Those who have been following what Mozilla is up to will know that they have been working on creating an open web app ecosystem ever since Google announced their Chrome Web Store and made it Chrome-only.
Mozilla has been trying to make a truly open web app ecosystem where multiple stores can coexist, where apps can be purchased and installed without even involving a store and where apps purchased in one browser will work on another browser. Cross-browser compatibility after all is a core principle of the open web.
Their own web app store, Mozilla Marketplace seems to be around the horizon. In fact the latest release, Firefox 16, has support for installing web apps though this isn’t publicized in the interface. Now Mozilla has announced that their latest Firefox Aurora release for Android now supports Mozilla Marketplace applications.
Mozilla has released this latest build with support for the Mozilla Marketplace in order to get feedback about the “design, usability, performance, reliability, and content” of the site.
The Mozilla Marketplace allows developers to offer free or paid web applications based on open standards. Apps can be installed from the store to the device, and subsequently used just like any other installed application.
While this will eventually be supported on all platforms Firefox runs on, including Firefox OS, for now Mozilla is testing apps only for Android.
If you have an Android device, you can get this build of Firefox from the Firefox Aurora download page. The Mozilla Marketplace itself can be browsed at marketplace.mozilla.org.
