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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?
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.
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.
Carol vs. Ghost
Today on Mac Rumors they posted a story saying that Steve Ballmer will be at the next WWDC keynote with Jobs showing "The new version of Visual Studio will reportedly allow developers to write native applications for the iPhone, iPad and Mac OS."
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
There is an extension you need called Firefox Sync. Just install it and it walks you through the sync process. IIRC you just need to set up an account with a password and choose what to sync. The data is encrypted by YOUR password which they don't know (so they can't peek at your data). Works with Firefox for desktop and Firefox Mobile. It was called Weave when it was in development.
Keep an eye on labs.mozilla.org, cool stuff on there.
> Will it require something on my desktop that then sends all the information from my
> browser to their servers?
Yes (though note https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/Crypto for details; the only data the server sees is an encrypted blob).
> Does firefox do that currently now?
Only if you install the relevant extension. See https://mozillalabs.com/sync/
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.
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.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
And theres no way to turn it off. Fantastic. Highlighting the options in the url bar and hitting delete doesn't get rid of them either. Fantastic.
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.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Opera Mini is different - pages are rendered (and JavaScript executed) on Opera's servers and sent back to the device for display. No rendering happens locally.
Amnesty International
Uhm, I think there may be a step or two about the approval process that you don't understand.
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!
Free Martian Whores!
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.
Opera Mini does not render HTML nor processes JavaScript. This is done on Opera's servers, and streamed down to the client for display using the native framework.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
This is not news. Mozilla is free to put as many apps as they want on the iPhone so long as they follow Apple's rules. Unfortunately, Apple won't tell us what those rules are, but we have a pretty good idea that you can't say anything bad about Apple or powerful people, and you can't compete with any Apple technologies or strategic plans (e.g. what Google Voice did). So, it would be news if Mozilla puts Firefox on the iPhone without stripping out their HTML5 Ogg support since Apple has a financial interest in H264. If Mozilla gets Firefox on the iPhone by agreeing to tailor Firefox to Apple's wishes (e.g. strip out Ogg or anything else that Apple doesn't like) then that would be a total sellout on Mozilla's part.
From their Wiki:
Reading is so passé, why have YouTube if you have to read? 3-step instruction? Don't read, listen to some nerd with dweeby voice ramble about it for 10 minutes on YouTube!
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Why exactly would Mozilla be interested in helping a commercial company push their proprietary technology?
...get Apple moving with Flash after everyone sees how wonderful it is.
Not everyone agrees that ending Flash's iron grip on video on the web would be a bad thing. Locked systems like Flash are good (sometimes) for fast adaption periods, but often fail to progress technologically long term; while becoming a cost prohibitive hindrance in a growingly commodified market.
maybe. I'm rooting for Apple on this one, but in corporate power plays, consumer benefit is usually only a low occurring side effect.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
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.
If they intend to bring FireFox to the iPhone, they've got to get a handle on it's memory gobbling first. It has gotten better over the last while, but leave FF open for any length of time and you suddenly have several hundred megabytes of RAM chewed up, especially on OS X where it stays resident even if you close all tabs.
But what if you have no network connection and can't get to Opera's server? How you gonna' surf the web then?
That's what I thought.
I drank what? -- Socrates
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.