Simulating Firefox OS for TV on your desktop

In this article you will learn how to set up a Firefox OS for TV simulator on your desktop computer to run and test your own TV apps.

Using the simulator via WebIDE

Soon, you will no longer be required to download multiple tools to get a simulator for TV — After bug 1212352 gets fixed, Mozilla's WebIDE tool will provide an easy way to create a custom simulator for different TV setups.

1. Open the WebIDE in Firefox Desktop by selecting Tools > Web Developer > WebIDE from the main menu.  The right side of the WebIDE window provides a listing of already-installed simulators as well as an Install Simulator menu to create a new simulator instance inside WebIDE.

2. If you haven't yet installed a simulator, do so by selecting Install Simulator and installing the Firefox OS TV version of your choosing.

   

3. Once your simulator instance is created and listed under Simulators, click the settings icon to the right of the simulator name.  You'll be presented with a screen that allows you to configure the device you'd like to simulate.

   

4. A TVs group is available in the Device dropdown menu, which contains each of the currently supported TV types:

   

5. Once you've configured the TV device to your specs, click the simulator name in the right column and the simulator will launch!  The home screen will look as follows:

   

Using Mulet to simulate Firefox OS for TV

If you'd prefer to build your own TV profile, perhaps to test Gaia changes that have yet to make an official Firefox OS simulator release, you can run your profile in a special build of Firefox called Firefox Mulet. See Using Gaia in Firefox Mulet for instructions showing how to set up the environment.

1. To create a special Gaia profile for TV, inside your gaia repo folder run the make command with the following options:

   GAIA_DEVICE_TYPE=tv DEVICE_DEBUG=1 make

   This creates a TV profile inside the profile directory that is set up for optimal debugging.

2. Run the Mulet build from the command line, passing it your Gaia profile as the profile to use when opening (signified by the -profile option), and setting a specified screen size (signified by the -screen option):

   ./mulet/FirefoxNightly.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin -no-remote -screen 1600x900 -profile /path/to/gaia/profile

   Note: If the -screen setting specifies a resolution bigger than your PC’s screen resolution, the system app will not work properly and you might see a broken UI. Reduce the screen size as necessary for your system.

   Note: The exact -profile /path/to/gaia/profile that you need is given to you when you create your profile (by running the make command, as shown above.)

3. If everything goes well, you'll see the Home app displayed — displayed incorrectly in a rotated portrait mode. It's a known issue (Bug 1228899):

4. You are able to correct it by clicking the rotate button on Mulet's RWD UI toolbar, and adjusting the screen size as necessary: