Firefox Home Coming To iPhone, Browser Next?

siliconbits writes "Mozilla has launched an iPhone app called Firefox Home that gives iPhone users instant access to their Firefox browsing history, bookmarks, and the set of tabs from their most recent browser session. What's more, it provides Firefox Awesome Bar capability that enables people to get to their favorite websites with minimal typing." With the Mozilla blog promising "There will be more to come," can the full browser be far behind?

Comments

Re:Surprising

[delinear]

It doesn't seem like much of an ifiltration if all it does (by the sound of it) is allow you to open your Firefox bookmarks, etc in the native iPhone browser and provide a search bar that does the same thing. Still nice to have the option to take your bookmarks across to the mobile device, though, and it might help win/retain a little FF mindshare but a far cry from the win that native FF on the iPhone would be.

Re:Surprising

[dzfoo]

It's perfectly understandable. Most Apple-bashing zealots have assumed from the beginning that Apple is engaged in an all-out war against anybody and everybody, for some irrational control-freakery bout they have attained. So it may seem surprising when their entrenched, biased opinions are rattled by an otherwise business-savvy move that seems too rational.

        -dZ.

More insightful than it sounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdotters have an odd tendency to view things in terms of black and white, good and Evil-with-a-capital-E. Most corporations fall solidly within the Evil category. Slashdot assumes that companies are in business to screw their competitors and customers as much as posible.

The idea that companies are in business to do business doesn't register.

Re:More insightful than it sounds

[Chrisq]

Slashdotters have an odd tendency to view things in terms of black and white, good and Evil-with-a-capital-E. Most corporations fall solidly within the Evil category. Slashdot assumes that companies are in business to screw their competitors and customers as much as posible.

The idea that companies are in business to do business doesn't register.

The truth is that businesses are out to screw competitors and their customers to what ever extent will maximise their profit. That means locking you in to expensive apps and platforms works, as long as they are not expensive enough to drive people away.

Like.. web apps?

[Henriok]

Ah, so you mean like writing web apps? The plattform independent platform that is HTML5? The kind Apple thought apps was supposed to work for iPhone since day one, long before the AppStore was even invented? If you think that's a great way to go, just go ahead. It's been implemented in the iPhone the last three years. You don't need Mozilla for writing web apps. Safari is great for such things. It's a web browser you know, they run web apps.

Why not switch?

[nightfire-unique]

I honestly don't mean this as a troll. I just don't understand something here.

If application compatibility is an issue for you, why not ditch apple's proprietary device and buy one of the many Android devices? Or if you're a *nix user, an n900?

I'm truly baffled by the iPhone's continued popularity amongst my fellow engineers.

Re:Why not switch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of us want a phone that 'just works' and looks polished and well thought out. We don't buy it to hack it.

You can say what you will about the iphone, but at least it does what it does well. Do I miss some features? Yes. Would I buy another one? Don't know, I may take a chance on an alternative, but at this point in time, using an iphone vs an android phone is a noticeable user experience difference. Android is less polished, more rough corners, less fluid, less thought out.

It will catch up. But not yet.

Re:Why not switch?

[nightfire-unique]

Some of us want a phone that 'just works' and looks polished and well thought out. We don't buy it to hack it.

You can say what you will about the iphone, but at least it does what it does well. Do I miss some features? Yes. Would I buy another one? Don't know, I may take a chance on an alternative, but at this point in time, using an iphone vs an android phone is a noticeable user experience difference. Android is less polished, more rough corners, less fluid, less thought out.

It will catch up. But not yet.

I hear this over and over again, but finally having used an iPhone a few weeks ago, I disagree. First, it's unstable. I personally witnessed two unexplained reboots and a hard lockup that required reflashing (over the course of one week of heavy usage). When I asked the owner what the deal was, he said: "Ah, it's been a while since I've reset." Say what?

Not all apps maintain their state (lack of multitasking aside). I left one application (think it was maps, but I forget) to get an address, and when I went back, I lost the buffer I had been typing in. Had to retype the entire thing. What is this, 2003?

The entire thing seems designed around tethering to a computer with iTunes. I spent two weeks in the US recently without my laptop - n900 only. Anything that can be done on the device can be done without a PC... even flashing.

Speaking of..flash... still no flash in the web browser! Feature? I guess. But one of the things it does well, apparently, is web browsing. After using my n900 for the past 4 months, Safari feels like a toy. Especially on that low-res screen.

I don't know; I didn't see any polish that was significantly better than my friend's Nexus running 2.1. And frankly I find the Maemo UI much more usable.

In my opinion, I think both devices have such a lead on the iPhone it's unlikely that it will ever catch up.

Re:What would be very interesting...

[B3ryllium]

Uhm, I think there may be a step or two about the approval process that you don't understand.

