Firefox Home – looking to the future

ragavan

56 responses

Firefox Home for the iPhone is one of the first applications to showcase the benefits of having your Firefox data in the cloud. We received an amazing response to the launch of Firefox Home in the Apple App Store and have worked to make the app even better. Now, we want to share our plan for Firefox Home and are eager to hear your feedback.

What is Firefox Home?

Firefox Home is a free cloud-based application that lets you access your Firefox desktop history, bookmarks and tabs on your iPhone. Want to pull up that funny video you were watching just before you left home? Open Firefox Home and your web history is right there. Forgot to print out directions to the restaurant before leaving work? Firefox Home gives you instant access to your desktop tabs.

On platforms that cannot support the full Firefox browser, Firefox Home saves the day by providing access to your Firefox history.

If you haven’t yet, download and install the latest version of Firefox Home today.

What’s next for Firefox Home?

As we look to the future, we identified a couple of areas of focus for Firefox Home and would love to hear what you think.

Provide access to more Firefox data on your phone and add social functionality.
For example:

  • Synchronize passwords to your phone so you don’t have to type them in anymore.
  • Better integrate with new iOS4 features and other native applications (such as Youtube, Maps, Mobile Safari etc.)
  • Bring other Firefox customizations such as search engine preferences.
  • Bring your Firefox  Panorama settings and tab groups to your phone.
  • Some of our more experimental features will allow you to easily share links, reviews and comments with your friends on
  • Twitter, Facebook or other social networks directly from Firefox Home.
  • Build the ability to provide feedback and get help with any issues directly from within Firefox Home.

Bring Firefox Home to more platforms

In addition to adding new features, another big focus is to bring Firefox Home to other phones where users don’t have the Firefox browser. We are working to bring Firefox Home to both Blackberry and Symbian platforms in the coming months. We want to offer people access to their Firefox data no matter where they are, and these two platforms make up around 60% of the worldwide smartphone market combined. We’ve also heard interest for an iPad version of Firefox Home and will investigate this option further.

No Firefox Browser for the iPhone

We are working to bring as much of your Firefox experience as possible to Firefox Home. People have asked about adding more browser-like features to Firefox Home, but there are technical and logistical restrictions that make it difficult, if not impossible, to build the full Firefox browser for the iPhone. We are focused on building Firefox Home as a rich, cloud-based application and making it a valuable product that people will continue to love and use.

Give us feedback

We would love to hear your thoughts around Firefox Home. In particular:

  • Do you have a cool new feature you want to see in Firefox Home? Tell us about it.
  • Do you want to see other types of data in Firefox Home?  Let us know.
  • Are you a developer on the iPhone/Symbian/Blackberry platforms and want to help us make this a reality? Join us on our mailing list or #mobile on our irc server.
  • Love Firefox Home and want to write a review?

—
Ragavan and Stuart on behalf of the Firefox Home team

56 responses

  1. Steve wrote on :

    Of course it’s good because it integrates into your browser and increases some functionality but personally I think the backfire effect of this particular move is more negative than positive because it’s developments like this that have contributed to the impending death of the xmarks service. Not good.

  2. Pierre wrote on :

    I know Firefox Home for Android is not in your plans because of Fennec, but an Android Sync Adapter for Sync would be so nice… Any chance ? 🙂

  3. Anees Younis wrote on :

    A prettier icon for the Firefox Home iPhone app would be nice. Also, it would be useful to have the option to lock the application at startup.

  4. vera wrote on :

    that’s why i love so much mozilla firefox.
    ps. can i have the name of the song in the video?
    thanks.

  5. Kenneth wrote on :

    Does Firefox Home support tags? I use them a fair amount to organize bookmarks… development, genealogy, etc. Be nice to be able to browse that way as well. If it’s in the current version, I must have missed it somehow.

  6. Wahooney wrote on :

    Any chance of an Android version of this?

  7. koda wrote on :

    It’s really a pity that there’re no plans to port fennec on ios, firefox home is really nice but it’s not the same…
    anyways, do you plan do add support for iPad as well? it would be a great addition for firefox home

  8. Igor wrote on :

    Yea,why is there no Android version planed?

  9. Harsh86 wrote on :

    +1 on what Pierre and Wahooney said.

