Mozilla platform engineer Rob Sayre has probably had better ideas.Hoping Microsoft might allow Firefox on their new Windows Phone 7 Series, Sayre wrote an open letter this morning to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "Hola, amigo. I know it?s been a long time since I rapped at ya," is how it starts.He then proceeds to make fun of Windows Phone 7 Series, the iPhone, Cocoa Touch, and Unix ? all in three concise paragraphs. He notes that Windows Phone 7 Series has a "busted" UI, calls the iPhone's UI "ugly jelly beans," and mocks the "allegedly cool" Cocoa Touch "stuff."Once he's done with all of that, he asks Ballmer to consider making an NDK for Windows Phone. An NDK is a companion tool for an SDK that allows you to build parts of apps in native code. For example, it's the Android NDK that allows Mozilla to make Firefox for Android.There's currently no plans to make an NDK for Windows Phone 7 phones ? hence Sayre's post. Without it, a version of Firefox for the OS is probably unlikely. And that's may be a good bet anyway, considering Microsoft seems to be pivoting its new phones closer to the iPhone's closed model rather than Android's open one.Sayre's approach to the post apparently didn't go over too well..Ya Think? he quickly followed up with an apology post, "Things I've Learned." "Blog posts that sound like Jim Anchower really irritate people for some reason. I won?t do it again, I promise," he writes.
Here is the Open Letter
Open Letter
March 20th, 2010
Dear Steve Ballmer,
Hola, amigo. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I been puttin’ out fires left and right. I have a great idea. Vlad and the mobile team here have Firefox acting pretty awesome on Android using their NDK.
What’s this got do with you? Well, you have this new Windows Phone thing going on. Tufte slammed it a little, and maybe the cropped UI is kind of busted. I’ll give it a shot, though. I think a head to head comparison makes you look pretty good. It makes the iPhone UI look like it’s made of ugly jelly beans. I’m kind of surprised–the allegedly cool Cocoa Touch stuff is reminding me of 90s Unix window managers. Oh wait, that’s what it is. haha.
So, anyway, you guys don’t have an NDK for Windows Phone. But I think there’s an opening here for everyone to do what they’re best at. I suggest you clone the Android NDK API, and add some stuff to make it better. Microsoft rocks at that. We’ll port Firefox, and I’m sure a bunch of games will come along too. It’s gonna be awesome.
