Oh please, not that again.
http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=53517

I think you're just misunderstanding how these apps work, both for HTML5 and for Android native apps.

Your typical Android "native" app (which does not actually use the NDK) expresses its user interface in a text file containing XML, with Java event handlers attached to it to respond to various user actions. This XML is parsed at runtime and the corresponding Android UI toolkit objects are created.

Your typical "HTML5" app expresses its user interface in a text file containing HTML, with JavaScript event handlers attached to it. The HTML is parsed at runtime and the corresponding DOM nodes and CSS boxes are created.

Both can use OpenGL via the appropriate language bindings (WebGL in the case of HTML5 apps), but typically neither one actually does, leaving that up to the runtime (the browser in the case of the HTML5 appe, the Android runtime libraries for Android native apps) instead.

For a locally installed HTML5 app there are no sockets or TCP involved in a web browser: just reading (or mmapping) data from persistent storage.

If you actually look at the design documents for FirefoxOS they discuss this issue directly. There are actually _fewer_ layers there for rendering than there are for non-NDK Android apps.

On Android your typical "native" app is written in Java and uses GL for graphics if it needs fast 3D graphics. The Java is interpreted (on older Android) or JIT-compiled (Android 2.2 and newer). And this JIT is not exactly like HotSpot in terms of the performance it produces. For audio it uses whatever the system libraries are.

On FirefoxOS your typical app is written in JavaScript and uses WebGL for graphics if it needs fast 3D graphics. The JavaScript is JIT-compiled. The output can be within a factor of 2 of the performance of C++ code for game engines (see http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/ if you've missed it). For audio, it uses the browser's Web Audio implementation.

The two setups are actually a lot more similar than it seems at first glance.

What do you think a browser and an OS do, exactly?

A web browser needs to do render text, various high-performance graphics stuff, show some widgets that a user can interact with, provide a programmable runtime that can be used to create things like gmail or the github UI out of those widgets, do various network access, handle prioritizing things like web workers, painting, layout, and so forth. Oh, and nowadays also audio processing, real-time audio and video communications (WebRTC) and a few other things along those lines.

The non-kernel part of an OS needs to have libraries for high-performance graphics, show some widgets a user can interact with, a modern one will typically provide a programmable runtime for creating UI backed by some logic out of those widgets (C#, Objective C, Dalvik, etc). Pretty similar to a browser, actually.

Oh, and an OS needs to mediate hardware access, which is done by the kernel. Oddly enough, Mozilla is not creating a kernel from scratch; they're using the Android neé Linux kernel in FirefoxOS. Maybe because they figured this was not something they were experts in and maybe using an existing reasonably good solution would be better than trying to create a new thing.

Which is why it was possible to create FirefoxOS by taking a browser and adding a few APIs for touching hardware that the kernel exposes (things like cameras, FM radio, cell radio, etc). Plus a bunch of optimizations to the browser core that are needed no matter what to have a competitive browser.

You mean the "slow startup speed" that's 2x faster than Chrome? See http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-27-firefox-21-opera-next,3534-4.html for what the startup times look like if you actually measure them.

The AG in Massachusetts is unfortunately more interested in setting up another run for the US Senate than in doing a good job as AG, as far as I can tell...

VP9 will be better than H265 for you as an end user because Youtube will support VP9 and not H265. Google has said so.

you followed me from k5? who are you? you really need to get a life

you have no idea who i am and you don't know anything about me. forming these sort of obsessions and attachments on the internet is not healthy

so in addition to the us govt tracking my online movements i have to worry about creepy stalker trolls doing the same?

it has to feed off it's target at certain access points. these can be located and identified. they will also be protected. but each will have a weakness, no matter how many such access points, they can be hurt

let's kill it

it will be a box in a server room, a conduit under street, a transmitter on a roof

let's sabotage these fucking assholes

in the name of the founding principles of this country, fuck these goons

For staying true to the founding principles of this country, despite the corruption around him.

Those who would demonize him and prosecute him, have lost their way, and are the epitome of anti-Americanism, regardless of how that term is abused in the political arena.

The abstract and the commentary imply the canard that faith in science and faith in religion must be at odds. This isn't the case in theory or practice. There is no philosophical incompatibility in believing that science and God both work, or even that God works through science. And in practice, most religious believers exhibit plenty of faith that science works and are comfortable with it.

at one time, assange did a good think with wikileaks in this world

now he's just an entertainment "news" story figure

the potential for some conspiratards to see themselves as they talk about "the government"

because it's all the same paranoid bullshit

Leaked IE11 builds support WebGL.

Chrome has some pretty bad bugs with the element in gaming contexts. But the real solution to audio in HTML5 games is the Web Audio API. This is still a work in progress, but we'll get there. The Citadel demo uses it. If you stand on the bridge over the river and turn around 360 degrees, you should get a nice stereo effect.