14 DAY TRIAL // As Mozilla announced a few days back, the new Firefox OS Simulator 4.0, an add-on that transforms your browser into an app development tool, is here. The latest release brings quite a lot of improvements for would-be Firefox OS developers.
There aren't any big changes or that many new features, but the tool has reached a point where it's well rounded and stable enough for hassle-free development.
One new addition is a "Connect" button, which opens the instances of the Firefox dev tools linked specifically to your app, and not the entire Firefox OS window, making debugging a lot easier.
Also new is remote CSS styling, as long as you use the Nightly or Aurora builds. These come with a full-blown Style Editor which enables you to modify or add CSS rules for your app and see the changes applied instantly.
Another very useful new feature is the emulation of touch events. Previously, the simulator registered mouse events when you were interacting with your app. That's understandable, since you were using a mouse, not a touchscreen, but not very useful for an app that was going to be used almost exclusively with touch input.
Now, mouse events are registered as real touch events in the simulator, meaning you can debug the input for your app without running it on a test phone.
The latest Simulator update makes it possible for developers to test app functionality based on receipts, i.e. to see how the app reacts to changes in the receipt type, i.e. valid, invalid, or refunded.
There's also a new shortcut key for a clean refresh. If you press Shift + Ctrl/Cmd + R instead of just Ctrl/Cmd + R, all the persistent data will be wiped, not just the cache. This means any local storage data, IndexedDB entries, and so on.
With Firefox OS-powered devices now selling in stores, a powerful development environment for Mozilla's mobile operating system is a must, so this update comes at just the right time.