Connected Devices/Projects/Project Tablet

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Revision as of 15:00, 1 June 2016 by Benfrancis (talk | contribs) (Build instructions)
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Project Tablet
Mozilla wordmark 25%.png
Project tablet.png
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 is on GitHub here.
  • This is an experimental branch of Gecko which includes the prototype tablet chrome.

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/benfrancis/gecko-dev.git

Checkout the tablet branch: 

$ git checkout b2g-tablet

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

Contacts

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