Connected Devices/Projects/Project Tablet

Project Tablet
Author(s)
Mozilla
Released
2016.05.11 (Initial Pitch)
Innovation Status
Stage 1 (Validation)

Project Tablet aims to a explore a simple, single-purpose tablet, completely dedicated to browsing the web.

If you would like to participate, you can get in touch with our connected devices participation team, or find us in the #tablet channel on irc.mozilla.org.

Project Overview

Hypothesis

Current tablet products are not meeting the needs of late majority adopters. There could be a demand for a simple, affordable browser-based tablet.

Problem

If all you want is a secondary device for casual web browsing and entertainment, existing tablets are over-complex:

• High friction app-centric experience more suited to productivity and communication
• Content buried inside separate apps
• Have to download an install an app just to try it, then clean up apps you don't use

Solution

A simpler tablet:

• Lightweight OS focused on web content
• Instant access to content, no app installations needed
• Automatically populated home screen

Project Status

Next step:

• User study to test a prototype and validate the hypothesis.

Success criteria:

• User study identifies a good problem/solution fit
• The concept resonates with users in the target segments
• Consumers would consider choosing the product over competitors

Design

• Features
  • Just the web, no app store
  • Dynamic home screen
  • Browse the WoT nearby
  • Automatic updates
  • Firefox Sync & Add-ons
• Early UI Mockups
• See video of early prototype in action

Development

The source code for an early prototype of the tablet UI can be found in an experimental branch of Gecko on GitHub.

Building the Prototype

Building the prototype for a desktop PC is like building Firefox, so make sure you have all the Firefox build pre-requisites installed. The prototype uses B2G's Mulet development environment to run and debug the tablet chrome.

First clone the GitHub repository (this is a fork of mozilla-central on GitHub, it's best to create your own fork of this repository to checkout if you want to submit pull requests):

$ git clone https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/gecko-tablet.git

Create a file in the source code directory called "mozconfig" and add the following line to the file:

ac_add_options --enable-application=b2g/dev

Build:

$ ./mach build

Create a blank profile directory if you don't want to use your default Firefox profile:

$ mkdir profile

Run the chrome inside the development environment (hit F12 to show the developer tools on the right hand side) and scale it to size:

$ ./mach run -profile profile

You can also run the tablet chrome directly without the developer tools:

$ ./mach run -profile profile -chrome chrome://b2g/content/shell.html

Meetings

Meeting notes will be recorded on an Etherpad. Meeting times TBD.

Discussions

• IRC: #tablet on irc.mozilla.org
• Forum: Discourse topic

Contacts

• Ben Francis - Product Owner