FirefoxOS Tutorial Episode 3

I completed episode 3 of the FirefoxOS Tutorial. Some of it is a bit rough and it needs to be polished and the Dev tools section also may need some work. Finn also looked over it so he corrected some errors. References to line numbers may need to be changed as well but for the most part the episode is complete and I have a link to it below.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028799/firefoxOSTutorialEp3

FirefoxOS Tutorial Ep 3

I started rewriting episode 3 of the FirefoxOS tutorial. I had to add a section on the WebIDE and a lot of the beginning sections had to have some changes made but some of the sections don't need to be changed a lot. Also, there will probably be some inconsistencies and other problems because, for example, you may be capitalizing words in earlier episodes that I'm not. Anyway, I have a link to my progress below. I am currently looking at the Firefox Dev Tools but I should be done soon.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028799/firefoxOSTutorialEp3

SaveNotes App

Today Finn and I worked on fixing the SaveNotes App. The fix was extremely simple because the problem was that there were no back buttons appearing but a simple stack overflow post revealed the issue.

I started looking at episode 3 of the firefoxOS tutorial and I have no problem writing about the WebIDE but I just have to figure out how I'm going to start rewriting this because there is a lot to talk about. I'll probably just start writing whatever I think of and then just look over it and then have Finn revise it.

FirefoxOS Tutorial Ep2: Functionality

I made changes to the second episode of Irani's FirefoxOS tutorial under the section titled "The code". It was pretty simple but the further chapters will probably become more challenging to change because I'm not familiar with Ajax or JSON and it will probably be mentioned more frequently. Anyway, here's a link to the text file:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8028799/episode2functionality.txt

US Zipcodes App

Today Finn helped me fix the Indian zipcode app but he really did most of the work. We actually changed the zipcodes to US because the API for the Indian zipcodes was no longer available.

• The app currently states coordinates, city, and state and the API we are using is called Zippopotamus
• We removed the Javascript within the html file and made a separate script file because firefoxOS can apparently have problems with internal Javascript
• A few changes still have to be made, especially stuff like the app icon because it currently says "Indian Zipcodes"

I made and updated the repo by myself for once though!
https://github.com/anicholakos/IndiaPincodesApp

GPS App Development

I continued to work on my GPS App which should be finished soon as long as I don't encounter any javascript problems but I am pretty rusty with javascript. Today I actually didn't make a lot of progress because I was having a github problem but Sam was extremely helpful and fixed the issue. I did update the code so it works properly and I don't think it references the notes app anymore, but right now I need to find a way to grab longitude and latitude coordinates separately because I don't think I want to display them together if possible.

Here's a link to the repo with my app actually on there
https://github.com/anicholakos/fxos_app_zoo

GPS App

I continued working on my GPS App and it is fairly functional right now but it needs to be refined a lot. I think I'll push my changes after I make a few adjustments because right now the code is a bit ugly and it may be broken. There's a link to my branch below for reference but it only has the helloworld app. 

https://github.com/anicholakos/fxos_app_zoo

Coordinates App

I worked on making an app, which used the note app as a basis, that displays a users coordinates. As long as the user has GPS enabled it will store the coordinates in a list item. On Friday I'll actually put the app on github but in the meantime I'll make a few points.

• I changed the design a little, it could still definitely use some work. There is also a lot of whitespace that could be used.
• I'm thinking the purpose of the app will be to display the coordinates when you press a button and if you press it again you will get new coordinates assuming you moved. Right now the app just keeps displaying coordinates in a list and the app actually seems to get slower after pressing the button multiple times so that may need to be fixed.

Bugzilla Notes(Search)

Fredy emailed me again with more information this time on effectively searching on Bugzilla so I'll summarize that here. Basically there are four different types of search on Bugzilla available on the tabs at the top once you click the search button(magnifying glass).

• Simple search is what it sounds like, you simply type in some words related to the bug and it will search the website but you are also given a few other options like the product(ex. Firefox) and status(ex. open or closed).
• Instant search is even simpler because only the search bar and product are displayed.
• Advanced search is full of many more filters including classification, product, component, status, and resolution. Also you can select multiple filters by holding ctrl and clicking on different ones.
• Google search is just using the google search engine to search on Bugzilla. You would get the same results if you typed in Google "<words> site:bugzilla.mozilla.org"
• It's also possible to save searches for future use.

Also, I won't be working on BuddyUp for quite awhile because apparently the developer is on vacation but I may be working on other stuff for the QA program.

Firefox bug

I'm going to make this post very quick so here is a link to the bug I filed
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1160256

FirefoxOS Design

I was reading the FirefoxOS in action tutorial today and I added some code to the note app provided by the book but it had an error(although it was a simple error that I fixed) so I just stopped reading it.