  10. ab wrote on :

    Really love FFH on my iphone and several home machines. Core competency is sync – please don’t dilute with Facebook/Twitter/sharing, etc. Passwords I can see as a rational addition; however, FFH does not need to be “social” to be a hit. Please just stay focused on what it does well – sync.

  11. Andreas wrote on :

    It would be nice if I could close tabs via Firefox home (stuff that i read on the iphone don’t need to be open at home)

  12. Mark GIles wrote on :

    Firefox home is great, but it’s very ugly on the iPad. Please make a dedicated iPad version a priority.

  13. Oliver wrote on :

    Coll App. I would highly recommend an iPad version. In my case I’m using the iPad much more for internet surfing than the iPhone. On the iPhone I’m using Apps, because of the display size Safari is an exception only…

    Thanks, Oliver

  14. Chris wrote on :

    If you really want to make an impact with this cloud app, you need to make it accessible from all desktop based browsers too. I am not going store all my data in a cloud app I cannot access without my iPhone or Firefox installed on a computer. I won’t be the only one either. Many corporate users may be locked to IE on their work PC and may want to access this data. Also consider users traveling. A web cafe may only have IE or Chrome installed. A “cloud” app should be about accessibility, not branding, which is kinda the feeling I am getting from your app.

  15. Kate Wilkins wrote on :

    Please please please can we have an iPad version of Firefox home.

    Thanks

    Kate

  16. jerrin wrote on :

    will the symbian version be available for symbian^1 devices and why can’t a full browser for symbian comeout.

  17. Shmerl wrote on :

    As discussed here: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=1904063&start=15
    it might be legally possible to develop Fennec for iOS. Did Mozilla lawyers investigate this issue, or Mozilla just prefers to avoid the legal thorns of iOS SDK altogether and didn’t research this yet?

  18. Josh wrote on :

    I use Xmarks to for this functionality on my Blackberry. Please, please release the BB Firefox Home app before Xmarks closes its doors on Jan. 10, 2011.

  19. Sophie wrote on :

    I heart Firefox! I am miserable without Firefox on my new iPad!

    Are you absolutely sure it isn’t possible to develop Firefox for the iPad? Other apps like the Atomic Web Browser seem to have found a way to do it….

  20. Trust wrote on :

    Will you make a web interface for Firefox Home, so that other unsupported OS or new upcoming OS can access to it too?

  21. jiri wrote on :

    any chance of a simple website for Firefox Home? I would love to use this even on computers where I cannot install Firefox

  22. Zicu wrote on :

    Why exactly is Firefox mobile not coming out for the iPhone? Opera Software did it, Mozilla should be able to do it too.

  23. Armando Rivera wrote on :

    Good grief, if I knew your plans earlier wouldn’t have got this HTC Droid. Now I have to wait another five years for FireFox plans for Droid?

  24. Josh wrote on :

    Screw apple… Let’s get an Android version of this… :\ Funny how Firefox is open source yet they’re marketing their features on a closed source system (iOS) that doesn’t even let you watch that “funny video” on your iPhone because guess what? iOS doesn’t support flash! WOOT!

  25. Patar wrote on :

    @Wahooney

    As it looks, or as I think, it’ll already be in Fennec for Android, the way it handles bookmarks, history and other related things.

  26. clooney wrote on :

    Because we are unable to bring the full Firefox browser to the iPhone, we developed Firefox Home, a free app that brings your Firefox history, tabs and bookmarks from your desktop to your iPhone. We feel this is a useful and necessary Web companion to Firefox, but it’s not, nor intended to be a Web browser.

  27. effal wrote on :

    It’s such a shame there won’t be a full version of Firefox on the iPhone. I would love to have one! Please Apple reconsider you strange policy.

  28. quad band cell phone wrote on :

    Good grief, if I knew quad band cell phone your plans earlier wouldn’t have got this HTC Droid.china cell phone wholesale Now I have to wait another five years for FireFox plans for Droid?

  29. Peter wrote on :

    This app is screaming for an iPad version!

    So often I’ve been browsing with heaps of tabs at my PC, and thinking I’d rather be sitting outside/on the couch/etc. to read all these tabs I’ve opened… exactly the kind of use case a native iPad Firefox Home would be perfect.

  30. Trevor wrote on :

    I love firefox so much so I downloaded it for my phone but my phone does not support it. Is there any way you could get it to work with the HTC Droid Eris?

