecko, you might want to check it out. Personally I would prefer the B2GBuilds.org project builds Cyanogenmod style otapackages instead. Support for this is coming soon, watch this space.

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Building Boot2Gecko(B2G) on Ubuntu

You heard about Mozilla Boot2Gecko(B2G) mobile operating system. Boot2Gecko's Gaia user interface is developed entirely using HTML, CSS and Javascript web technologies. If you are an experienced web developer you can contribute to Gaia UI and develop new Boot2Gecko applications with ease. In this post I'll explain how to setup the Boot2Gecko (B2G) development environment on your personal computer.

You can run Boot2Gecko(B2G) inside an emulator or inside a Firefox web browser. Using Boot2Gecko(B2G) with QEMU emulator is very resource intensive, so we will focus on the later in this post. I'll assume you are comfortable with Mozilla build environment. So, get that pot of coffee brewing and prepare for a long night of hacking.

Building Boot2Gecko(B2G) Firefox App

Before you start, let us make sure that you have all the prerequisites for building Firefox on your computer. Please have a look at the build prerequisites for your Linux, Window and OSX operating system.

# Let get the source code 
# Download mozilla-central repository 

$ hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central mozilla-central

# Download the Gaia source code 

$ git clone https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gaia gaia

# Change directory and create our profile 

$ cd gaia 

$ make profile 


# Change directory into your mozilla-central directory

$ cd mozilla-central


# Create a .mozconfig file inside your mozilla-central directory: 

$ nano .mozconfig 
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=../b2g-build
mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j9 -s"
ac_add_options --enable-application=b2g
ac_add_options --disable-libjpeg-turbo
ac_add_options --enable-b2g-ril
ac_add_options --with-ccache=/usr/bin/ccache 

# Build the Firefox B2G app and wait for the build to finish 

$ make -f client.mk build 


# Create a simple b2g bash script to launch B2G app; change paths you suit your environment
# Note: Have to use to -safe-mode option due to bug on my Ubuntu box 
 
#!/bin/sh 
export B2G_HOMESCREEN=http://homescreen.gaiamobile.org/
/home/arky/src/b2g-build/dist/bin/b2g -profile /home/arky/src/gaia/profile

If everything goes well. You should have boot2gecko running inside a firefox now.

Customizing Firefox B2G App

For better Boot2Gecko (B2G) experience, we will customize Firefox features offline cache and touch events using a custom Firefox profile.

Create a Custom Firefox Profile

You can use dist/bin/b2g -ProfileManager option to launch Firefox Profile Manager. Create a new profile called 'b2g'. Now we can add customizations to this new profile.

On Linux computers, the profile is created under ~/.mozilla/b2g/ directory. You can find the information about location of firefox profiles for your operating system here.

You launch B2G with your new custom profile using the '-P' option. Modify your B2G bash script and add the custom profile option. dist/bin/b2g -P b2g

Disable offline cache

Create a user.js file inside your custom 'b2g' firefox profile directory. Add the following line to disable offline cache.

user_pref('browser.cache.offline.enable', false);

Enabling Touch events

Add the following line in your user.js file inside your custom 'b2g' Firefox profile directory to enable touch events.

 user_pref('dom.w3c_touch_events.enabled', true);

That's it. You now have a Boot2Gecko(B2G) running inside Firefox on your computer. Happy Hacking!

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Samsung Galaxy S2 GT-i9100G: Review, Firmware, Software Update, Rooting

Mozilla Mobile Test Drivers program lent me a Samsung Galaxy SII mobile phone to test the nightly builds of Firefox Mobile. This Android 2.3.6 (Gingerbread) phone runs off a powerful dual core A9 1.2 GHz processor with a good responsive capacitive touch screen. The device is impressive and attracts a lot of attention everywhere.

Samsung Galaxy S2 Android 4.0 (ICS) Update

On March 10, 2012 Samsung will release an firmware update for Android 4.0 code named Ice Cream Sandwich. You will find the upgrade information here on Samsung website.

Android 4.0 promises to offer better accessibility and internationalisation support. You can navigate the android phone built-in screen reader using touch gestures. There is much better rendering support for Asian languages and additional Unicode fonts are bundled with the release.

Cyanogenmod Firmware for Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100G)

The Cyanogenmod has been boon for mobile phone technophiles. The project provides customised firmware for wide variety of phones. Unfortunately Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-i9100G) is not well support by Cyanogenmod project. Why? Samsung had changed the hardware specification of this model and none of Cyanogenmod developers have this phone model to work on.

Last week, Yang and I spent an afternoon looking for compatible firmwares to root Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-i9100G) . After few failed attempts we found that MyGKernelV1.1.1_CWM5.tar version managed to give us root access to the phone.

Installing Boot2Gecko on Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100G)

You have heard of Mozilla Boot2Gecko. The Mozilla entry into smart phone market was unveiled at Mobile World Congress last week. Build with HTML5, CSS and Javascript, it allows web developers an open phone stack for their applications.

The Mobile World Congress Boot2Gecko videos shows a Samsung Galaxy S2 running Boot2Gecko. You should take note that this Samsung Galaxy S II model is GT-I9100. The Boot2Gecko developers use Samsung Galaxy S2 as their development platform.

Since Cyanogenmod scripts are used for Boot2gecko installation. You won't be able to install it on Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100G) without lot of hacking. Recently there has been a lot of talk about people dying to install Book2Gecko on Samsung Galaxy S2. Caveat Emptor.

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