Review of Minimalist for FireFox Mobile Beta

App review for Minimalist
App store: Firefox Marketplace
App URL: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/minimalist/
Platform: Firefox (Android/Linux/?)
Cost: $0.00
Source: (View source :p)
Developer: Kevin Ngo

The shiny new Firefox "Apps" button in the Firefox Beta Menu with the venerable Mozilla Rocket stepping up as the icon.

Pressing the Apps button takes you to the Firefox store. Here we see a few different views of the Minimalist app details in store.

 

After installing the app launcher icons appear in the FireFox app tab, on the Android home screen and can also be placed in folders/widgets/etc. Ignore the text being cut off on my home screen, this is because I cram a lot of icons onto my pages, you can even see the same happening to the play store.

Startup screen is quite pretty and then we see the process of adding a new list. The popup dialogue text reads "The page at http://[...] says:" which is a bit of an awkward way of saying "New list name:" :p

Adding to list is quite straight forward, select your list and start typing, return takes you to a new list item.

More adding to lists displayed here, unfortunately the list seemed to be quite light on first loading as displayed on the left above, but after adding or switching lists the text was much darker and more legible. It also seemed to handle all sorts of unusual characters admirably.

It is a bit of a draw back that the name of the list I am currently working on is not always visible, so the only way to view the list title is to swipe to another list and swipe back at which point the list name is displayed very briefly (I could only faintly catch it in the above-left screenshot).
It is also possible to swipe left when there is only one list and the effect looks a bit doge, but perhaps I'm being a bit too picky here.
When multitasking in Android the App preview in the task switcher only labels the app as "App" (a word my spell-checker still refuses to acknowledge), The preview looks fine, but I could imagine it being a drag trying to identify different programs if I was using a half dozen or so of the Firefox Apps. This one may also be a limitation of the Firefox App Platform, but have not investigated enough (yet) and not Minimalists fault at all.

Another issue I have that I'm sure is a limitation of the platform (but will mention none the less) is that if I try to remove the app using the Android technique of dragging and holding the icon over "remove" until it becomes "uninstall" and then dropping it. The result is not as you might expect. As you can see above the dialogue is a bit confusing, paraphrasing: "App is part of App... do you want to remove App"... to which I respond "Which one?" and just guess it means Minimalist and click "ok"... I was wrong, it uninstalled Firefox and all the apps I had loaded from the Firefox Market. So to uninstall just Minimalist (or any other app) we must enter the Firefox Market again and proceed to uninstall apps there.
I have not reviewed it here but there is also a desktop version available... Whilst Minimalist is functional and certainly fulfils the expectations set forth by its name I would like to see some syncing capabilities across devices, to have the notes I take on my mobile available on my desktop and vice versa. Additionally an option to export to disk would be essential for me to adopt this solution to my note taking requirements.

Other than that I'd have to give it about a seven out of ten for a simple note taking app that gets the job done. Have fun exploring the Firefox Marketplace peoples :D