I started reading articles on the app center on the mozilla developer website

• When making an app there are some pretty obvious things everyone should do but is important anyway but these steps can be modified depending on your preference
• When thinking of an idea for an app and you have decided you should state the purpose of the app and who would use it. Also consider if it will be on different platforms
• Draw what the app will look like, probably a sketch for each screen and more if the app will be on multiple platforms
• Also if your app is on different platforms it may have different features on each platform, a mobile app will sometimes have less features than a desktop site because of the lack of space(google docs is a word processor with a lot of functions but the mobile app only allows you to view your documents and not edit them which is annoying in my opinion)

This tutorial looks really good so far and I looked at the example geolocation app on my laptop but I haven't seen what it looks like on the Flame.

FirefoxOS and Naming bug

Over the weekend Fredy emailed me saying he fixed the testcases I invalidated and he doesn't have any assignment for me right now but he will email me on Monday(which he never did and I hope he didn't forget). I did a bit more reading today and I wrote a few notes below.

• As I mentioned in a previous blogpost, the "certified" permission has permissions that can be abused(making purchases) but this permission level is not available on workplace apps and is a part of the OS
• The note app that I currently have allows a contact to be selected but it doesn't actually add that person to the note like it's supposed to so that needs to be fixed

I also wrote to Fredy about a bug but it was kind of annoying to explain so I just want him to confirm that it is a bug that hasn't been filed yet if he can.

FirefoxOS stuff

Today I finished up the last few testcases and I emailed a few questions for Fredy. One of the testcases referenced an "Active" tab which was removed recently so I invalidated that. As for your app, it worked fine on my simulator and you actually don't need contacts for it to work and you can just pull the changes from Finn, I think.

Testcases

I actually went to moztrap and noticed there was another page of testcases which must have been added recently so I went through those today. When going through them I checked for bugs or invalid instructions. I'm not really sure if I should invalidate some stuff but I think as long as the instructions are understandable I don't need to. I make sure to invalidate a testcase if the UI is different but for example one testcase says "Press continuously "Power" button" when it should probably say to "Hold down the "Power" button continuously". I also need to make a note to myself to look at testcase 26 because there was a problem with upvoting, I think.

I think I may have found a bug though because when you delete your name it gets replaced with a randomly generated one with the word Buddy and a number with it(like Buddy3478) but when you delete your name and it gets randomly generated again there is a lowercase "b". I'll have to check in with Fredy about this stuff though.

Testcases(11-20)

I don't really have anything interesting to blog about because I just went over the rest of the testcases. I don't think I missed anything and I tried to use my best judgement. There was one prerequisite that I think was wrong but I didn't report it although maybe I should have(testcase 13). Besides that I didn't really find any problems and I went through the testcases pretty thoroughly so I'll probably email Fredy soon and see if he needs anything else done right now.

More testcases(1-10)

So my new task is to go back through the testcases and invalidate any testcases if required because all the testcases were changed to be clearer and the UI of BuddyUp keeps changing.

One thing I noticed with the testcases so far was that one page is referred to as the "Homepage" when it says "Support" at the top but I think it's fine. I did invalidate a different test that referenced a nonexistent tab so the UI must have changed very recently. Testcase 9 and 10 are really long but I think both were fine so I only found a problem with one.

Debugger

You're probably already fairly familiar with the debugger but I wasn't aware that you could track certain variables by clicking on the "gutter" of a line which I posted a picture of below. You can also just screw around with your code like by stopping it at a certain point, inspecting your app, and resuming it. The debugger is also really useful for redesigning your app and seeing the changes immediately.

The problem is now I added that geolocation code and my app is no longer working and the debugger won't show anything and I really have no idea why.

The little blue dot is where the gutter is and you can mark certain lines of code

Awesome Note App

I continued looking at the book since I had no other task. I got to the part where it talked about making a note app and a bit on how to to debug if necessary. The explanations are pretty good but I think there was one error in the manifest file because I could not run my app although maybe it was my fault. You made the app yourself but I posted a screenshot of it below. This does make it really easy to convert any website into a mobile app because you just have to make the manifest file and add an icon(and probably redesign it).

FirefoxOS in action

I finished my task so I decided to read some more of that book today.

Security
There are 3 different types of permissions for Firefox OS that determine what an app can access because you may not want websites to have access to your SD card and then it gets a hold of your pictures.

• Standard:  Stuff that can't really cause harm like gps or vibration
• Privileged: Stuff that can expose personal info like contacts
• Certified: Stuff that can cost money like making calls or disabling wifi and wasting data

Whenever a FirefoxOS app would like to use one of the higher permissions it prompts the user, unlike Android where you are only prompted once before installing the app.

Developing

• Making an app is obviously very similar to making a website except you have to keep a couple of things in mind, people are tapping and not using a mouse, and the phone is less powerful than a desktop.

Also, I learned how to use some basic git commands from Finn so I shouldn't need as much help when using github

Finished up invalidating

I finished looking over all the tests, it was pretty tedious but got easier towards the end since the testcases seemed to be more up to date. It wasnt really hard and I usually knew when I should and shouldn't invalidate something, but there was one testcase though that I wasn't sure about because it said to tap on an input field but it was a button. I didn't invalidate it because I was unsure and it didn't seem too important but I was thinking it made it sound like the button was a text field.

Most of these tests had the same error though because there was one wrong button but I did invalidate one today that had quite a few wrong buttons and pages listed in the instructions.