Mozilla launches Firefox Marketplace on Android

Martin Brinkmann
Oct 19, 2012
Firefox
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If you are using Firefox on your Android smartphone, for instance to benefit from the synchronization of data between your desktop version of the browser and the Android app, you may be interested in the Firefox Marketplace as well. Mozilla today launched the marketplace for Firefox Aurora versions. Firefox Aurora is a special version of Firefox for early adopters that often incorporate features that stable version users of the browser do not get for a while.

Mozilla plans to collect feedback from users who use the Firefox Marketplace on the Aurora version of the web browser to optimize and improve it before it gets released to beta and stable users of Firefox for Android in 2013.

firefox marketplace android

To get access to the Firefox Marketplace you need to complete the following steps on your Android phone:

  1. Download the latest version of Firefox Aurora for Android from the official Mozilla Mobile website.
  2. Open the web browser afterwards and select Options > Apps, or if you do not see Apps there, Tools > Apps.
  3. The market place should open up and display apps that you can install

Some of the first apps available include apps for Twitter, Soundcloud and Jauntly.

You may ask yourself why Mozilla is developing the Firefox Marketplace, and how the apps offered there are different from add-ons that are also available for Firefox on Android. The core difference is that marketplace applications are built using HTML5 which enables developers to create cross-platform applications, something that can't be done with add-ons that easily.

Most web apps, just like those offered on Google's web store for Chrome, are nothing more than links to websites where those apps and games run on. This may be convenient for developers, but does not really justify installing apps on the phone if all you need to do to access it is to open a website in your browser.

This may change in the future when offline capabilities are made available so that apps can be started without an active Internet connection. What's your take on Mozilla's efforts to establish a marketplace for Firefox? (via Caschy)

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