  31. Allen wrote on :

    I have an iPad and really miss Firefox. Is there a possibility that Firefox will be available for iPad in the future?

  32. monica wrote on :

    I’m just glad whoever wrote this article, this one was very informative.Glad to read it .. GOOD job!

  33. castle wrote on :

    I’m waiting for Firefox home on my iPad

  34. Leonardo Ocaña wrote on :

    I’ve been using hundreds of tabs across multiple browsers in multiple devices (mostly desktop and notebook), all of which have multiple OSs installed. This Sync feature is as MUST to my messy way to work, and I’ve been especially impatient for the Panorama feature. I now have an Android Device, and I haven’t yet tested Fennec (for I have not yet updated my Android version, even though there’s an update to 2.1 available).

    Anyway.

    Where the hell is Firefox Home for Android? Is it integrated in Fennec, or Fennec’s Sync feature will cover that necessity for a dedicated app like Firefox Home?

    Also, one doubt has been hovering over my mind lately: how will I be able, for instance, to deal with my usual 100-200 tabs in the browser (if all devices would be synced, that number would be something like 300-500 I guess)… and then sync those to my Android Phone? How would that be made possible or negotiable? I don’t even count on being able to deal with, say, 15 tabs at once in my smartphone (not with the provided browser, anyway). Could those tabs be arranged via Panorama so that just a small portion of the tabs would be synced as normal with the phone, leaving all the other ones “minimized” or, for that matter, “hidden but accessible some other way”?

  35. Rudy wrote on :

    After getting the update for Firefox Home . It quit working for me. S I tried re logging on and I can log into my account alright but no tabs or bookmarks.
    It authorizes but then it wont pull up any history for my taks and book marks.
    I have looked thru the web trying to get help over the last month but none so far.

  36. Rudy wrote on :

    I got it working. When a new version of firefox was installed the part under the sync preferences in Browser sync, the items were left not checked. Like tabs, bookmarks, history, etc. I put check marks in them all and resynced on the browser and then I tried my iphone app Firefox Home and it worked OK in Firefox 3.6.

    Yaaayy!

  37. BPO Work wrote on :

    So often I’ve been browsing with heaps of tabs at my PC, and cerebration I’d rather be motility outside/on the couch/etc. to have all these tabs I’ve opened… exactly the kind of use framework a soul iPad Firefox Home would be perfect.
    __________________
    deepty

  38. BPO Work wrote on :

    I bonk firefox so such so I downloaded it for my phone but my sound does not strengthener it. Is there any way you could get it to play with the HTC Droid Eris?
    ________________________
    RATNAKAR

  39. kamrul islam wrote on :

    please please please we need mozila firefox for symbian mobile,please do something for all symbian user..coz i bought nokia E71 recently i use firefox for pc now i want to use it in my mobile device………..

  40. Franko wrote on :

    I would also like an iPad version of Firefox home.

  41. Mike wrote on :

    yeah, its really nice utility with user interface and as very supportive to the device as other applications by mozilla.

    Mike
    replica watches

  42. Robin wrote on :

    After last week’s effective death sentence for Symbian (the Nokia/MS deal), are you still planning to keep working on a Symbian port of Firefox Home? A lot of us still have Symbian phones for the time being (18 months in my case) and some form of sync support would be a real godsend, but not a word has been said (that I can find) since the initial announcement. Where to get information on this?

    If the port is off the table, it’d at least be nice to see a working web interface for the weave server. Any hope of that either, or is it (weaveweb) dead too?

  43. سعودي كول wrote on :

    This is such a nice addition thanks

  44. bpo work wrote on :

    Why exactly is Firefox ambulant not coming out for the iPhone? Theatre Software did it, Mozilla should be fit to do it too.
    ___________________
    prabin

  45. tk wrote on :

    When will Firefox have web browser for blackberry? I have BB, but I would like to have firefox for my BB. I have been using Firefox since it first came out, with my desktop and my laptop. keep up the good work! Thanks

  46. bob wrote on :

    when will firefox be available for the blackberry storm 9500 coz i luv’s it

    diolch

    bob, n.wales

  47. Derek Lo wrote on :

    I like firefox home.
    Please consider making an iPad version

  48. Cunning Alias wrote on :

    Android Please!

  49. Stephen wrote on :

    Blackberry version PLEASE!!!

  50. francois wrote on :

    For Blackberry. Please. You know it makes sense!

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