Re:STOP advertising apple.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

If you don't want to hear about Apple then stop visiting a site thats "News for Nerds".

There are just as many Windows and Linux related stories.

Evidently, you're not as sensitive to those stories.

Why the iPhone?

[mcgrew]

Considering that the iPhone is limited to AT&T (the network I hate most) and is completely closed, why not Android? Android is open source and on many different networks.

I wish I could get FireFox on my i776, it has perhaps the worst browser I've ever seen (OpenWave). Maybe they designed it to be bad, so it wouldn't be used much, since it's Boost Mobile and has unlimited everything for a $50/month flat fee with no contract.

I'm getting tired of hearing about the iPhone. Come on, Mozilla, get with the program -- ANDROID!

A Firefox Browser on My iPhone Would Be AWESOME

[Logical Zebra]

...as long as it comes equipped with AdBlock.

Re:A Firefox Browser on My iPhone Would Be AWESOME

[jo_ham]

Why is the parent flamebait? It's a serious concern. It's silly that my iPhone's browser displays more adverts than my desktop copy of Safari, and the phone's screen is smaller and is often browsing via 3G, so is even more annoying for downloading content that I do not want. At least the flash ads are a non issue.

Why not just build web apps

[ThrowAwaySociety]

It would be nice if we could run javascript/html5/css3 code on Apple products (plus minor extensions for accessing local stuff etc), via Mozilla. Then we could finally write useful platform-independent apps that also run on Apple products.

Why not just build javascript + html5 + css3 web apps? You get full platform independence and no app store hassles.

The iPhone supports HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. As for "local stuff," HTML 5 already has features that allows persistent local database storage. If your app need location awareness, the iPhone supports the W3C Geolocation API.

You may not remember, but originally, Apple's official stance was that the only third-party iPhone apps would be web apps. Lots of people bitched and moaned about how Apple was not allowing developers onto its device, so Apple eventually caved and released its SDK. But there's no reason you can't still build web apps for the iPhone.

Re:Why not just build web apps

[marmoset]

Everything you mentioned can already be done in Mobile Safari, Check.in (from the Brightkite folks) is a web application that makes use of local HTML persistance, geolocation, and hides the browser controls. It looks and behaves exactly like a native iPhone app.

Re:Why not just build web apps

[jez9999]

Why not just build javascript + html5 + css3 web apps? You get full platform independence and no app store hassles.

If such apps started to get really popular, Apple would have to implement a mechanism to enable them to charge for access to them.

Re:Awesome Bar

[VGPowerlord]

I can't see why anyone would actually want to port the 'Awful Bar' to another device.

No, seriously, I can't.

Re:What would be very interesting...

[Goaway]

Why exactly would Mozilla be interested in helping a commercial company push their proprietary technology?

Re:You think that's surprising?

[Xest]

Yeah, unfortunately following through the links it seems to be entirely unfounded, and little more than a guess that Ballmer is going to turn up, followed by a guess it'll be about Visual Studio 2010.

The wording also says "Chowdhry says the new version of VS will allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS.". Which we know is false because VS2010 is already out and has no such support, unless he's suggesting they'll follow it up with some downloadable addon.

If Microsoft are turning up I'd wager it's more likely going to be about an Apple/Bing tie-in after Apple fell out with Google, or perhaps something about Microsoft's new web based version of Office being compatible with the iPad or something dull.

It seems unlikely they'd invest time doing something in Visual Studio that would require a lot of work (new language support, new binary format support/emulator required, new compiler support etc.), and doesn't really benefit them or their customers whatsoever. I just don't really see what they'd gained by it, particularly at a time when Apple has been killing off 3rd party development environments, and is facing potential court cases over it to boot.

Re:Awesome Bar

[HockeyPuck]

Here's a fix:

Don't use it.

Even x86 is proprietary technology

[tepples]

How is making a bookmark sync tool available for iPhone any more "helping a commercial company push their proprietary technology" than making binaries available for x86 CPUs? Both ARM and x86 CPUs use proprietary technology subject to patent, trade secret, and either mask work right or HDL copyright, and you'd have to switch to something like the MIPS-compatible CPU written in VHDL to get away from this.

Re:Even x86 is proprietary technology

[Goaway]

Please at least make the effort to read the post I am replying to, OK?

Re:You think that's surprising?

[Cyberax]

Technically, it's not that hard for MS to add this support. Objective-C/C++ is just a plain C with some preprocessor magic, and VS in its current iteration is quite extensible.

Certainly, adding support for another language is possible as a simple add-on (for example, Nemerle language has one - http://rsdn.ru/article/nemerle/Nemerle.VsIntegration-en.xml ).

Re:Awesome Bar

[Sir_Lewk]

Weird, I never had to "train" my bookmarks menu. This is considered "better" how exactly?