Firefox OS 2.2 for developers

Product features

This section lists various categories of new product features and improvements to existing features.

System Features

Bluetooth

Bluedroid has been moved to a separate process for increased security (bug 1005934.)

Text Selection

To support Copy/Paste, text selection capabilities have been added to the system.

WebRTC

Hardware composer rendering has been added for WebRTC to improve power efficiency and save battery life (bug 1043558.)

SIM Tool Kit (STK)

STK support has been added for reading abbreviated dialing codes (bug 1061130.)

STK icons are now displayed in the SIM services screens (bug 1016807.)

Search

The search user experience has been enhanced to make it easier to access the user's search engine of choice (bug 1099157.)

Text-based search suggestions are now shown from the default search provider, making it easier to find what the user is looking for (bug 1098494.)

Privacy

Users can now browse without saving history using private browsing (bug 1081731.)

Support has been added for adjustable location accuracy to obscure location from basic forms of location detection (off by default) (bug 1073419.)

Platform

App start up and general performance has been improved (bug 1074783, bug 1082262, bug 1082268 and bug 1086963.)

On low RAM devices users will experience improved performance (Cgroup support reducing high priority process swapping) (bug 1082290.)

Android L support has been added (bug 1094121.)

Add-on support is now available to extend the capabilities of Firefox OS (off by default) (bug 923897.)

Language/Localization

Right to Left Languages are now supported on Firefox OS (bug 906270.)

Metrics

The ability to report on monthly active users has been added to enable better metrics (bug 1109422.)

NFC

Third party apps can now make use of NFC APIs (bug 1102019.)

Core Applications

Phone (Dialer)

Phone calls can now be placed on hold from the active call screen (bug 977588.)

SMS/MMS

MMS messages can now be sent to e-mail addresses (bug 997547 and bug 1091486.)

Contacts can now be shared in vCard/VCF format via email, messages, and Bluetooth (bug 1007932.)

Email

It is now possible to attach downloaded files stored in Download Manager to emails. (bug 1113152.)

Email accounts can now be manually configured with either SSL or clear text (bug 1046799.)

There are no longer restrictions on the types of received attachment filetypes that the user can download (bug 825318.)

Homescreen

It is now easier than ever to organize and group content on the homescreen using the new app grouping capability (bug 1067435.)

Keyboard

Users now have the ability to select text (tap and hold to select a word, then edit the selection using the provided drag handles), cut or copy selected text to a clipboard, and paste clipboard text into the current position within displayed text.

Settings

Settings

A new call barring menu had been added to settings panel (bug 910552.)

Privacy

A privacy panel has been added to enable the user to adjust privacy settings that control which data stored on the phone is shared (off by default) (bug 1083953.) When turned on, see Settings App > Browsing Privacy.

New DevTools features

We have added a "Reset and enable full DevTools" button to the Firefox OS Developer Settings to enable higher permissions on your device — this is important for those of you who can't root their device — this option does not require root privileges.

Platform changes and additions in detail

Web API changes

• app.getLocalizedValue() method added for returning localized App name (bug 1118946.)
• A whole host of telephony-related refactoring has been done; most notably, MozMobileConnection.sendMMI and Telephony.dial functions have been unified (bug 1031175.)
• In accordance with the above changes, MozMobileConnection.sendMMI, MozMobileConnection.cancelMMI, MozMobileConnection.onussdreceived, and USSDReceivedEvent.sessionEnded have been deprecated.
• Telephony.dial's promise now resolves directly to the call result, not a DOMRequest for the result (bug 1080883.)
• mozApps.mgmt.setEnabled and mozApps.mgmt.onenabledstatechange added for enabling and disabling an app (bug 1072090)
• mozApps.mgmt.import and mozApps.mgmt.export added for controlling app imports and exports (bug 982874.)
• HTMLIFrameElement.setNfcFocus() added to the browser API to indicate whether an iframe can receive an NFC event (bug 1105666.)
• Useful defaults provided for CameraControl interface — forward facing camera selected, best recording profile possible selected, inner window size selected for the preview size, and actual recording height/width set to the full screen size, when CameraControl.getCamera() is invoked (bug 1104913.)
• The NFC API has been made available to privileged apps (it was previously internal/certified-only) (bug 1091356.)
• Two new NFC API-related manifest permissions have been added — nfc and nfc-share — to make NFC permissions more granular and easier to transition to privileged status (bug 1048676.)
• The NdefReceivedEvent has been added to the NFC API, to notify the system when an NDEF is received from another NFC Peer (bug 1127735.)
• A number of NFC API changes have been made to support different tag formats (such as ISO 14443-4 tags.) Most notably, the MozNFCTag.transceive() method has been added, to read different formats, and MozNFCTag.format() has been added, which formats cards to a format Firefox OS can use (bug 916428.)
• The MozNFCTag.makeReadOnly() method has been added, to make a tag read-only.
• The MozNFCTag.id property has been added, to give all tags a unique ID (bug 1115465.)
• The MozNFC.onpeerfound, MozNFC.ontagfound, and MozNFC.ontaglost event handler properties have been added, replacing the web activities that previously handled such functionality (bug 991970.)
• Support for NFC Secure Elements has been added (bug 879861.)
• KeyboardEvent events (DOM Level 3 Events for hardware buttons, e.g power, volumeup, volumedown) now dispatched across browser elements (bug 989198.)

Security advisories

We have made available a complete list of security advisories for Firefox OS 2.2.

Older versions