I am wandering about some advanced features for Firefox OS which look exciting to me. I though of sharing these ideas here to gather feedback and suggestions. I don’t actually know whether there is anything like that already in the works.
All major mobile operative systems (Android, iOS, Windows on mobile) have a desktop counterpart (Chrome OS, OS X, Windows on desktop) and they leverage those to provide extra benefit to users having a matching desktop PC and mobile device.
Mozilla has no desktop OS and there is nothing suggesting it will in the near future. Though, the Firefox browser is available on most PCs. My question is, how could this be leveraged?
Browser Integration
A major selling point for matching desktop and mobile OSs is integrating the user experience. For example:
- Files can be easily shared among the devices.
- A back-up of the mobile device can be made and preserved on desktop.
- Call, receive and send messages from the desktop.
I think the nature of FxOS make it possible to bring this concept much further than that, since the web technologies building FxOS can be run on desktop as well (or, at least, that’s what I hope). What I, as a user, would like to have, is:
- Remotely control my FxOS device from a tab in my browser on desktop.
- Share open tabs.
- Share files.
- Back-up
- Call, receive and send messages from the desktop.
- Others?
Continuity
Microsoft and Canonical are trying to use mobile phones to give the user a desktop-like experience, when monitors and input devices are connected to the smartphone. Here again I think the great flexibility of the Web could help FxOS to implement this feature in a more natural way.
As a user, I would like to connect my mobile device to monitor and keyboard/mouse and to have a Firefox-desktop-browser experience. Mozilla Marketplace host web apps for desktop which are just what I need once I have connected my device to a desktop station.
I don’t know if those ideas are viable to implement, nor if users have a real interest in them or if they have already been proposed. I have no idea how a user-requested feature is evaluated, approved and implemented, but I guess discussion with the comunity is a good first step. Anyway, I would welcome any feedback or criticism.