Firefox OS 2.5 for developers

This page details the developer features newly implemented in Gecko that are specific to Firefox OS 2.5, plus product features, DevTools features, and other points of interest for the new release.

Note: Firefox OS 2.5's Gecko component is based on Firefox 38 onwards.

Product features

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

New system features


The Bugzilla Lite app: Providing the ability to raise bugs/feature requests directly from the device (bug 1180660.)
Add-ons: Providing the ability to customise the experience to the user's liking (bug 1180672.)
Replaceable homescreens: The user can now choose between different homescreens (bug 1180665.)
The Web Speech API: Allows developers to implement apps that can be controlled by voice input (bug 1051148.)
Pin the Web: Provides the ability to seach the web and pin any website to the homescreen so that users can have quick and easy access to content that interests them (bug 1180669.)
Tracking protection: Users can now safely browse the web without being tracked (bug 1180674.)
Device startup time and performance: Startup/performance regressions have been eradicated from Firefox OS 2.5, ensuring a good experience right from when the device is turned on (bug 1180695, bug 1180696.)
Late customization: Device vendors now have the ability to offer locally relevant apps to customers on first startup (bug 1180707.)
Improved RTL experience: Firefox OS 2.5 has much better support for RTL languages, ensuring much better language support across all our user base (bug 1179459.)
First Implementation of New Gaia Architecture (NGA): The first step is to split the Gaia app's frontend and backend architecture, allowing for many improvements in the future (bug 1180716.)
View source: When the device is in developer mode, users can view the source of core applications directly on the device (bug 1188671.)
Presentation API: Allows developer to to enable web content to access external presentation-type displays and use them for presenting web content (bug 1184073.)

Firefox OS TV–specific features
TV Browser: Firefox OS browser to support TV form factor (bug 1190158.)
Firefox Account integration with TV Browser: Allows TV users to sync bookmarks and history via Firefox Accounts in the browser (bug 1194108.)
Presentation API request receiver: Enables Firefox OS TV to receive URLs sent from other devices via Presentation API calls (bug 1205999.)
Metrics for TV: Firefox OS Metrics now enabled for TV form factor (bug 1199319.)

New DevTools features

Note: You can always find details of new and upcoming Firefox DevTools by looking at the Mozilla Hacks Developer Tools category.

Platform changes and additions in detail

Note: Our list here includes features most important to Firefox OS. For an expanded list of general Gecko feature additions (which are generally also present in Firefox OS 2.5), consult the newest Firefox developer release notes.

JavaScript

The ECMAScript Internationalization API has been enabled for Firefox OS. See bug 866301 for more implementation details, and the blog post Introducing the JavaScript Internationalization API for usage examples.

Web API changes

The Web Speech API allows incorporatation of voice data into a web app — both speech recognition and synthesis (bug 1051148.)
The Camera API has had two new methods added to control video recording: CameraControl.pauseRecording() and CameraControl.resumeRecording() (see bug 1187364.)
The Data Store API is now available to privileged homescreen apps. This is so that 3rd party homescreen apps can access the same data stores as the default homescreen app and provide equivalent functionality. See bug 1181329 for feature implementation details, and Using the Data Store API for specific code details.
The DeviceStorage interface has a new Boolean property available, which returns true if the storage area is nearly full (bug 1204618.)
The Telephony API has a new method allowing an app to be designated as the owner of the telephony calls from the AudioChannel policy — Telephony.ownAudioChannel() (see bug 1129882.)
The Browser API has a new method for retrieving microdata from loaded pages: HTMLIFrameElement.getStructuredData() (bug 1195801.)
The Browser API has a new method, for retrieving a loaded app's manifest: HTMLIFrameElement.getManifest() (bug 1169633.)
The Browser API mozbrowserasyncscroll event has been removed (bug 898075.)

Bugs and regressions

Long pressing on images in edit mode resulted in a context menu where the options did not function correctly, due to an incorrect activity selector. This regression was fixed as of early October (see bug 1198522.)

Security advisories

None as yet.