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